I have always been fascinated by horror short stories and have wondered how the authors can conjure up fear in people's minds within a few pages, unlike full-length novels. Authors like Shirley Jackson and Stephen King have proved their mettle in both the forms - novels and short stories. I recently came across this book and felt that I needed to read it because of the different horror tropes I might get to check out.
This book is an anthology of horror short stories where different writers have worked on the numerous popular tropes that you would encounter in the horror genre. You may encounter a magical book where words can come alive, a serial killer who never dies, or travel outside to find birds who might strike you with lightning. There are clowns out there to get you but one of them has a different mission. Killers need not be well-built and come in ages. They might not go after people but make sure people fall for them like a flytrap. There are tropes of vampires, zombies, bloody mary, dreams, and epidemics but most of them with a twist of their own.
The read gave me mixed feelings. There were stories which I enjoyed very much but also stories which did not go well for me. The start was good with the first story setting in the right environment for a good read but then the couple of stories that followed did not work well with me. Four or five stories down the lane I started enjoying the stories with occasional ones that did not work for me. It was an undulating read which did seem to deter the flow. Since I have been going through a period of reading slump, this drastically hampered my reading experience. This does not mean that the writing was bad. It's just that I did not enjoy those stories. On the positive side, I got to read a whole variety of tropes within the genre. Most of the authors have given their own twists and tweakings to those tropes making the reading enjoyable. Some of the stories that I enjoyed were "We Are Words", "The Wind Through Chimneys", "Emily's Teeth", "Three Sisters Stars" and, "This is Your Wake-Up Call". There were these story notes at the end, where the writers give us a small insight into how they selected the particular trope and how they gave it a twist of their own. It was insightful to see how the thought process works. There were illustrations at the start of every story which I liked.
In short, this anthology is a mixed bag of horror short stories and for me, it is a decent one-time read. People who love to explore various tropes in the genre can give this book a try.
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