The latest issue of Britain's leading dark fantasy magazine features two returning regulars and three debutants, one of them with a significant track record at novel length, with fine cover art by Ben Baldwin. There are reviews of the Blu-Rays of Dungeons & Dragons and The Day of The Triffids from Tony Lee, while Peter Tennant interviews and reviews Alexandra Solokoff and features Australian horror, including Karron Warren's Slights.
James Cooper
For the second consecutive issue editor Andy Cox chooses to lead the fiction with a novelette, thereby allowing the author greater space to develop the situation. 'Eight Small Men' by James Cooper features twin narratives twenty-five years apart, the latter a reunion between two middle-aged brothers and the man who took them in as orphaned teenagers, the former featuring them as those teenagers. But it's the presence of the bullying Matron, her teenaged son and the conflict with the brothers that gives the story its bite. Like all Cooper's fiction, it's unpredictable and disturbing. Highly Recommended.
Simon Kurt Unsworth's 'The Knitted Child' marks an outstanding debut by a Lancaster-based writer whose debut collection is imminent. When three generations of women are plunged into grief by the death of a child, the grandmother pours sympathetic magic into a fetish. Short, poignant and memorable, it benefits from deceptively simple illustrations by Jim Burns.
A first short story sale for Alan Scott Laney with 'Maximum Darkness' features an old book found in an attic and the creeping darkness that follows from its discovery. As Robin Parker's mental condition deteriorates, so the "fluid mix of radiance and gloom" continues to spread. A promising debut not helped by the distractions caused by atypical sloppiness in the proofing.
Daniel Kaysen
Much better is 'Babylon's Burning' by Daniel Kaysen, in which protagonist Daniel is invited to a corporate function by his brother, who works for an international security company. The entertainment features murder and dismemberment, and a job offer; hugely entertaining within it's modest length, and Highly Recommended.
Sarah Singleton is a writer better known for her novels than for her too-rare short fiction, and she makes a welcome debut. Singleton specializes in stories in which a glossy veneer of normality overlays a far stranger world than that which we perceive and this is perfectly illustrated by 'Death by Water.' Bemused and bereft by the loss of his wife, Ian consults medium after medium, all of them unable to explain why she died by drowning. Highly Recommended.
Features
Mike O'Driscoll calls for a proper public debate on censorship, following what he terms "sleight-of-hand introduction of clauses into the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act." Stephen Volk discusses the difficulty of adapting good books into good films, while Christopher Fowler explains why he's given up scriptwriting.
Peter Tennant puts together the latest horror news in White Noise, and as well as interviewing Alexandra Sokoloff, Tennant reviews her novels, and offers readers the chance to win copies of them. Tennant also runs a feature on Australian Horror, including Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror: The Year's Best Stories and books by Shane Jiraiya Cummings, Paul Haines, Stephen M. Irwin, Robert Stephenson and Kaaron Warren, whose Slights is described as 'simply magnificent.'
Meanwhile, Tony Lee's selection of DVDs and Blu-Rays for dismemberment includes Borderlands, Dante's Inferno, Dungeons & Dragons, House, Jennifer's Body, Room 36 and the recent BBC adaption of John Wyndham's classic Day of the Triffids.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
