Announcing Writers of the Future Volume 39
Writers of the Future is a yearly anthology featuring the latest in great speculative fiction.
By Guest Article on May 17th, 2023
Writers of the Future is a yearly anthology featuring the latest in great speculative fiction.
By Brandon Scott on May 8th, 2023
In a running trend for Disney Chills, Second Star to the Fright mixes up the formula. This time, we get a complete curveball: it plays the “be careful what you wish for” trope entirely standardly.
By Brandon Scott on May 1st, 2023
One of my initial worries when planning these Disney Chills reviews was that they would be repetitive. And the plot summary for Fiends on the Other Side didn’t assuage that concern in the slightest.
By Brandon Scott on Apr 10th, 2023
Did you know Disney released a book series like Goosebumps but with their villains? Well, neither did I, but it’s called Disney Chills; there are six out and a seventh releasing this year, and because it seems like fun, we’ll be reviewing all of them over the next few months. Starting with Part of Your Nightmare, a book that takes the horrifying implications of Ursula’s powers and then goes even further with them.
By Brandon Scott on Apr 5th, 2023
Horrid is a book about emotions more than anything else. Its plot, its ending, its momentum are all in service of getting across big emotional moments.
By Brandon Scott on Mar 13th, 2023
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.
By Brandon Scott on Feb 22nd, 2023
The Girls Are Never Gone is an interesting blend of concepts attached to a traditional ghost story. From The Twisted Ones to Horrid to even aspects of Harrow Lake, I already knew this story’s bones.
By Brandon Scott on Feb 15th, 2023
When you become a diehard fan of a type of media or genre (really any of them), you notice patterns. I’ve spoken before about storytelling patterns in the wider construct of narratives, but what I mean this time is tropes.
By Brandon Scott on Feb 13th, 2023
I wish I had more nice things to say about The Twisted Ones. Given how impressed I was with The Hollow Places, I expected another creative cosmic horror with a breezy pace. And while I will ultimately have several nice things to say about the book, it’s a step down in quality.
By Brandon Scott on Jan 23rd, 2023
It was an accident that I found out about the Forward collection on Amazon Prime—but I’m so happy I did. Turns out, if you have Prime, it’s free, and each short story is interesting in its own way. There’s six in all, so I thought I’d cover my thoughts on each of these tales.
By Brandon Scott on Jan 3rd, 2023
The Luminous Dead is perhaps one of the hardest reviews I’ve done in a long time. The nature of the work has clashed with my usual operations.
By Brandon Scott on Dec 28th, 2022
Now it’s time for the negativity. The stuff I least enjoyed reviewing. I’ve sandwiched this part between two positive articles, so we don’t end this retrospective on a low note.