<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A mixed bag of spirits.
Review: Choosing Peter Straub, author of the classic supernatural tale Ghost Story, as the editor for this was another neat marketing trick by the HWA. Too bad the tales he gathered are less than impressive. Straub's story "Hunger" is literate and fascinating, but most of the rest fall flat. Chet Williamson's offering does get under the skin though, causing a rash of gooseflesh. Die hard horror fans will want to check it out, so I recommend it for at least those two tales.
Rating:
Summary: A mixed bag of spirits.
Review: Choosing Peter Straub, author of the classic supernatural tale Ghost Story, as the editor for this was another neat marketing trick by the HWA. Too bad the tales he gathered are less than impressive. Straub's story "Hunger" is literate and fascinating, but most of the rest fall flat. Chet Williamson's offering does get under the skin though, causing a rash of gooseflesh. Die hard horror fans will want to check it out, so I recommend it for at least those two tales.
Rating: 
Summary: Gross, but not very scary
Review: I thought the stories in this collection were well-written, in some cases sliding over into the realm of 'pretentious'. Lots of blood and gore, which I don't particularly care for in a ghost story (in fact, I hurled the book into the wastebasket after reading one particularly bloody specimen). My main objection to the stories is that none of them were particularly scary.
Rating: 
Summary: Ghosts of the mind
Review: Peter Straub has selected some extremely interesting ghost stories in this book. Very systematically he looked for stories that depict a deranged mind more than real paranormal phenomena. The ghosts are living in the minds of the main characters and that gives a real twang to the book. No special effects, no monsters with a zipper in the back but phantasms, imaginary beings, delusions, all the result of a mind that does not know where to stand any more. And when you lose your footing, you have the tendency to see the ground floating over your head and the air harbouring a lot of incredible beings and creatures. In other words these stories are perfectly plausible, most of them, and they give you a real feeling of unease because you know you could experience the same thing under some circumstances.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan
<< 1 >>
| 
