OTHER TERRORS: AN INCLUSIVE ANTHOLOGY BY VINCE A LIAGUNO , RENA MASON

OTHER TERRORS: AN INCLUSIVE ANTHOLOGYBY VINCE A LIAGUNO , RENA MASON

15/7/2022

OTHER TERRORS: AN INCLUSIVE ANTHOLOGY
BY VINCE A LIAGUNO , RENA MASON
William Morrow/ HarperCollins 2022
Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Reviewing horror anthologies is becoming increasingly difficult because editors, taking advantage of the flexibility of the digital format, tend to include progressively larger amounts of short stories.

The present volume, for instance, assembles twenty-four contributions, the majority of which are far from being short, and a good number of which could have been easily excluded from the final table of contents. Thus, both readers and reviewers have to spend a lot of time reading forgettable tales as well as good material.

Obviously not all the stories will please anyone and every reader will love or hate different tales.

Even so, I maintain that oversized anthologies are becoming a disgrace and that editors should be more selective when assembling their volumes.

This particular anthology can be defined as fairly good, but, in my opinion, there are only four stories which will really remain in the reader’s memory.

In the excellent “ Waste Not” by Alma Katsu, a young widow, a policewoman, tries to get rid of the incredible amount of junk that her late husband and her mother-in-law have accumulated throughout the years. With some surprising results.

In “ There’s Always Something in the Woods” by Gabino Iglesias a monster lurks around a cabin in the woods where three undocumented immigrants are hiding. The rather predictable outcome is redeemed by a tense, spellbinding narrative which keeps the reader constantly on edge.

Tananarive Due contributes “ Incident at Bear Creek Lodge” ,an offbeat, quite interesting tale where a young boy must come to terms with an unknown side of his family, especially an obnoxious grandmother.

To me the best story is the outstanding “ Idiot Girls” by Jennifer McMahon, where two girls try to discover the culprit of some murders taking place in a small community ( with an unexpected twist in the tail).

Other Terrors: An Inclusive Anthology
by Vince A Liaguno , Rena Mason

An anthology of original horror stories edited by Bram Stoker Award(R) winners Vince A. Liaguno and Rena Mason that showcases authors from historically excluded backgrounds telling terrifying tales of what it means to be, or merely to seem, "other."

Offering new stories from some of the biggest names in horror as well as some of the hottest up-and-coming talents, Other Terrors will provide the ultimate reading experience for horror fans who want to examine fear of "the other."

Be they of a different culture, a different background, a different sexual orientation or gender identity, a different belief system, or a different skin color, some people simply aren't part of the community's majority--and are perceived as scary. Humans are almost instinctively inclined to fear what's different, and there are a multitude of individuals who have spent far too long on the outside looking in. And the thing about the outside is . . . it's much larger than you think.

In Other Terrors, horror writers from a multitude of underrepresented backgrounds have created stories of everyday people, places, and things where something shifts, striking a deeper, much more primal, chord of fear. Are our eyes playing tricks on us, or is there something truly sinister lurking under the surface of what we thought we knew? And who among us is really the other, after all?

CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE: Tananarive Due, Jennifer McMahon, S.A. Cosby, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu, Michael Thomas Ford, Ann Dávila Cardinal, Christina Sng, Denise Dumars, Usman T. Malik, Annie Neugebauer, Gabino Iglesias, Hailey Piper, Nathan Carson, Shanna Heath, Tracy Cross, Linda D. Addison, Maxwell I. Gold, Larissa Glasser, Eugen Bacon, Holly Lyn Walrath, Jonathan Lees, M. E. Bronstein, Michael Hanson