Looming Low Volume I

Looming Low Volume I by Justin Steele
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Back in the early 2000s, there was a proliferation of speculative short fiction anthologies, a couple of which I edited. It was a kind of golden age where the internet was available as a tool, but it had not yet been saturated by so much dreck; a time when an author (or editor) still strove to have their work published in hardcopy, but when electronic communication (mostly in the form of message boards) allowed one to get one's name "out there" without having to spend a mint doing it.

When I saw the premise and cover of Looming Low, Volume 1, my heart skipped a beat. Or, rather, my heart hearkened back to those days of yore when Leviathan, Redsine, Polyphony, Flesh & Blood, Earwig Flesh Factory, Indigenous Fiction, and many, many others were within easy reach, if you knew where to look. I knew that Sam Cowan's Dim Shores press had been attracting a bevy of "name" horror authors, as well, so I thought I'd take a chance, albeit a fairly "safe" chance, since I knew that a few of these authors were going to have quality work included.

Story by story, here are my notes:

This is the first story I've ever read by Kurt Fawver. "The Convexity of Our Youth" uses a Millhauserian voice to tell a tale of transformation of children into orange balls. The syntax is satisfying and on the paragraph-level the writing is spectacular. But the story itself just wasn't to my liking. Too bland for such mechanically great writing. Three stars.

A.C. Wise "The Stories We Tell About Ghosts" was overly predictable, some of the kids in the story didn't speak like kids, and the plot was lackluster. The writing was technically sound, but had no real distinctive voice, nothing to set it apart. Two very disappointed stars.

Michael Wehunt's "In Canada" is a disturbing peek into the innocent mind of insanity, especially regarding questions of identity. It's a little predictable, but provides an excellent glimpse into the inner world of one gone mad vis-a-vis an outer world gone mad. Four stars.

As I've come to expect from Brian Evenson, his story "The Second Door" is exceptional. My favorite so far. Mix a vaguely post-apocalyptic setting with a narrator who may be slipping from reality, or, possibly reality is slipping away from him (or, perhaps, this strange reality is very real), then throw in the quandary of a language breakdown, and you've got a recipe for a beautiful disaster. Five stars.

Mill's "The Christiansen Deaths" was pretty standard fare, with an ending paragraph that showed a reaction that just seemed to accept the outre as very matter-of-fact. This lessened the impact of the story greatly. Still, it was well told. Three stars.

Betty Rocksteady's "Dusk Urchin" is a surreal (in the classic sense of the word) horror that relies on the unsteady mind of the main protagonist. The atmosphere is excellent and the fragility of the main character makes for an excellent unreliable narrator. At times the voice felt a little forced, but maybe that was the intent of the author. Four stars.

"The Gin House, 1935," by Livia Llewellyn, is the tale of Lillian, whose life, badly lived, becomes a transformation back into . . . Ah, ah, ah! No spoilers. Five stars for this tricky tale.

"This Unquiet Space" did absolutely nothing for me. Just nothing. Two stars.

Sunny Moraine's "We Grope Together, and Avoid Speech" is a plotless sketch, though sketch isn't the right word - perhaps "tableaux" about walls of mouths. It's as weird as it sounds, and creepy, both because of the delight the narrator takes in the description of these strange . . .entities, and because of the devious invitation at the end, where readers become implied characters in the not-story as the fourth wall itself melts away. Five stars!

"Heirloom," by Brooke Warra, is a morbidly poignant story about twins literally separated at birth. While separated, though, they are never fully apart. And that is the horror of it all. Weird folk horror. Four stars.

There's more than a little absurdism in Lucy A. Snyder's "That Which Doesn't Kill You". But it's not so ridiculous that it strays into pure silliness. Four stars.

Codependence, conspiracy, and slippage between realities dominate Simon Strantzas' outstanding tale "Doused by Night". There is a lot of density to this packed short story, with a whole unseen plot-between-the-lines undergirding the surface plot(s). Five stars.

Kaaron Warren's "We Are All Bone Inside," while well-fleshed out (readers will note the irony of that phrase), didn't do a lot for me. Three stars.

Lisa L. Hannett's "Outside, a Drifter," is not my usual fare. I've never been a huge fan of "body horror," but this story can't be pigeon-holed that easily. It is a strange sort of dark fantasy story about love and sacrifice and business. The folksy cadence of the story is an acquired taste, but I found it satisfying in the end. Four stars.

