- Hardcover: 350 pages
- Publisher: PS Publishing (Jun 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1902880692
- ISBN-13: 978-1902880693
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 15 x 3.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,379,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Ramsey Campbell's latest collection gives us another twenty-three horror tales. In any collection you'll always get a few duds, but the hit ratio here is high, with even the lesser pieces still well crafted enough to be interesting (the only story that does nothing for me here is 'Twice by Fire' - a fairly generic ghost story produced as spinoffery for the movie The Crow). Some of the highlights for me were 'Agatha's Ghost' (is Agatha really haunted or just insane - nicely twisty), 'Little Ones' (concerning a school mistress's bizarre family life) and Slow (a very strange sf-story where the worlds slowest ever chase gains tension due to its very strangeness). There is some repetition of ideas and moods here if read in one sitting, and it's not quite up to the level of Dark Feasts (my favourite Campbell collection) but this is still an essential collection for lovers of the macabre.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Stories from a master of mood
4 May 2007
Format:Hardcover
This stellar collection contains twenty-three stories written over thirty-five years, beginning right after Demons by Daylight and ending with the publication in 2002 of "The Retrospective" in Dark Terrors 6. In his afterward, Campbell confesses that he's losing his perspective on these stories; readers, however, will experience a writer who continues to evolve, a talented professional whose current output remains as vital and enthralling as his estimable earlier efforts.
Campbell remains a master of mood, of creating an underlying sense of menace in everyday settings. Witness this bit of stage setting from "Twice by Fire":
"A department store occupies most of the next block. Legs wearing shoes stand in a window, torsos without limbs expose their underwear beside an arrangement of half a dozen heads whose lidless eyes turn inwards, fixed on their nightmares. Light as pale as a mortuary, and rendered meaningless by the desertion of the street, freezes all these objects as though preserving evidence."
Perfect. And there's more where that came from.
Despair is a key element in these tales, on vivid display in such tales as "Agatha's Ghost" and "The Entertainment." So is disorientation, used to good effect in "Accident Zone" or "All for Sale." Campbell ranges far and wide for his effects, effortlessly shifting from the big city to rural settings to create his intimate hells. Campbell even addresses the literary milieu, capping the collection with three very effective pieces, "Worse Than Bones," a tale about readers' relationships with their books, "No Story In It," about a horror writer slowly fading into obscurity, and 'The Word," a tale of a global bestseller that conveys a personal message to each of its readers. Each has telling points to make about readers, writers, and the literary world in general.
As Poppy Z. Brite concludes in her introduction, "Because he is able to...horrify us in a way that touches not just our brains and viscera, but our souls--Ramsey Campbell truly is the best of us all, and his own best is well represented in this collection." Kudos to Ms. Brite for saying it so well.
Campbell remains a master of mood, of creating an underlying sense of menace in everyday settings. Witness this bit of stage setting from "Twice by Fire":
"A department store occupies most of the next block. Legs wearing shoes stand in a window, torsos without limbs expose their underwear beside an arrangement of half a dozen heads whose lidless eyes turn inwards, fixed on their nightmares. Light as pale as a mortuary, and rendered meaningless by the desertion of the street, freezes all these objects as though preserving evidence."
Perfect. And there's more where that came from.
Despair is a key element in these tales, on vivid display in such tales as "Agatha's Ghost" and "The Entertainment." So is disorientation, used to good effect in "Accident Zone" or "All for Sale." Campbell ranges far and wide for his effects, effortlessly shifting from the big city to rural settings to create his intimate hells. Campbell even addresses the literary milieu, capping the collection with three very effective pieces, "Worse Than Bones," a tale about readers' relationships with their books, "No Story In It," about a horror writer slowly fading into obscurity, and 'The Word," a tale of a global bestseller that conveys a personal message to each of its readers. Each has telling points to make about readers, writers, and the literary world in general.
As Poppy Z. Brite concludes in her introduction, "Because he is able to...horrify us in a way that touches not just our brains and viscera, but our souls--Ramsey Campbell truly is the best of us all, and his own best is well represented in this collection." Kudos to Ms. Brite for saying it so well.
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