By David Lenton
read As the night deepens For me, this was an unexpected nostalgia trip—a throwback to an earlier time when I would happily read any anthology of horror stories I could find. As such, I couldn’t help but sense in the work of the twenty writers who contributed to this book echoes of stories I read decades ago, both in the occasionally familiar content of their stories and in the themes they explore.
The latter aspect of the collection As the night deepens It’s a reminder that horror doesn’t have to be all gore and violence to meet the genre’s standards (although both can be found in this book); rather, horror is rooted in examinations of personal and societal anxieties, and that the monsters lurking in the darkness are more likely manifestations of our own fears than anything resembling actual monsters or ghosts.
Loss, fear, love, anxiety, desire, and depression—these are just some of the emotions that for The night is darkThe way we interact with each other as fellow human beings is put under a microscope, and as a result, the darker sides of our psyches cannot hide from this scrutiny.
While I can’t say that all of the stories were to my taste, the writing quality was almost uniformly high. There was some vagueness here, some superficiality there, and a few commas scattered throughout that should have been periods (sorry, I couldn’t help but notice!), but what ultimately stood out was a collection of some pretty sharp little stories written by people who had clearly sat down and thought hard about how to explore what darkness is and what lurks within it.
Whether you’re a nostalgia fan like me, or you’re just looking for some horror stories, As the night deepens Well worth reading.
Order yours here.
score: 4/5
