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Fifty-Two Stitches: Horror Stories #2
52 Stitches: Horror Stories - Volume 2
These flash stories are quick, dark, and sometimes mean. You'll find black humor here. Zombies. Killer angels. Maybe a vampire or two. But there are other, less common horrors at work, even a few subtle, unsettling tales which stretch far beyond their few pages. Each story can be read in a few minutes, but will haunt for much longer.
136 pages, Paperback
First published September 14, 2009
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About the author
Aaron Polson
82 books77 followersAaron Polson currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, two sons, and a tattooed rabbit. His stories have featured magic goldfish, monstrous beetles, and a book of lullabies for baby vampires. His work has seen print in Shock Totem, Blood Lite II, and Monstrous with several new stories forthcoming in Shimmer, Space and Time, and other publications. The Saints are Dead, a collection of weird fiction, magical realism, and the kitchen sink, is due from Aqueous Press in 2011. "
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 8, 2011
(Review written for a now defunct review site, but I figured why not throw it up here!)
As was the first volume of 52 Stitches, this second installment is a series of dark flash tales, originally posted for free at the 52 Stitches website run by Strange Publications' Aaron Polson, one a week for an entire year. Why, then would one pay for a paperback -- apart from the marvelous cover?
One very good reason I came up with while reading it was that these sharp little stories, none of them more than three pages long, could easily bring the bedtime story back into fashion for grown-ups. Ideally one would read one a night and it'd last a few months, but the problem there is that it's like candy. You finish one and think, "Oh, that was good -- one more won't hurt", and pretty soon you're stuffed.
Fans of dark fiction on the fence about the flash phenomenon might find this a good starting point, as well. The theme is just that, short and dark, which covers a lot of territory. Sometimes that can be disorienting and end up feeling slapdash in an anthology, but these stories have something deeper in common that makes it work on another level: it might be called 52 Sucker Punches for the way it operates on a reader. If the writer's job is to evoke emotion, it's pretty impressive to land a jab in 500 words. Particularly when so many of them still hurt the morning after, as in this collection.
A few stories fall flat, but with the minimal time investment there's not much disappointment -- and there's enough to delight in that it's easy not to dwell. There's dark, delicious humor (Michael Stone's "The Rise of Azaliel and Lorcas", Jonathan Pinnock's "The Wrong Thing to Say"); mini descriptive tour de force (K. Allen Wood's "By the Firelight", Joe Nazare's "Beside Himself"); small town horror and silence (Doug Murano's "Fireboomers", Alan Davidson's "Thor's Hammer", Kent Alyn's "The Slough"); intense gut-wrenchers that run the gamut from childhood innocence (Michael Colangelo's "The Chronicles of Blackbriar") to dystopian futures (Cate Gardner's "Edible Flowers Perched Above a Dying Landscape"). Madness, hunger, paranoia, loneliness, love, war, holidays, and, as the chilling cover might imply, even dolls with bad intent.
Familiar themes, but each reworked into something quick, clever, yet lasting. Some of the stories are almost poetry, they're so prettily but exactly written. It's a bedside table book, for sure -- though there's always the issue of what dreams may come to deal with, after this one.
(As an important note, 52 Stitches 2 is dedicated to the memory of one of the contributors, Jamie Eyberg. All proceeds from its sale go to the Kennedy and Brendan Eyberg fund.)
As was the first volume of 52 Stitches, this second installment is a series of dark flash tales, originally posted for free at the 52 Stitches website run by Strange Publications' Aaron Polson, one a week for an entire year. Why, then would one pay for a paperback -- apart from the marvelous cover?
One very good reason I came up with while reading it was that these sharp little stories, none of them more than three pages long, could easily bring the bedtime story back into fashion for grown-ups. Ideally one would read one a night and it'd last a few months, but the problem there is that it's like candy. You finish one and think, "Oh, that was good -- one more won't hurt", and pretty soon you're stuffed.
Fans of dark fiction on the fence about the flash phenomenon might find this a good starting point, as well. The theme is just that, short and dark, which covers a lot of territory. Sometimes that can be disorienting and end up feeling slapdash in an anthology, but these stories have something deeper in common that makes it work on another level: it might be called 52 Sucker Punches for the way it operates on a reader. If the writer's job is to evoke emotion, it's pretty impressive to land a jab in 500 words. Particularly when so many of them still hurt the morning after, as in this collection.
A few stories fall flat, but with the minimal time investment there's not much disappointment -- and there's enough to delight in that it's easy not to dwell. There's dark, delicious humor (Michael Stone's "The Rise of Azaliel and Lorcas", Jonathan Pinnock's "The Wrong Thing to Say"); mini descriptive tour de force (K. Allen Wood's "By the Firelight", Joe Nazare's "Beside Himself"); small town horror and silence (Doug Murano's "Fireboomers", Alan Davidson's "Thor's Hammer", Kent Alyn's "The Slough"); intense gut-wrenchers that run the gamut from childhood innocence (Michael Colangelo's "The Chronicles of Blackbriar") to dystopian futures (Cate Gardner's "Edible Flowers Perched Above a Dying Landscape"). Madness, hunger, paranoia, loneliness, love, war, holidays, and, as the chilling cover might imply, even dolls with bad intent.
Familiar themes, but each reworked into something quick, clever, yet lasting. Some of the stories are almost poetry, they're so prettily but exactly written. It's a bedside table book, for sure -- though there's always the issue of what dreams may come to deal with, after this one.
(As an important note, 52 Stitches 2 is dedicated to the memory of one of the contributors, Jamie Eyberg. All proceeds from its sale go to the Kennedy and Brendan Eyberg fund.)
December 24, 2010
A solid anthology, though with so many stories—fifty-two in all, hence the title—there were some that I didn't care for. Not surprising given the number of tales. But they were all quick reads, and I enjoyed most.
My story, "By the Firelight," can be found here as well.
My story, "By the Firelight," can be found here as well.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews