THE ALCHEMY PRESS BOOK OF HORRORS 2: STRANGE STORIES AND WEIRD TALES / EDITORS: PETER COLEBORN, JAN EDWARDS / PUBLISHER: ALCHEMY PRESS / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 16TH
Whether your favourite place on the horror spectrum is the unnerving and sinister or the outright gory, there will be something to scare and intrigue you here. In this way this second outing for The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors delivers on what it sets out for itself: a selection that showcases horror as the broad church it is. With a preference for the spooky and psychological over the outright bloody, there is plenty of treasure here for the digging. If there’s sometimes a bit too much digging involved, where more aggressive editing could have made that treasure shine brighter, it’s still very much worth the effort.
Expect strong voices and memorable storylines and characters – I Remember Everything by Debbie Bennett and Footprints in the Snow by Eygló Karlsdóttir are particularly satisfying, and the latter is all the scarier for being very relatable right now. For exquisite moments of good old ghostly imagery, The Hate Whisperer by Thana Niveau is an impressive psychological picture; another is The Secret Place by Samantha Lee: a moving portrait of childhood friendship that is as amusing as it is sinister, sad and spooky. Hydrophobia by John Llewellyn Probert, a deeply claustrophobic underwater nightmare that starts leaking into the waking world, is a particularly cold and powerful tale.
In a world where short fiction, small presses, and horror itself have to work that bit harder for their shelf space, the importance of assertive editing for momentum and effect is all the stronger if the horror genre is to show it has the same (if not more) potential for depth and richness as any other. While there is a pervasive sense of words that are too often an end in themselves rather than the conduit for meaning, atmosphere, character, and story they need to be for maximum effect and momentum, the images themselves and the societal what-ifs they represent will stay with you long after you put the book down.
