Zombos Says: Very Good
Ghoulies, ghosties, beasties, here be monsters all, hobnobbing their way through the mortal realm in 19 tales assembled by Christopher Golden, with book-body parts supplied by Jonathan Maberry, David Liss, Kevin J. Anderson, Nate Kenyon, Sarah Pinborough, and many more. Squatting in the monster's corner is you, metaphorically speaking of course, as the next meal, the next victim, and next sideline viewer or partaker of nasty events. Identifying who the monsters and victims are can be a little challenging because sometimes they swap places or appear similar, depending on your vantage point, and the tone of monstrosity varies from story to story, as does the terror.
Perhaps the clearest monstrous vision here is seen through Pinborough's The Screaming Room. Having snakes for hair and turning people to stone doesn't make the Gorgon a social butterfly, but when her dates do eventually show up, she does get to spend a very long time with them, enjoying their constant song of love. Only they aren't singing and she's deluding herself, turning her loneliness into happiness. A simple premise sustains a truly terrifying revelation, and this story will not easily leave you once you put the book aside.
Often the monster ranks are swelled by those we unleash ourselves, and in Maberry's Saint John, you may be hard pressed to find the saints, but sinners abound. Armageddon leads to madness, but sometimes madness can lead to redemption, and here the sinners must face a holy roller to reckon with, dressed in swirling white robes and long sharp blades wielding salvation. Not surprisingly, coming from an author who specializes in death and destruction in apocalyptic measures, Maberry creates an unbalanced world populated with unbalanced people, and places his heroic protagonist, who's either deep-dish crazy, made so by the monstrous events of his past, or following God's crib-notes, within it, preaching one slash and thrust sermon at a time. There's an intimacy here as Maberry focuses on one small street corner and those people stepping into it, coming under Saint John's light. Victims and monsters are interchangeable. Salvation is tenuous. The emotional complexity deep and disturbing. Maberry may have created a new and noble antihero ripe for novelization.
For a swim with Lovecraftian primevalness, Tananarive Due brings us to Graceville, Florida in The Lake. Abbie's new job, new house, new life is growing on her so much she's becoming a whole new person; or thing, anyway. People say not to swim in the lake in summer, though the reasons are hushingly unclear. She swims anyway. The lake's calm water is so inviting. Slowly changes in her attitude start to match the physical changes between her toes, and the changes in her appetite. Is she dreaming? Is she delusional? Is she embracing a whole new Abbie? Her understated tranformation unfolds in carefully building paragraphs, rendering the terror mood gently and matter of factly, until the ending reminds you it's not wise to swim in the Graceville Lake during the summer months.
You won't find gore or check-the-door scares in The Monster's Corner, but you will find, hanging out in its dark recesses, a well varied assortment of true monsters, seeming monsters, and would-be monsters, all either vying for your understanding--as carefully outlined in Gary A. Braunbeck's witty And Still You Wonder Why Our First Impulse Is To Kill You--or your blood.
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