Status Updates From Dreamsongs. Volume I

Reading a bunch of these for book club, so I'll be rating them individually as I make my way through them and decide later if I finish the anthology as a whole!

Sandkings: I can see why this is so popular amongst GRRM fans and just a wider horror community, it’s a truly twisted tale with a lot of familiarity of the themes and iconography, the Asian shopkeeper who sells a mysterious creature to the American is very reminiscent of gremlins and the little shop of horrors element found later makes this easy to picture and a fun read.

Remembering melody: very creepy story lots of setup for a decent ending but feel like it’s lacking a conclusion compared to something like meathouse man.

Meathouse man: George writes about this one specifically in his little segment before these stories and describes it as his venting from a bad relationship experience and boy was he mad, it’s disgusting to put it simply and all the better for it, it’s a truly disgusting tale of a man who desperately wants love but can’t accept rejection and it only gets worse from there really.

The lost lands: it’s not often you see a monkey paw type of story from the perspective of the monkey paw itself but this was a really fun little fairy tale story, I loved the magic at work here and the world it builds of this desolate all consuming land. Very fun little story hope there’s more like these.

Laren dorr: one thing I love about Martin’s writing is how he subtly tells you the ending before you get there this is a perfect example of that, the information we get is there right from the starts and he does this slight of hand like he does in asoiaf where he distracts you with the rest of the story to make you forget until he hits you at the end with the answer and it’s perfect here.