The Nightmare Chronicles

Rating:
Summary: Trust me, don't waste your time or money!
Review: Like others I bought this book based on the reviews and by the fact that it has won an award. So okay give it a try. Man was I ever dissappointed, I don't believe I have ever read such a boring book! I found the characters to be paper thin like the pages they were printed on. And the stories themselves never made much sense at all, what a total waste of time.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and really chilling stories from a master!
Review: Nightmare Chronicles by Douglas Clegg is one of the most page turning collections of stories I've read in many years. Some of the stories are quiet subtle horror tales, and others, like White Chapel, I Am Infinite I Contain Multitudes, and Underworld are big stories of love lost and terror found.

These are some of the most original tales of horror I've read, and are right up there with Straub's (Magic Terror) and even some of Joyce Carol Oates. If you're looking for blood'n'guts, you'll find a couple of extremely brutal stories here, but in general, the stories have a brief shock illuminated by a psychological insight into a character's existence.

The faint-hearted should be warned off the two best stories: White Chapel and I Am Infinite I Contain Multitudes. Clearly these are amazing tales, but also they are as brutal as can possibly be imagined. The stories that were funny to some extent include The Night Alec Got Married, which begins as a bachelor party and turns into a reason to avoid intimacy, also, the story called Only Connect was odd and funny in a way because of the secrets within secrets and the paranoid sense of life Clegg manages to create in it.

Another favorite is Fruit of Her Womb, about an aging couple who discover that a mythos-tragedy has happened in the house they've bought. The husband in discovering an old murder mystery, finds some transcendant horror in it.

Some of the stories seem sketchy but interesting, like The Little Mermaid and The Rendering Man. Both are about transformations of sorts.

All in all, this is a satisfying grouping of stories, and leaves me hungry to try out one of two of Clegg's other books.

Rating:
Summary: Truly wonderful and terror-filled
Review: Nightmare Chronicles caught my eye because of the cover. Its a dark cemetery filled with gravestones, against a spooky moon with wild trees in front of it. Nightmare Chronicles was like discovering a whole new territory of horror. It reminded me of picking up the first Books of Blood by Barker or the stuff by younger Ray Bradbury. This is one hell of a ride through stories and terror. There's a boy in a cellar who gives these nightmareish visions to this older woman. What she sees are the dozen orso stories in Nightmare Chronicles. The best one was called Fruits of Her Womb, about a mystery cult in a very ordinary small town. Another good one is called White Chapel about a woman who goes looking for a demonic killer and a goddess in India.

If you are a fan of the best that exists in horror fiction, you might try Nightmare Chronicles.

Rating:
Summary: _The Nightmare Chronicles_ Review
Review: No wonder this book won both the International Horror Guild Award and the Bram Stoker Award. Clegg is one of those writers whose artistry is only matched by his sense of story. He builds mythologies within the smallest of stories, and deconstructs the essence of the horror tale (with echoes of Hawthorne and Machen and even Shirley Jackson and Joseph Conrad) in some of his longer tales.

I never come at books as mere entertainment, although even the most literary novel had better involve me. Clegg, with The Nightmare Chronicles, has managed to create a body of entertaining fiction as well as some serious notions about horror and love, all exploding within these pages. Clegg doesn't shy from ambiguity either.

In his first story here, "Underworld," a man has recently lost his pregnant wife. She was murdered violently. When he goes to a small restaurant in an old alley in the city, he thinks he sees her through the portal window of the kitchen. When he eventually pursues this further, the story takes a twist into what feels inevitable but unexpected. The ending (don't worry I won't reveal it) is both emotionally moving and a stunningly quiet and perfect climax to the events leading up to it. In some ways, it's an illuminating thought about what it means to go through the human nightmare.

The stunner of the collection, "White Chapel," comes next. In "White Chapel," nearly a novella within the collection, a journalist gets the scent of a fascinating but psychotic mystery: a man who has become a legendary torturer and killer, who lives now in the jungles of some Asian/Indian outpost. This is where the Joseph Conrad echo comes in. "White Chapel" is a distant cousin of _Heart of Darkness_. When Jane Boone and her photographer assistant take a boat down a "brown river in intolerable heat," they are entering the outer reaches of human consciousness. Arriving in White Chapel, named, of course, by former British colonials, another reflection is thrown to us: Jack the Ripper and his murders in Whitechapel. But as Jane gets lured to the temple of the Monkey Goddess, the terror and wonder build.

"White Chapel" is a masterwork, and Clegg has managed to intrigue and terrify without venturing too far into the realm of nastiness.

Probably the gem of the collection is a little story called "The Little Mermaid," which has very little to do with the Hans Christian Anderson tale. In this one, a middle-aged woman is at her beach house avoiding the life she has amassed, and finds a potential new love in an elderly man, a doctor, who she meets on the shore. He has a sparkle and passion, and his love literally transforms her with terror. A very short story that's over too soon (tantalizingly so), "The Little Mermaid" is a brief shock of icy water.

Other stories stand out as well, and the worst thing I can say about this collection is that the frame story around the collection could have been either eliminated or amplified. It's a metaphor for the storytelling process, a tale of turned tables, but is unnecessary given the strength of these remarkable tales.

I would classify Clegg up there with the early stories of Clive Barker and a few Stephen King stand-outs. If you're a fan of short horror fiction, _The Nightmare Chronicles_ should not be missed.

