Michael A. Arnzen

Ooooooh .... spooky!

Normally I shy away from multi-author fiction collections since the quality and tone tends to vary so markedly. I can't really remember why I decided to give this horror collection a try. Probably because it said Best of, so I figured it wouldn't be awful. And it wasn't awful; it was pretty good. I read through it quickly in two evenings. I can't say that there were any stand-outs for me, but overall, the tone wasn't overly genre. This was more like reading literary fiction in the horror realm than pure slash-em-aliens-ghost-psychic pulp. And there were some slash-em stories, and alien stories, and ghost stories, and psychic stories, a good variety of different plots and points-of-view. Nothing too frightening though (although I doubt anything is going to be as frightening as me being eleven, alone in the dark, and reading about Danny getting trapped in the snow tunnel The Shining). Just mild thrills. A good diversion.

The Best of Horror Library: Volumes 1-5 edited by R.J. Cavender went on sale May 6, 2015.

I received a copy free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.… (more)

This is an anthology of a wide range of traditional horror stories. Some are funny, some are creepy, some are just gross.

Whether or not they were to my taste, though, they were all quite well-written, and only a couple so vague that at the end I had little idea what had been going on. Since I often have that response when horror is more atmospheric than narrative, I consider this a good thing.

I think more hard-core horror fans than I am might enjoy this more than I did. Still, it's a very good collection.… (more)