Use Once, Then Destroy

Rating:
Summary: Existencial horror at best
Review: Conrad Williams is one of the best new names to appear in horror fiction in years.
Williams' stories are surreal urban nightmares with an existencial bent that reminds me how human and profound horror fiction can be.
This collection is a little bit uneven but the best stories like Suicide Pit, City in Aspic and Nest of Salt are masterpieces of anguish and despair and rank among the best existencial horror stories ever written.


USE ONCE, THEN DESTROY:

The Machine ======================= **
Supple Bodies ===================== ****1/2
The Light that Passes Through You = ****
Nest of Salt ====================== ****1/2
City in Aspic ===================== *****
Other Skins ===================== ****1/2
The Windmill ====================== **1/2
Wire ============================== ****
The Burn ========================== ***1/2
The Owl =========================== ****
The Night Before ================== -
Edge ============================== -
MacCreadle's Bike ================= **1/2
Known ============================= ****
The Suicide Pit =================== *****
Excuse the Unusual Approach ======= ****
Nearly People ===================== ****

Rating:
Summary: Ethereal prose strokes your soul like fetid colors on canvas
Review: Painted onto paper with pen strokes much like a dark feather tickling down your spine, Use Once, Then Destroy is a chilling and eerie treat to the horror fan in you.

Not particularly graphic or even overly shocking, these tales are old time creepy combined with new world situations, brought to vivid life with the poetry of William's prose.

The horror are vague, and they hide in the shadows as they salivate over your soul, waiting for the appropriate moment when the air is at its chilliest to sweep over you in shivering apprehension and dread, leaving you bleak and trembling in their wake.

UOTD is a chilling collection of quiet terror, of felt but unseen things in the mists, of low-lying dread and unspeakable impulses. There are seventeen stories in all, too many to cover each one, but here is a quick summary of my favorites:

City In Aspic - a haunting and misty tale of a hotelkeeper in Venice, and the horrors that haunt him through the city's winter streets.

The Windmill - A vacation in Norfolk will be the beginning or the end of Claire's relationship.

Wire - A boy remembers his mother, and the dark terror that stalked her when he was young.

Edge - Another vacation gone awry, and love that turns bitter and violent.

The Owl - A young man and his expecting wife move into an old house in the country, and a storm comes that changes everything.

The Suicide Pit - In streets filled with "little samples and smears of humanity that won't erase", a lonely man finds his destiny.

Nearly People - (the longest and best of the stories) Eerily futuristic look at a quarantined area of a city, where Carrier stalks food for Jake, and meets the Dancer. I loved the Mowers, and there is some graphic and dizzyingly disgusting scenes in this tale, causing my shiver-meter to jolt into the red.

Conrad Williams' surreal and nightmarish tales are well worth the price, poetically written and devilishly creepy, this is a great collection to add to your bookshelf. Enjoy!