Jeff’s Reviews > I Know A Place: Rest Stop and Other Dark Detours > Status Update

"A Fruiting Body": 3/5 - more meditation on mind-control and possession, this time in a semi-experimental form. High-minded and interesting but bewildering.

"Meet-Cute #2: The Scariest Thing": 2/5 - all of that was not worth the genuinely insightful commentary on Uslysses. But it was close.

"Into the Life of Things": 1/5 - almost every single story is revenge with a semi-supernatural twist. In this one, a guy starving himself for a girlfriend at a yoga retreat finds out she was intimate with the yogi and (surprise) beats him to death brutally--then his newly acquired yogic powers allow him to leap between bodies like Charles Lee Ray in Curse of Chucky. Man, I wish I were watching that instead.

I bet Cassidy is a big fan of Scott Smith. No evolution to the characters, no creative lore, original storytelling or revelations that reframe the situation, just a slow, brutal parade of violent imagery. At least Smith only thought he was being clever, not also cute and funny. Jonestown references here are way too on-the-nose, like asking your readers--hey, didja see what I did there? Good, right?

"Come": 1/5 - Yeah, I guess I should have assumed the absolute worst with that title, but I didn't. There were a series of movies about viral videos killing teens in 2014. This is far from an original premise. This time, it's a porn video--big twist. Also, the protagonist might be asexual. So much perspective.

"Jubilee Juncture": 1/5 - Never missing a chance to reduce to the lowest common denominator, Cassidy brings his readers to a Place in this story where we at first think we're getting living doll lore, but it turns out to be the tale of a Christian evangelist pedophile ventriloquist who murders children and pulls on their insides to use them like puppets. Prurient insulting garbage.

"Laughlines": 2/5 - I kept waiting for her to get the "undeliverable" error message and that's exactly what this story is, undeliverable. A dumbed-over epistolary perversion of Shirley Jackson's Dracula. 2 stars because like all the others, there are flashes of undeniable talent and effective passages. But overall. What an insult.

A big horror fan will recognize that this is Cassidy's Dracula, but to put in that kind of analytical effort for this payoff is not going to be an easy sell for most readers. You'd have to never have read a medieval legend story written by a competent author (or seen one produced for the screen) to find this even vaguely genuine or convincing.

Someone depicted getting a pie in the face on a medieval tapestry is a good analogy for Cassidy's thematic content.

"The Lunar Eclipse": 2/5 - vague, nebulous, blood for it's own sake. An outline of a mediocre story.