Lristi DeMeester's "The Small Deaths of Skin and Plastic" was strange and creepy, but lacked substance. Three stars is all I can muster for this story.

Scott Nicolay's "When the Blue Sky Breaks," outside of some clever syntactical moves, was decidedly "meh" for me. A rather weak story with linguistic potential. Two stars.

I admit it: I'm a bit of a prude when it comes to my literature. So I'm not big on erotica or sex scenes. But Craig Laurance Gidney's "Mirror Bias" is so incredibly well-written, I'll give it a pass. A big pass. A five star pass. The writing is exquisitely beautiful. I will be seeking more of Gidney's work, for sure. He is a masterful wordsmith.

"Boisea Trivittata" by Anya Martin was good. But I've seen this trick before. Ann VanderMeer and Jonathan Carroll both did similar things many years ago, and they did it better. It wasn't a bad story, just a tiny, tiny bit hackneyed (although I suppose that using the word "hackneyed" means it's been done many, many times before). If you haven't read VanderMeer's or Carroll's stories, then you might like this better than I did. Three stars.

Michael Cisco's scintillating "Rock N' Roll Death Squad" is a study in ultraviolence that belies the supposed exhiliration of mass murder. It's a bit like seeing A Clockwork Orange from the inside out, but lacking pathos - a horrifying thought indeed! Unfortunately this also means it doesn't really connect enough with the reader on an emotional level, though it explodes in the brain, more jazz than blues. Four stars.

"Alligator Point," by S.P. Miskowski has a cinematic sensibility. I could easily see this turned into a short movie. It's the sort of psychological tension-builder that Hitchcock would have loved. Four stars.

Jeffrey Thomas's "Stranger in the House" delves into the abyss of self-identity and its loss. It's a good story, well-written, but not as impressive as most of Thomas's work. For that, turn to The Endless Fall and other Weird Fictions. I hate to do this, because I really do love most of Thomas's work, but in this case, I can only honestly give three stars.

Christopher Slatsky's "SPARAGMOS" explores the shadows of dementia, family, and corporate evil. It's a disturbing, yet mildly comforting view of a dystopia and the mercy of forgetfulness. Four stars.

Richard Gavin's "Banishments" is an excellent foray into social media deception and its supernatural consequences. A very creepy story, I found myself thumbing back every couple of pages seeking more clarity on what had happened earlier. It might have been the piece-meal way in which I had to read the story (because: life), but it felt a little muddled at the beginning. Still fully worthy of four stars, though!

One of my favorites in this anthology, "The Sound of Black Dissects the Sun," by Michael Griffin is focused on dark ambient music (which I listen to a lot) and the occult. It's a reality-bender with a narrator that I felt some sympathy for, which might say some disagreeable things about me. Flattery aside, the pacing, atmosphere, and voice were just about perfect. The story "fits itself" well. Five stars.

I admit that when I started Nadia Bulkin's "Live Through This," I was underwhelmed, at first. By the end, however, I found myself swept up by this story of communal guilt in the face of the void. This was a long, slow burn sort of story that lasts, with a very satisfying character arc and a sort of folk-horror creepiness throughout, but folk horror from the inside. Well worth the read and well worth five stars.

Gemma Files' "Distant, Dark Places" is everything I expect a Gemma Files story to be: well-researched, with characters exhibiting a range of human emotions, and conspiracy-horror on a cosmic scale. You'll never look at the moon and stars the same way after reading this. Four stars.

On average, that's about three stars. And, though the book came with a beautiful bookmark and cardstock poster of the cover, I'm not inclined to bump it up. Bulkin, Griffin, Gidney, Strantzas, Moraine, Llewellyn, and Evenson have produced some outstanding work here. And many of the other stories might be five-star tales, in another reader's eyes. But the lows were, well, pretty low. And while I'm certain that other readers will look at my own edited anthologies and think that some of my selections were suspect, at best, I have to stick to my guns. Perhaps my taste has changed a little. Or maybe it hasn't changed at all, and it's just been that long since I've seen an outpouring of the sort of thing I love. In any case, I can't let nostalgia blind me.

That said, this anthology has encouraged me to take up editing again. Things are still in the nascent stages, but plans are afoot. Dark, nefarious plans . . .

View all my reviews

________________________

If you like my writing and want to help my creative endeavors, ko-fi me at https://ko-fi.com/forrestaguirre. Every little bit is seen and appreciated! Thank you!