Vicious Traditions

Sometimes I try books Amazon suggests and it works out well, sometimes not, and sometimes it's somewhere in between. This is one of the latter times. 

I love horror anthologies. You all know that. And occasionally I just don't pay attention when I'm ordering them. I tend to stay away from collections by a single author, just in case I don't like their style. Well, this past order, I managed to get two anthologies, each by a single author. 

My overall impression of this book is sadness that the world of publishing has changed so much. In the past, you'd see an infrequent typo in a book. However, nowadays as happens with these small press pieces, the entire book needed massive edits that never happened. It is extremely distracting from the flow of the story. Typos all over, word repetition, run-on sentences galore, and one mistake that repeated in multiple stories that I'm not sure if it's that the author doesn't know the correct usage of the word or if it was some kind of "find and replace" editing error. 

In case you were wondering, the term of exemption is "save for" not "safe for." Everything was missing, SAVE FOR the box on the table. This same error was in at least three different stories. 

I tried to give this a shot and I read it all the way through. Typos aside, I feel like the writer found a list of horror themes or tropes and wrote stories going down said list. I'm going to make my own list of the stories included here and I'll let you all be the judge of whether you agree with me. 

Boys of Summer: Straight up Lost Boys fanfic. Not one single name is used that was in the film, but this is clearly set in the world of The Lost Boys. I have zero problem with this. I actually was into it when I first started, but the heroine is dull and the story doesn't explain itself very well. so your theme here would be girl becomes vampire.

Fields of Blood: Vengeful female ghost.

Baby Teeth: Mother kills her baby because she's convinced the child is possessed. Kills therapist at the end, convinced that the baby's possession transferred to her. This one had an anti-goth bit I hated. The author mentions goth a few times like she's aware of it, but I didn't feel the prejudice here was necessary to the story or even fitting of the subculture.

One for the Money, Two for the Show: Couple goes to horror-themed drive in only to realize they're the stars of the show. 

Red Snow: Woman returns to family cabin to see ailing mother one last time. Is forced to confront the tragedy that happened two years ago, only for the reveal to be that the killer was her. Both Baby Teeth and this story mention a "Pierrot the Clown" doll, which I actually found more intriguing than the stories themselves. It's an odd thing to be repeated. (I like pierrots, so it caught my eye.)

Driver, Surprise Me: Killer girlfriend gets a ride from guy with a bunch of dolls in the backseat and ends up transformed into one of them. This one was extremely short, but it was actually one of the best. I didn't care for the previous ones, but I hoped this might be a turning point in the book and things would get better. 

Silent Ivy Hotel: And they did. I liked this one, although I'm not sure I agree with the protagonist's view that women start aging that seriously at 30 and that 30 is the death age for female actors in Hollywood. A lot of actresses thought of as conventionally beautiful are well over 30. And I'm 43 and have no sign of it in my face. So the premise here is aging starlet visits witch to rejuvenate her beauty. I liked the gorgon theme a lot. Not often one used in connotation with beauty. This one reads like a Tales from the Crypt episode, which is definitely a compliment coming from me. 

Comets Tear the Skies: Aliens, but they worship a goddess named Scylla, who's voracious like the Greek myth Scylla. I liked that bit. This one was pretty good. 

Green Gloves: Roma curse. Male writer becomes obsessed with waitress who wears green gloves. She tells him about a baby raised by wolves because it had been cursed. The twist at the end is a bit clumsy, but I enjoyed the story overall. 

Across the Woods: Girl runs through the woods on her sixteenth birthday because it's family tradition. Her boyfriend follows her and she kills him, because that's her initiation into her family of witches. Very short story and it doesn't work this time. It feels too amateurish compared to the others, like the author spat it out in ten minutes.

The Invasion: Aliens again only reversed. Humans were conquered by Plutonians and the twist is that the lead character who is different is still human. I liked this one. 

My Tears Ricochet: Ghost of teen girl watches her own funeral then kills the boyfriend who killed her. 

Lake of Sin: Italian lake kills a ton of people every year, including the lead's brother. She trains in swimming and scuba so she can search the lake. Finds it full of ghosts of people the Nazis forced to drown. Lead ghost is Roma and cursed the lake. Main character frees her and breaks the curse. Another Roma curse seems repetitive, but this is also a good story so I don't mind so much. 

Good Sister, Bad Sister: Muslim girl envious of older sister gets attacked in woods. Spends rest of story changing into what I'm assuming is a werewolf, though it's never specified. Kills boy after he rapes her older sister, then turns into badass. I liked this one. The lead's little edgy makeover at the end was cute and made up a bit for the anti-goth bull in the baby story.

Now do you see what I mean about the tropes? In horror, it's hard to do truly unique things these days. You kind of have to take the tropes and try to do the best you can with them, but a lot of people are really, really good at that. This book just wasn't. There are decent stories here, but they still feel like the author is doing some sort of horror writing challenge and posting a story a week on a blog or something. 

I do like that almost every main character is female. Green Gloves was the only male protagonist. I like that a lot of women are either badass or the killers themselves. I do think Nox has promise, but she isn't quite there yet. And dear gods, PLEASE find an editor! That would help so much.