Tantalus Depths is the kind of book that the right audience will love. It’s a solid combination of cosmic horror, somewhat-hard science fiction, and has sprinkles of space epic. And perhaps its biggest triumph is how it balances those three things in an organic, unfolding way that never feels like a hard genre shift.
I’d not read anything by T. Kingfisher before this novel, but given the grace of the prose, The Hollow Places will not be the last. She’s shown her sureness within both this subgenre and in the art of simply telling a good story.
Starting worst and going toward best, this is a shorter but much more spoiler-heavy breakdown of these six spooky tales.
I Found a Circus Tent in the Woods Behind My House is a stark contrast to the first book in the “I Found Horror” series. It’s technically the second book, but was published first. I’m unsure of why it’s set up that way, except perhaps to give a better starting impression.
“Big Bad” made for an interesting end to the Creature Feature collection. It’s the only story in it that fits within any of my preconceived expectations. It’s about a werewolf. The werewolf follows normal horror werewolf rules (as opposed to paranormal werewolf rules), and the story has a lot of gore and tense moments in it.
“Best of Luck” is pulling as my favorite story in the collection. Although “Ankle Snatcher” is the only one that scared me, this one was the most fun to read. I actively wish there were more pages, that the story didn’t have to be over so soon.
“In Bloom” just kept missing. Each time the horror felt like it was going to build to something, each time I thought the concept was going to hit harder, it just failed to work.
If there was an award for the most middle-of-the-road story in this collection, “It Waits in the Woods” would currently win.
I’m not that easily scared, but “Ankle Snatcher” genuinely freaked me out. The night I read it, I obeyed all the rules outlined about how not to get brutally killed by this monster that lives underneath the bed. It’s been a few days since then, and I am still overly cautious when I’m falling asleep.
I Found Puppets Living In My Apartment Walls has two qualities that have continued to stand out to me even after some time since I read it. One: it has an extremely unwieldy name to put into an article. And two: it is one of the scariest, most unnerving, most creative pieces of horror fiction I’ve come across as a reader.
As odd as it is for a horror fan to say, “The Pram” is the first thing I’ve read by Joe Hill, the son of the most famous horror writer in the world, Stephen King. But, from what I’ve heard through the grapevine of criticism, they share a fair number of stylistic flourishes.
Black Tide was a different sort of book than I expected. The premise of a cosmic horror-style alien invasion was interesting by itself, but Black Tide marks the first “bottle episode” book I’ve ever read.
