I completed The Darker Side: Generations of Horror earlier today. I had high hopes for the collection of "27 Original Stories From The Most Terrifying Voices Of Modern Horror." I was sorely disappointed.
Out of the twenty-seven stories in the book, I would say that maybe seven are worth reading. The rest were a complete waste of time.
My favorite story was "The Origin" by David B. Silva. It tells the story of a kid who we are told eventually kills nine people before he is caught. The story begins with his first killing and ends with "the origin" of his dark tendencies. The rest of the story was filling in the gaps between those two points in time by telling what happens in reverse chronological order.
"Hell Came Down" by Time Lebbon and "Armies of Night" by John Pelan were also two well done stories. The former is about a land where severe droughts have caused a sorcerer to attempt to conjure rain, but much more sinister things fall from the skies. The latter is about miniatures of army battles, the man who loved them, and the woman who killed him.
I would consider those the top three in the collection.
Overall, the stories weren't very good. The endings sucked for the majority of the stories, the plots were usually thin, and most of the characters were shallow and atrocious.
While I might recommend those three stories, I most definitely wouldn't recommend this collection.
Now I move on to Dante's Divine Comedy.
Posted by Randy at April 30, 2004 12:37 AM | TrackBack