MISC HORROR

The Hot Blood series is an old favorite of mine. I love horror anthologies, so I picked up a volume from the middle of the series in a bookstore, then had to get them all. The stories are all horror erotica, some quite graphic, so they're not for kids or the faint of heart.

There are, appropriately, thirteen total volumes that were published between 1989-2007. I reread them every few years and they work well for that, even though I know the endings of the stories.

During my current reread, I noticed my favorite story from multiple volumes was usually the one by Graham Masterton. I don't know how I never noticed it before or got into Masterton's writing before now. He's been at it since almost the same time as Stephen King, who's a childhood favorite. Carrie was published in 1974 and The Manitou, Masterton's first, was in 1976. So I decided to start picking up some Masterton novels and short story collections.

I ordered a few off Abebooks, which is where I typically get the best deals on used books. Masterton sadly did not take off in the US like Stephen King, so I couldn't just jump on ebay and buy a lot of 20 used books. While waiting for the ones I ordered to arrive, I stopped in the used bookstore downtown and was pleasantly surprised to find several books, some of course being ones I'd just ordered. But I purchased three.

I figured I'd start with The Manitou. Honestly, I wasn't impressed with it much. It's a good first novel, but you can tell it's a first novel. It's kind of like Carrie is far from my favorite King book. Some of the characters are interesting, but some with potential die too quickly to be developed. The final battle is really drawn out and ends up being a bit on the sci-fi side instead of horror. I won't go into more details so as not to spoil, but yeah, I didn't much care for it. Not sure I'm going to continue reading The Manitou series or not, but if I do pick it up, it won't be until I've read a lot of his other books first.

Picture of Evil I enjoyed much more. This one was also published as Family Portrait, which I actually think is a better name, being the title of the portrait that's the source of all the trouble in the story. You see, this is based on Dorian Gray. The characters here get to be much more developed and interesting. Unfortunately, I had a problem with the ending again, but up until that point, I really enjoyed it. I'll skip dissecting it, because I don't like to go into too much detail on horror. Part of the fun is finding things out for yourself, like with mysteries.

I will definitely be talking about more Masterton books here as I read them. I just started The 5th Witch today.