Rating:
Summary: Do you nightmare?
Review: Thanks for dropping by and checking out my book, The Nightmare Chronicles. The nightmares in the book are comprised of thirteen short stories (13 being such a great number, after all) sewn within a larger story of a mother and her adult sons who have kidnapped -- and intend to murder -- a little boy. The only trouble is, the boy is not what he at first seems. Is he a demon? A psychopath? A magician? A dream? Or a nightmare in human form?

Dreams and nightmares create the surreal landscapes I most enjoy writing about. Each of the stories in The Nightmare Chronicles had its kernel in a good or bad dream I've had at some point.

In addition to the stories, I've included an afterword in which I talk a bit about how the stories came about, as well as an excerpt from my upcoming epic horror novel, You Come When I Call You.

I appreciate all of you who have read my fiction -- whether online with the email novel, Naomi, or my paperback Halloween Man. I hope you will allow me to continue to allow my imagination into your reading life.

I look forward to both the positive and negative reviews here, but above all: it's my hope that The Nightmare Chronicles will involve you.

Rating:
Summary: Uneven at best
Review: The first thing to note is that whoever wrote the jacket copy obviously DID NOT read the book, so right off the back the reader is mislead. The stories stand alone, and the tie-in to the kidnapped child only serves to disappoint the reader because it is only used as a framework for the stories and is not a crucial plot device, as is hinted at on the back cover. The stories themselves are hit-or-miss, either capturing the reader and keeping them on the edge of their seats, or boring them to tears.

Having read THE HALLOWEEN MAN, which I thouroughly enjoyed, I was disappointed with this work by Clegg, and I would not recommend this collection of stories if you are reading Clegg for the first time.

Rating:
Summary: Best of the Year
Review: The Nightmare Chronicles by Douglas Clegg is the peak literary achievement of a novelist and short story writer who has truly developed his talent, disregarding the standard formulae of either paint-by-numbers fiction-writing or gross-out extremist writers. This collection is the point in which pulp meets literature head-on.

In this collection of short fiction, Clegg has managed to conjure up some of the most disturbing tales in which the supernatural touches everyday life, where paranoia meets truth, and where dreams and nightmares cross over into day-light.

For anyone looking for standard fare, The Nightmare Chronicles is not the book. If you want something scary that appeals to light and mindless reading, try Goosebumps or a Young Adult book, find an Anne Rice vampire novel or pick up the latest commercial mishmash. This is not a book for horror lovers alone, but for readers who really enjoy a superb experience with fiction.

But, if you are a serious reader of the best that genre fiction has to offer, try this collection of short stories. Someone here mentioned this has no plot. Well, of course it does not have a plot; it's a collection of short fiction. This should be obvious to anyone who has actually gotten beyond the first page of this book. The characters are ordinary but thrust into the mouth of terror, disturbance, and shadow. The imagery within these tales is startling.

Of the tales, the best are "White Chapel," "I Am Infinite; I Contain Multitudes," "Underworld," and one of the most interesting short horror stories I've ever read, "The Rendering Man."

I have read two of Clegg's novels, both of which were good, but I have no doubt that it is in the short story, as exemplified in The Nightmare Chronicles, that he excels.

Rating:
Summary: Horror at its finest!
Review: The thing that makes this such great horror is the people are so real! It could happen to them -- it could happen to YOU! Not only are the stories great, the writing is sooooo good! I wish this guy would write more books!

Rating:
Summary: Wonder and nightmares...
Review: There's always been a special place in my heart for single-author horror collections. Perhaps this began with Stephen King's NIGHT SHIFT, one of the first books of "modern" horror stories I ever bought.

However, the single-author horror collection is a somewhat illusive beast. Perhaps publishers are more comfortable publishing novels.

That's why it's exciting when a new collection comes along. Especially one this good.

It's been nearly a year since I first read this book, and still I am left with haunting images from some fo my favorite stories: Of the avenging angels from "The Ripening Sweetness of Late Afternoon." Of a woman robed in wasps in "The Chosen." Of the sheer depths of the jealousy of the Monkey God of "White Chapel," or of horror glimpsed through the portal window of a kitchen door in "Underworld."

But the absolute prize of the collection is "The Rendering Man," a brilliant story of one woman's awakening to the horrors both in the world around her and within herself. The final few paragraphs are as horrific and beautiful (for good terror tales are often both) as anything I can remember reading in recent horror fiction.

The best single-author horror collection to come along since Thomas Ligotti's GRIMSCRIBE, this one deserves a wide readership, as do all of Clegg's works.

Rating:
Summary: Wonder and nightmares...
Review: There's always been a special place in my heart for single-author horror collections. Perhaps this began with Stephen King's NIGHT SHIFT, one of the first books of "modern" horror stories I ever bought.

However, the single-author horror collection is a somewhat illusive beast. Perhaps publishers are more comfortable publishing novels.

That's why it's exciting when a new collection comes along. Especially one this good.

It's been nearly a year since I first read this book, and still I am left with haunting images from some fo my favorite stories: Of the avenging angels from "The Ripening Sweetness of Late Afternoon." Of a woman robed in wasps in "The Chosen." Of the sheer depths of the jealousy of the Monkey God of "White Chapel," or of horror glimpsed through the portal window of a kitchen door in "Underworld."

But the absolute prize of the collection is "The Rendering Man," a brilliant story of one woman's awakening to the horrors both in the world around her and within herself. The final few paragraphs are as horrific and beautiful (for good terror tales are often both) as anything I can remember reading in recent horror fiction.

The best single-author horror collection to come along since Thomas Ligotti's GRIMSCRIBE, this one deserves a wide readership, as do all of Clegg's works.