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A Sinister Quartet Kindle Edition
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Contains “The Twice-Drowned Saint” by C.S.E. Cooney, 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List, Best First Novel
“With fiction from C.S.E Cooney, Jessica P. Wick, Amanda J. McGee, and Mike Allen, Mythic Delirium’s excellent new anthology, A Sinister Quartet, provides further evidence that long-form genre fiction is not just alive and well but thriving.”
—Locus, Ian Mond
“Mythic Delirium is one of the smaller presses which sustains our field . . . This is lovely and fascinating . . . Really fine work.”
—Locus, Rich Horton
“Easily one of the best things I’ve read this year . . . ‘The Twice Drowned Saint’ alone is worth five times the cost of the collection.”
—The Little Red Reviewer
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJune 9 2020
- File size5374 KB
Product details
- ASIN : B085XMVB4G
- Publisher : Mythic Delirium Books (June 9 2020)
- Language : English
- File size : 5374 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 645 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #457,562 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #4,289 in Mythology (Kindle Store)
- #7,068 in Fairy Tales
- #10,113 in Horror Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
C.S.E. Cooney (http://csecooney.com/) lives and writes in the borough of Queens, whose borders are water. She is an audiobook narrator, the singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine, and author of World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories (Mythic Delirium 2015).
Her work includes the novella Desdemona and the Deep (Tor.com 2019), three albums: Alecto! Alecto!, The Headless Bride, and Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir, and a poetry collection: How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes. The latter features her 2011 Rhysling Award-winning “The Sea King’s Second Bride.”
Her short fiction can be found in Ellen Datlow’s Mad Hatters and March Hares: All-New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the Sword and Sonnet anthology, edited by Aidan Doyle, Rachael K Jones, E. Catherine Tobler, Mike Allen’s Clockwork Phoenix 3 and 5, Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018), Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 12, Lightspeed Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, Apex, Uncanny Magazine, Black Gate, Papaveria Press, GigaNotoSaurus, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and elsewhere.
Nebula, Shirley Jackson and two-time World Fantasy award finalist Mike Allen wears many hats. As editor and publisher of the Mythic Delirium Books imprint, he helmed MYTHIC DELIRIUM magazine and the five volumes in the CLOCKWORK PHOENIX anthology series. His own short stories have been gathered in three collections: UNSEAMING, THE SPIDER TAPESTRIES and AFTERMATH OF AN INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT. He’s won the Rhysling Award for poetry three times, and his most recent collection of verse, HUNGRY CONSTELLATIONS, was a Suzette Haden Elgin Award nominee. A dark fantasy novel, THE BLACK FIRE CONCERTO, appeared in 2013.
More of Mike's stories have popped up in places like BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES, LACKINGTON'S, SPECTRAL REALMS and the anthologies BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR ONE, CTHULHU'S REIGN, SOLARIS RISING 2, TOMORROW'S CTHULHU, PLUTO IN FURS, PHANTASM/CHIMERA, NOWHEREVILLE, TRANSMISSIONS FROM PUNKTOWN and A SINISTER QUARTET.
For more than a decade he’s worked as the arts and culture columnist for the daily newspaper in Roanoke, Va., where he and his wife Anita live with a cat so full of trouble she’s named Pandora. You can follow Mike’s exploits as a writer at descentintolight.com, as an editor at mythicdelirium.com, and all at once on Twitter at @mythicdelirium. You can contact Mike at mythicdelirium[at]gmail[dot]com.
Amanda J. McGee is a mapmaker by day and a writer by night. When not writing, she can be found in the garden. She lives in Southwest Virginia with the love of her life, two excellent cats, and a plethora of plants.
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The first and last stories made the book. The first « The Twice Drowned Saint » and the last, « The Comforter » are tight, keeping you rooted to your book, chapter after chapter.
The second and third stores, An Unkindness and Veridian respectively, have an amateurish feel about them - as if they were written by new authors, not quite polished enough.
Buy the Kindle book though...those first and last stores are well worth the money.
Top reviews from other countries

CSE Cooney's story feels like a blend of SF and high (almost Biblical) fantasy. Cooney’s masterful use of language soars into the ethereal and plummets through the earthen – colors and sounds and smells evoked with unexpected turns of phrase and exacting word choice.
High fantasy and portal fantasy are the genres for “An Unkindness,” Jessica P. Wick’s marvelous look at the power of the Fae over the mortal world. The sibling relationship we see at the beginning of the story is so real and touching that the sudden antipathy/distance of Aliver in the second chapter hits the reader as hard as it does Ravenna. Kudos to Wick for establishing that relationship so well in such a short opening space; the rest of the story would not work as well if we didn’t believe in the bond between sister and brother that threatens to be severed.
Amanda J. McGee’s “Viridian” is very much rooted in the “modern Gothic” and “reconstructed fairy tale” traditions. It’s always interesting to me when a writer can make a story feel both laconic and urgent, and McGee shifts seamlessly from one to the other in the same scene. Of the four stories in A Sinister Quartet, this is the one I can most easily see being adapted to film – and in the right hands, I think it would be amazing.
Finally, “The Comforter” by Mike Allen, is the one most firmly rooted in a single genre. This is body horror, straight-up and unadultered, mixed as it may be with classic supernatural thriller elements. Throughout the story, and in increasing detail as the story unfolds, characters are physically altered in horrific ways. The constant shifts in POV keep the reader off-center and always on edge, not sure where the story will go or how much of the truth will be revealed or even if the disparate threads will converge. It’s a masterful mind-screw.

Jessica Wick. This is the most misogynistic take on Girl-Saves-Boy that I have read in umpteen years. If the author was trying for fairies meet grimdark she succeeded. Zero character development, zero redemption, nothing to respect in any of the characters at the end of the story.
Amanda McGee. I actually cannot remember anything about this story despite the fact that I read it this morning.
Mike Allen. Channeling Stephen King but doing it very very very badly, the only thing more incoherent than the story was the ending.

C.S.E. Cooney's novella "The Twice-Drowned Saint" immerses you in an entire quirky world of humor and dark whimsy with the same ease you might slid into a pool on a hot day. It's effortless. You want to learn more about this mythical angelic city that is strangely familiar (there are movies and popcorn!) and utterly alien (there are also some truly grotesque creatures that do things like eat deaths and manifest food). Cooney is also amazing at building relationships between characters. You just want to give everyone a hug and the entire thing is over far too soon.
Jessica P. Wick's "An Unkindness" takes some familiar ideas about the faerie realm that play backdrop to a story about the love of one sibling for another, grief and depression. Made me cry. She painted a beautiful, haunting realm in my imagination.
"Viridian" by Amanda J McGee also deals with grief set into a Bluebeard horror story that has you cheering on the main character as she struggles to move forward and heal.
Mike Allen's "The Comforter" has one of the most interesting monsters I've ever read about described in such a way that it was pure, disgusting poetry. It's like one of those things you just can't look away from even though it's gross!
The entire collection is typical Mythical Delirium style: beautiful written, novel, engrossing and wonderful put together to take the reader on a journey through the imaginations of four talented writers. I can't really compare these works to anything else out there. Mike Allen, once again, showcases some one-of-a-kind fiction. They aren't stories, they are beautiful confections. It isn't just what is told but the way it is told. Some phenomenal writing is found here. Highly recommend.

"An Unkindness" --It is truth universally acknowledged that a brother palely loitering in fairy realms is in need of a rescue, or he may find himself paying a teind to hell.
"Viridian" --reminiscent of DuMaurier's "Rebecca" ... if Maximillan DeWinter was into necromancy.
"The Comforter" --full-bore eldritch horror/body horror; terrifying