Literary Horror discussion

Please join Randolph and Bill for a buddy read: Richard Thomas' new collection Spontaneous Human Combustion.

A couple of many rave reviews:
https://locusmag.com/2022/04/gabino-i...
https://culturedvultures.com/richard-...

Let's start around May 20.

"Repent": I like the mix of gritty realism and dark magic ritual. I tend to prefer writing that's less ornate, but it works ok here.

"Clown Face" is 4 pages of similarly dense prose. But the last sentence comes out of nowhere, ha.

Each story starts off with a small illustration by M.S. Corley. I like the first two so far.

I read this collection in February (ARC from the author) and thought it was excellent overall.

The writing is quite dense and dark so I found I could only read one story at a time, while many collections I zoom through. I liked that, though: it forced me to slow down and really think about them.

Many of my favourite stories were in the second half, but I do remember liking Repent a lot. Repentance and redemption are major themes that cycle through the collection.

I'll reread a few favourites as the buddy read goes on, it will be fun to revisit these stories.

Last call for June monthly read nominations:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

We already have several juicy suggestions. I'd like to start the poll by the weekend.

Only a handful of the voters for the winning books of the past couple months have participated in the discussions. For the June monthly read poll, I will not broadcast the call to vote. But active participants in this and a few other forum threads should get notifications when the poll is up.

Leanne wrote: "I read this collection in February (ARC from the author) and thought it was excellent overall."

Thanks for your comments, Leanne! I've been trying to wrap up a couple other monthly reads, but will return to this today. Look forward to chatting more.

These days I'm rarely in the mood for the kind of post-apocalyptic dark fantasy in "Saudade". But I do appreciate that the mechanics of the world are kept mysterious (time loop hints and all), and the magical events and symbolism are left somewhat open to interpretation. Some nice imagery, and atmospheric writing.

I was getting a little antsy after another dark mood piece. Then "Nodus Tollens" features the poker game described in the cover blurb. Very enjoyable with some surprising plot twists and strong imagery; wouldn't mind a tighter treatment, but that's my usual preference.

I don't recognize the stories from the blurb, other than "Nodus Tollens". So they're mostly teasers for the later stories in the collection? I love the ideas in the teasers, and am much more optimistic from here.

June 2022 poll is up!
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

If you vote for a book and it wins, you are committing to participate in the conversations.

I tend to like Thomas' plot-driven pieces more than the impressionistic mood pieces. (Usually it's the other way round with my favorite writers.) "From Within" is fairly straightforward dark sci-fi with aliens, but I like the central idea and the treatment.

"Ring of Fire": the setup reminds me of Evenson's bleak science fiction pieces: isolation, paranoia, strange intrusive instruments, uncertain realities. Thomas is rather more verbose, but this was enjoyable.