The New Death and Others

 

   This interesting collection of tales has just recently fallen into my grasp for free by way of the author, James Hutchings, who asked only that I review it here in exchange. As the fact that the only label for this post if "Review" some of you might have realized I actually mean to do so which probably shocks me more then any of you as I never expected anything like this to happen. Anyway on to the review itself!

   I absolutely enjoyed reading the book. There I said it, full stop, no more is needed...





   Oh, your still here? I guess I should really go into why enjoyed it, huh? First of all a good number of the stories contain twists that I did not expect. Now this may not seem such a surprise to you out there, "Oh no a surprise was surprising!" and all that but let me tell you something about myself. I read a lot. Not just a lot as in I read more then normal but as in one summer vacation I read three to four paperbacks a day, everyday till school started. It takes a bit of work to pull a surprise twist on me. While some of the stories are the generic twist in a can there are a decent number of stories that do surprise me and this was the quite the novelty.
   Another thing I liked about the collection was how it wove humor and horror together. Many of the stories contained within poke fun at a great number of things in a way that I enjoy and yet there are stories that raise the hair on my neck. Not that surprising in a book where part of the description is "Death gets a roommate" and one of the sample stories you can read for free is based off of one of Lovecraft's stories. The important thing though is that they mix well. There are a few bumps in the flow here and there but whether on purpose or not the stories have an overall flow and the funny moments leads to fear in such a delectable way. A quick note about the humor though, I am using the word "humor" as a broad description to cover not only the normal run of the mill types but puns and satire as well, you have been warned.
   A final thing I have to say about it is that you get a lot. The book contains 44 short stories and 19 poems. It contains more quality work then most story collections books could ever hope of glimpsing. I even enjoyed the poems which I tend not to though that may just be a symptom of most poems that I have had to read in the past where for school but whatever. Now I won't try claiming every story contained is a jewel as they are not and some of the short stories are more short then they are story but enough of the the book was worth it that I was able to enjoy myself all the way through. You can get the book for the Kindle at Amazon and in a number of other formats as well as read samples from it at Smashwords.