A Carnival of Chimeras

by Stephen Woodworth

A man with a woman's face on the back of his head. A zombie Richard Nixon who rises from the grave to save the world on the eve of Armageddon. A blind man terrorized by a creature in dreams of utter blackness - a being he can only sense through sound, smell, and touch. A legendary bird that kings would kill to possess, for it sings a song of exquisite pathos… but only when it is tortured beyond endurance.

These are among the sideshow sensations featured in A Carnival of Chimeras, the long-awaited first collection of short fiction by Stephen Woodworth, award-winning author of the New York Times best-selling paranormal thrillers Through Violet Eyes and With Red Hands. Culled from a career spanning more than 20 years, including appearances in Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Best of Black Wings, and Year's Best Fantasy, these tales range from surreal explorations of the human psyche to visceral evocations of cosmic dread - a funhouse filled with thrills like no other.

Genres: Horror

282 pages, Paperback

Published February 5, 2020

About the author

Stephen Woodworth is the author of the New York Times bestselling Violet Series of paranormal thrillers, including Through Violet Eyes, With Red Hands, In Golden Blood, and From Black Rooms. His short fiction has appeared in such publications as Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Year's Best Fantasy, Black Wings IV and V, and Midian Unmade. You may find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/stephen.wood....

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the address for this collection is certainly located in The Weird, when you peek through their windows and past their curtains, the Bizarro have been invited in to crash on the couch. “Olverung” is a tall tale with a delightfully unhappy ending from an unreliable narrator. If you want a sample of what to expect from this book, this story is well served by the audio presentation available for free over on PodCastle.

https://podcastle.org/2009/09/09/podc...

“The Colorless People” does a fantastic job with neuroatypicality that is reminiscent of Kirlian photography. The characters were effectively constructed and the psychic vampires were beautifully drawn. “Street Runes” is a fascinating take on the constant evolution of language and the power of words to tear down and build anew.

“Voodoo” is an excellent expansion of the Mythos that refuses to be slavish to the source material. This picks up from the generations impacted by the most horrific segment of Call of Cthulhu where cultists danced in the swamp among humans that were flayed and displayed on poles like banners around the worship site. This story perfectly inhabits New Orleans and shows all her grotty layers. If you love stories about NOLA, then that alone is worth hunting this one down -- the monsters are a nice bonus.

“The Hidden Track” shows us an audio engineer and sound preservationist finds an old wax cylinder for a phonograph that documents a monstrously failed seance. This brings in found documents of the spiritualist era and a scientist who has gone mad with being rejected from academia for researching creatures in the fourth dimension. Delightfully tense, it snaps along at an inexorable pace until we’re left to doubt our senses.

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

It seems every book Hippocampus puts out is a collection of "One of Weird Fiction's Finest Writers". Just by how much they put out, I would say that is possible but not likely. That said, I am glad to say that the cover blurb's hyperbole isn't that far off. So, just to be a jerk, I am going to talk about the things I did NOT like.

There are the two criticisms:

-The mentioning of Adele playing on the stereo in, "Her". When an author does this pop culture referencing, I feel it poorly dates ANY kind of stories, but especially so in works which are usually noteworthy for their creepy sense of time and/or timelessness. This smacks of the old stock character adult trying to sound "hip". Maybe the author and I just view Adele differently. It's like saying, "We shared a tender moment and Backstreet Boys was on the stereo". I could forgive almost any other artist being named as background music, but Adele...*

-The inclusion of the the Richard Nixon Zombie story, "The Silent Majority". This seems so off key with the book as a whole that I feel including it hurt the rest of the collection. This story is still sympathetically written and enjoyable but it feels too light, too on the nose, and just too silly to mix in with the rest. This may be a result of the book encompassing ALL of Woodworth's fiction, but then I would have (because you care...) some how marked it off from the rest of the collection. Or omitted it entirely as inappropriate.

So, the reason I took these two piddling issues so personally is because I REALLY enjoyed these stories. Woodworth does something I am not particularly familiar with in the Weird Fiction I have read; He writes good characters. I never realized how much a well drawn protagonist enhances my reading pleasure. It should not be overstated that the stories in themselves are creative and enticing in the way the best weird fiction is, but having a round character in this kind of work seems rare to me. In looking back over the stories, I was surprised to find how well I remembered each. A rare feat for a man whose mind is oatmeal.

Excellent work, Mr. Woodworth.

*I actually enjoy a few Adele songs.