Darkside (Paperback)

First off: there are a slew of really awful reviews for this book out there. Most of them seem to have some of their criticisms in the right place (the subtitle is utterly meaningless being the most common that actually has a shred of validity). The rest of them seem to require a quick history of horror. Recent horror, especially, but that known as "splatterpunk" is nothing new. The complainers might do well to go back and read some of the more visceral work from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before talking about how wonderful it is that old horror is still on the shelf instead of this dreck.

There are two schools of horror now. This is most obvious in the Japanese film industry, but they both seem alive and well in the American horror story, too. There is the atmospheric, spooky horror (aka JNH in the Japanese film industry), and then there is the extreme horror (aka the Guinea Pig movement, in honor of the series of extreme horror films of that name). Extreme horror rose to prominence in America in the eighties on the wings of authors like Ed Lee, Ray Garton, and Candace Caponegro; it has been the strongest direction in which horror has gone since, especially with the publication of the seminal, brilliant anthology Splatterpunks.

Darkside should, rightly, have been Splatterpunks III. Only a few of the stories would have seemed out of place, and the complainers would have known to steer clear.(Oh, horrors. Your fourteen-year-old got his hands on a copy and you took it away from him. If HE doesn't have a problem with the subject matter and YOU do, have you ever stopped to consider it's not your child's psyche that is the problem here?) The truly memorable stories here would get their due; especially chilling are Lauren Fitzgerald's "Wasting," Edward Lee's now-infamous tale 'The Stick Woman," and Sue Storm's "Having Eyes, See Ye Not?" (especially amusing as I write this, as some bonehead inspired by a recent film tried to do exactly the same thing a few days ago). The JNH-style stories, in standing out as different from the rest, would get even more due than they have (the book's opener, Robert J. Levy's "Skinwriters," is crafted with a precision that beings to mind Richard Christian Matheson's immortal story "Red", and Brian McNaughton's "ystery orm"is far more a Thomas Ligotti story than Ligotti's own contribution here). I'd still have to wonder what two of the book's last three stories are on about (Ligotti's "The Nightmare Network," which is still unfathomable upon second reading, and t. Winter-Damon and Randy Chandler's boring, overly-messaged "...And Thou Hast Given Them Blood to Drink," a piece cut from their novel Duet for the Devil).

Flashes of real genius here are rare, as they are in most anthologies; Levy is definitely a writer to watch, as are McNaughton and Adam-Troy Castro, among others. Some of the heavy hitters bring out decent material, as well. Along with Lee, Wayne Allen Sallee definitely delivers the goods (a very short monologue from the point of view of Timothy McVeigh), and Jack Ketchum and Lucy Taylor deliver good, solid work, if nothing groundbreaking. Some of the other stories fall flat (surprisingly, Caitlin R. Kiernan's is one of them; rare is the Kiernan story that is not perfect), and some of the young writers notorious in their absence here may take some of the luster away (notably, Poppy Z. Brite was still a neophyte when this came out).

Final call: some good, some bad. You always have to wade through the swine, but the pearls are worth it; "Skinwriters" alone is worth the cost of admission here, everything else is icing on the cake. ***

(...) I began this book at full-speed last November until I read Edward Lee's "The Stick Woman", and then I set the book aside for two months before slowly continuing with the others. If you've already read the above story, then you'll understand my shock. It was hard to digest such a brutal, appalling story--and what was even worse to imagine was that this sort of activity actually happens in our society. "The Stick Woman" left me completely desensitized, and it certainly reconfirmed my underlying belief that there is "no end to the absolute evil of men". (p 63)

In summary, this book was a complete gore fest with pretty much every author trying to outdo the other with the most traumatic, disgusting childhoods and fantasies. The majority of them are very disturbing and graphic. There are a few good stories in here though (i.e., "Skin Writers", "Ice Dreams"), but the rest are just polluted with extreme sex and violence. I would strongly discourage most people from reading this book. If you're used to reading about snuff and such, then proceed; otherwise, skip this one and preserve your sanity. In my opinion, somebody needs to stick a warning sticker or an NC-17 rating on this book.