Book Review: Supernatural Noir by Various

Title: Supernatural Noir
Editor: Ellen Datlow
Publisher: Dark Horse
Release Date: 06/28/2011
ISBN: 1595825460







It doesn't matter how you like your supernatural tales. Modern, retro, a touch of gothic... there's a little bit of everything in this collection of short stories. Just don't be surprised when you end up going back over some of the stories just to figure out everything, though.

A hit man who kills with coincidence... A detective caught in a war between two worlds... A man whose terrible appetites hide an even darker secret...

Dark Horse once again teams up with Hugo and Bram Stoker award-winning editor Ellen Datlow (Lovecraft Unbound) to bring you this masterful marriage of the darkness without and the darkness within. Supernatural Noir is an anthology of original tales of the dark fantastic from twenty modern masters of suspense, including Brian Evenson, Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Nick Mamatas, Gregory Frost, and Jeffrey Ford.

Dark Horse has really outdone itself with this book. Like I said above, you'll find a lot to like in this collection. You'll find some stories that you'll just go batty over, others that you won't be able to peel your eyes away from. I have to admit that I wasn't expecting some of the resolutions here in these stories & I love that they threw me for a loop. It's no fun when you can predict everything that happens & you don't get that here. The Absent Eye ended up being one of my favorite stories & I just really hope that the author (Brian Evenson) does more with this story. It (like some of the others) had a lot of potential to be developed into one or several books.

However, as is the case with any collection of stories, you'll find the ones that you just weren't into. I have to admit that I just wasn't drawn into Caitlin Kiernan's short story, although I will admit that it was well written. (I can either take or leave her stuff.) Others were just a little too surreal for my tastes.

There was more here that I liked than disliked, so I highly recommend that you try this book out. It'll probably end up being overlooked by many, but this really is an excellent collection of stories.

4 out of 5 stars

(ARC provided by Netgalley)