Darker Side [Paperback]

Pelan's second collection of "the new breed" of horror writers connects on most levels where the original failed. There's still a smattering of bad mixed in, but this time, most of the results are good.

I should get the bad out of the way first. I haven't yet tired of calling Edo van Belkom this generation's Saul Wernick, and he gives me another opportunity with the anthology's opening story. The usual van Belkom; simple, unscary, likely to be as obscure in twenty years as Saul Wernick is now. David Niall Wilson and Shikhar Dixit both come extremely close to having written great pieces of fiction (I'd be hard-pressed to call either a horror tale, but both have an appealing gothic quality to them), but fall somewhat short in the delivery. In both cases, continuity is the problem. Both authors paint a very lovely picture, but fail to connect enough dots to let us know what the picture is.

But enough of that. So many of these authors deserve such praise. Pelan rectifies the overlooking he did in the original anthology, including such names as Poppy Z. Brite, Cait Kiernan (whose story here is one of the most understated and effective she's written), Mehitobel Wilson, Charlee Jacob, Brian Keene, and the wonderful Jess Salmonson (who's been writing longer than most of these authors have been alive, thus lending some credence to the title this time), all of whom turn in good, and some great, stuff. (Charlee Jacob, in particular, rocks the house. As usual.) Returning are two of the finest authors from the original, Lucy Taylor and Brian Hodge. Taylor's story is luscious, erotic, and painful (nothing new from Taylor, but pulled off excellently here). Hodge's story, like the previous anthology's "Skinwriters," though, is the story for which you want to buy this book, and the story for which you will treasure it.

Hodge's story is told in a memoir style, and you will spend the vast majority of the time wondering what this story is doing in a horror anthology. (As Hodge's novels have turned to mystery, it's not an unreasonable thing to wonder.) At the end of the story, he pulls it off, but it's so deadpan and understated you're STILL left with the idea that this is a memoir, perhaps penned by Dennis Lehane or Dash Hammett or one of the other tough-guy mystery writers. It's concise, wonderful, and probably the best stuff I've seen from Hodge since Deathgrip, well over a decade ago.

Better than its predecessor The Dark Side. Check this one out first. *** 

THE BEST:

Maybe it's just me, but I think Charlee Jacob is one of the best writers in the business. Her novels are cathedrals of poetic language wrapped around unbelievable sequences of gory violence. The story Jacob contributed here, "The Plague Species," will stand out in my memory for some time to come. Residents of a Greek island are shocked to discover a shocking loss of various body parts. It turns out that an invasion launched by residents of this island against the neighboring island of Timnah resulted in a horrific curse with gory implications. The language is pristine and the conclusion surprising.

Mehitobel Wilson wrote "The Mannerly Man" to show us a world where political correctness has run amok. In this tale, people can kill anyone who offends them, for any reason, but can only do so once. A person who goes beyond their one freebie faces automatic execution at the hands of the police. The problem with this system is that a person never knows who has killed someone and who hasn't. It's amusing in the extreme to see how people bow and scrape at the slightest thought of stepping on another person's toes. In fact, even going outside presents a whole host of dangers.

Shikhar Dixit's "Asian Gothic" deserves special mention if for no other reason than for writing a tale that takes place in India. Something is seriously wrong with Suraj Mahal, a house in the town of Patna. This haunted house possesses the ability to wreak bloody havoc on its residents by causing the narrator's family members to commit suicide. There's more to it than that, of course, but I like the idea of unconventional horror stories that go outside the western world.

THE WORST:

David Niall Wilson's story about a painter, "The Whirling Man," bored me to tears with its descriptions of an artist and his encounters with a model. This guy creates some type of painting about colors squirting out of a woman's heart or some such thing. I read this a while ago and forgot about it the minute I finished it. "The Whirling Man" is just too nonsensical for my tastes.

"The Night City," a joint effort by Wilum Pugmire and Chad Hensley, isn't that long of a story, but it didn't make much sense. Some weird guy visits a nightmarish, polluted city in order to experience the dark delights such a place puts on display. The descriptive language succeeds in conveying a degenerate atmosphere, but I just never really caught on to what the characters were up to. This one is definitely a "pass" on subsequent readings of the book.

There are many other stories of varying degrees of quality in the collection. I wouldn't want to leave out Edo Von Belkom's story, "Do You See What I Fear," about a woman who, after undergoing an operation, rapidly comes to understand how death works in the real world. Poppy Z. Brite writes a story about the soul draining aspects of fame, and Tom Piccirilli strikes gold with his weird contribution about a guy that eats people's souls. I got a kick out of Pelan's entry, about the sinister implications of taking a hobby WAY too far. On the other hand, I didn't care much for Joel Lane's "After the Flood," a story about a basement full of water that holds people's memories. Ultimately, "The Darker Side" was a mixed bag for me, containing a few stories I didn't care for more than balanced out by great yarns of purest gold. If nothing else, I discovered a few names I think would be well worth pursuing in the future.