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aaronj21's Reviews (912)
I love single author short story collections and books like this are the reason why.
“The Dark Man, By Referral and Less Pleasant Tales” is a delightfully dark, rollicking jaunt of horror and imagination. You can feel the author’s enthusiasm coming through in each tale. Collections like these allow writers to showcase both their range and their distinct style and verve and Chuck McKenzie does both very well here. What struck me most was the utterly unique nature of each story, every one was quite unlike anything I had read before and this coming from someone who reads horror collections like these fairly often. Underneath the horror and menace, and there is plenty of both, don’t you worry, there is a unifying undercurrent of macabre whimsy. I could tell from reading that this is an author with a lifelong love of horror media, he brings that passion along with a delightfully offbeat and surprising humor to his tales.
I enjoyed the whole book but some standouts for me were “Retail Therapy”, “The Shadow Over Bexley”, and the eponymous tale “The Dark Man, By Referral”. Reading these was like watching some of the better Twilight Zone episodes, effective storytelling, profound themes, and satisfying plot twists.
While the longer stories definitely allowed McKenzie to flex his writing talents, I also really enjoyed the very brief “flash fiction” interspersed throughout this collection. I’m a firm believer that stories should be only as long as they need to effectively tell the tale. Sometimes that gives you a 598 page brick and sometimes that gives you a few well crafted paragraphs. Extremely short fiction like this can be quite demanding but the author pulls it off several times in this collection. Of these juicy tidbits I particularly liked “Moth” and “Howler”.
This collection was an entertaining and refreshingly unique reading experience for me. I would read anything new from this author on the strength of these stories alone and I do hope he writes more, I need more of his distinctive style of humorous nightmares.
“The Dark Man, By Referral and Less Pleasant Tales” is a delightfully dark, rollicking jaunt of horror and imagination. You can feel the author’s enthusiasm coming through in each tale. Collections like these allow writers to showcase both their range and their distinct style and verve and Chuck McKenzie does both very well here. What struck me most was the utterly unique nature of each story, every one was quite unlike anything I had read before and this coming from someone who reads horror collections like these fairly often. Underneath the horror and menace, and there is plenty of both, don’t you worry, there is a unifying undercurrent of macabre whimsy. I could tell from reading that this is an author with a lifelong love of horror media, he brings that passion along with a delightfully offbeat and surprising humor to his tales.
I enjoyed the whole book but some standouts for me were “Retail Therapy”, “The Shadow Over Bexley”, and the eponymous tale “The Dark Man, By Referral”. Reading these was like watching some of the better Twilight Zone episodes, effective storytelling, profound themes, and satisfying plot twists.
While the longer stories definitely allowed McKenzie to flex his writing talents, I also really enjoyed the very brief “flash fiction” interspersed throughout this collection. I’m a firm believer that stories should be only as long as they need to effectively tell the tale. Sometimes that gives you a 598 page brick and sometimes that gives you a few well crafted paragraphs. Extremely short fiction like this can be quite demanding but the author pulls it off several times in this collection. Of these juicy tidbits I particularly liked “Moth” and “Howler”.
This collection was an entertaining and refreshingly unique reading experience for me. I would read anything new from this author on the strength of these stories alone and I do hope he writes more, I need more of his distinctive style of humorous nightmares.
In the tradition of Erik Larson and David Grann, Save Our Souls is the riveting, true account of an unlucky family shipwrecked on a remote island with a known murderer; and it might just be the book to get you into reading non-fiction.
Fact is often stranger than fiction and books like this illustrate that point. Although it sounds like the plot of Swiss Family Robinson, or maybe a drama mini-series, in 1887 a shark fishing vessel wrecked off the coast of Midway Atoll stranding its remaining crew there. Among those stranded were the Walker family, a captain husband, his wife, three sons, and their loyal canine, Jessie. Far from the lush, verdant islands scattered across most shipwreck fiction, Midway is mostly sand and birds, making survival a constant challenge. But in addition to surviving the elements, the Walkers and their crew have to contend with a mysterious castaway already present on the island, a man whose experience and history may be the difference between life and death.
I knew absolutely nothing about this event prior to reading this. My initial reaction was one of elation and gratitude that someone had gone through the trouble to write a whole book about the topic. This read was exactly what I was looking for, well-paced and researched, with more than enough information to appease my curiosity. The author does a splendid job of building suspense, so much so that one afternoon I read for hours in one sitting because I absolutely had to get some answers. On the whole this was an immediately engaging, well written book laden with a profusion of detail and told with astute deftness.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes exciting, absorbing non-fiction, or even readers who usually only read thrillers and adventure titles, there is more than enough of both here to satisfy anyone.
Fact is often stranger than fiction and books like this illustrate that point. Although it sounds like the plot of Swiss Family Robinson, or maybe a drama mini-series, in 1887 a shark fishing vessel wrecked off the coast of Midway Atoll stranding its remaining crew there. Among those stranded were the Walker family, a captain husband, his wife, three sons, and their loyal canine, Jessie. Far from the lush, verdant islands scattered across most shipwreck fiction, Midway is mostly sand and birds, making survival a constant challenge. But in addition to surviving the elements, the Walkers and their crew have to contend with a mysterious castaway already present on the island, a man whose experience and history may be the difference between life and death.
I knew absolutely nothing about this event prior to reading this. My initial reaction was one of elation and gratitude that someone had gone through the trouble to write a whole book about the topic. This read was exactly what I was looking for, well-paced and researched, with more than enough information to appease my curiosity. The author does a splendid job of building suspense, so much so that one afternoon I read for hours in one sitting because I absolutely had to get some answers. On the whole this was an immediately engaging, well written book laden with a profusion of detail and told with astute deftness.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes exciting, absorbing non-fiction, or even readers who usually only read thrillers and adventure titles, there is more than enough of both here to satisfy anyone.