Status Updates From Güller Tepesinde

"Projections": Mix one part Stone Tapes, one part True Detective, and three parts ancient cultist ghost of a nun driving a man insane. Despite the comparisons, this story (created well before TV even existed) is a compelling whole with a nasty ending that I wasn't quite expecting. Five stars!

I must admit that the slow start of "At the Villa by the Sea" did not instill confidence in me. But by the end, the story unfolded like a gothic lotus, dark, dreamlike, and with it's own intoxicating odor. I started out disliking it and ended up liking it very much. Five stars.

So far, there's too much explication and info-dumping in "At the Villa by the Sea". I'm hoping that the rest of the story can make that last stretch be subsumed in the overall tale, rather than sticking out so blatantly.

I have three sons. I have a hard time imagining them ever being at odds with each other for too long. So, the story-behind-the-story in "Shadows" saddened me a great deal. It's who tale of two brothers who find themselves on the opposite . . . wait, now, you didn't really think I was going to spoil that, did you? An emotional gut-punch of a tale with a touch of the strange. Four stars.

The line between psychological dysfunction and the Changeling or Skin Walker is blurred in "Strabismus". Or, if you will, it is a story about a doppelganger that is not, but is the one who sees it, like a rabbit re-absorbing its young, only the young is itself. If this is not making sense to you, perhaps you should just read the story. Four stars to this enigmatic, swirling tale of borderline personality disorder(?).

I need to read the last 1/3rd of "On a Tangent" again! It's a brilliant unraveling of sanity and reality. Something very Roland Topor-esque about this story. Literary and manic at the same time, with the redolent smell of science fiction. I will note that there are a LOT of typos here that spell-check would not pick up, but a good editorial run would have. Despite the shoddy editorial work, five stars.

"The Frenzied Farmhouse" was, like the first story in this volume, predictable, but the perverse joy of the journey more than makes up for having foreseen the destination. Fives stars.

And Grabinski's writing style reminds me very much of Brian Evenson's (which I love).

The title story puts the "decay" back in "decadence". I figured out the central conceit very early on, but the journey to get there was delightfully atmospheric and rewardingly horrific. Well worth the read, even if you guess what's going to happen in the end. Five stars.