Alexey’s Reviews > The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories > Status Update

Joyce Carol Oates - Family. Light, funny and macabre and weird in places. 4/5

Poppy Z.Brite - His mouth will taste... Too full of goth romance for me. Otherwise interesting style. 3/5.

Michal Ajvaz - End of the garden. Stream of psychedelic consciousness. On par with Borges. 2/5.

Karen Joy Fowler - Dark. Very solid style, interesting structure. Pity she is a mainstream writer. 5/5.

Lucius Shepard - Shades. A bit too much for me, but interesting sometimes. Weak ending. 3/5

Harlan Ellison - Function of Dream Sleep. Too creepy and weird. Disappointing ending. 2/5.

Ben Okri - Worlds that flourish. Distinct feeling of African writer. Don’t like the style. 2/5.

Elizabeth Hand - Boy in the tree. Interesting style and setting. 4/5.

M. John Harrison - Egnaro. Very close to VanderMeer “Finding Sonoria”. 3/5

F. Paul Wilson - Soft. solid sci-fi similar in atmosphere to Day of Triffides. 4/5.

Octavia Butler - Bloodchild. Disturbing mix of sci-fi and horror. To read Kindred? 5/5.

Leena Krohn - Tainaron. Urban legends in insect city. 3/5

Garry Kilworth - Hogfoot right. Very short and very strange. Children books author. 5/5

Michel Bernanos (Talbert, Drowin). Very “Mountains of madness” but with more weird elements. Doesn’t let you out until the end

GRR Martin - Sandkings. Interesting another side of great author. Worth to read his other sci-fi works.

Bob Leman - Window. Solid parallel universe sci-fi/horror story. To read.

Michael Shea - impressive vivid prose, scary and sci-fi at the same time. To read.

Authors seemed interesting enough to read more:

Mervyn Peake, Saki, Ryunosuke Akutagawa,
Alfred Kubin’s other side - Shrike and other Ambergris setting - to read more

Francis Stevens - light Doyle-like Sci-fi with elements of weird

Bruno Shulz - Kafka-like prose - to read more

William Sansom - The long sheet. Interesting symbolic tale.

Gahan Wilson - Scary and poetic. To find other tales.