Rise Reviews

They Had Goat Heads is a collection of “bizarro” fiction by D. Harlan Wilson. The thirty-nine stories are very short; one of the stories consists of just six words.

Because the stories are “bizarro” fiction, they are all very weird and a lot of time have no plot or make no sense. This is the second collection of “bizarro” fiction I’ve read, and I’ve realized it’s not my favorite genre. However, although not my cup of tea, They Had Goat Heads had some great stories; a couple of them made me laugh out loud.

Unpleasant Tales is a fantastic collection of short stories by Brendan Connell. While each of the twenty-two stories is different in subject matter, a feeling of surreality permeates throughout. The first story, “The Maker of Fine Instruments” is a creepy yet beautifully-written tale of Willi, who seeks help from a reclusive luthier after his beloved cello breaks. Charles Martens is a brilliant musician and teacher, but is also extremely eccentric. Willi goes to Charles to get his cello fixed and ends up taking music lessons from Charles. The instruments he gets to play are nothing he’s ever seen before. “The Maker of Fine Instruments” weaves a feeling of dread throughout and ends with a horrifying visual that will haunt one’s dreams long after the story is over.

“A Dish of Spouse” follows a woman who prepares a feast for her friends with her husband as the main dish. Every moment of the butchering and preparation for cooking is written in loving and grotesque detail. The guests are perfectly aware of the main course and look forward to it. “A Dish of Spouse” is a blackly humorous story that I enjoyed very much.

Bizarro, surreal, stream of consiousness, non sequitur. Tom Bradley’s fiction is a pick your descriptor grab bag. Hemorrhaging Slave of an Obese Eunuch strings together nine tales of debauched and hallucinatory imagery with somewhat mixed results.

The challenge of writing truely experimental or non-traditional fiction is keeping the reader involved in some kind of sequence of events that is understandable. Many amateur attempts leave the reader blinking in confusion, wondering what is a nugget of plot and what is just extraneous information. Thankfully, Mr. Bradley is no amateur.

In Fungus of the Heart, the latest collection of stories by bizzaro/horror/magic realism author Jeremy C. Shipp, the prose reads as if it’s been shot from a shotgun. Short, punchy writing that develops a rhythm in your mind as you’re reading it. It’s almost beat poetry at some points. Strange, surreal beat poetry.

Shipp unleashes his imagination on the page, transforming the mundane into the exotic in the process. In the opening story, “The Sun Never Rises in the Big City,” we are introduced to a new world, similar to our own, but here there is a group called the Pyramid, taking young girls as “rags,” playthings to be discarded when their owners are tired of them. We follow Frank as he investigates the death of his rag and finds himself in an underworld of female freedom fighters.

The Bride Stripped Bare is a collection of 23 stories by Rachel Kendall. These are stories of birth, death, redemption; all beautifully written. Kendall’s prose flows seamlessly through each story, painting pictures that are sometimes raw and brutal. You can’t look away.

I didn’t like every story; however, even the stories I didn’t care for were very well-written. I really enjoyed the story “51 Weeks”, which is about an empty man who joins a sadistic club in order to try to feel something, anything. He puts himself through hell, but the outcome isn’t what he expected.

It’s hard to classify a collection like Sheep and Wolves because it fits into some many genres. Fantasy. Science Fiction. Horror. Dark. Humor. The seventeen stories within these pages range between all of these, and even seem to create some new corners to hide in, waiting for you to come by to leap out and [...]

In short, “Monstrous Creatures” by Jeff Vandermeer can be best summarized up by the book’s own subtitle: Explorations of Fantasy through Essays, Articles and Reviews. It’s a deceiving in its simplicity and forwardness concept. The reader will read essays, articles and reviews in order to participate in this tour. At 254 pages “Monstrous Creatures” doesn’t frighten anyone with its length. On the contrary, it only contributes to the fake sense of immediacy, of reading this book in one sitting.

“Monstrous Creatures” is a beautiful chimera of ideas and opinions. Vandermeer goes for a 360-degree expedition of fantasy in all of its manifestations as well as through significant periods of its evolution. Wherever the fantastical seeps in, be it in books, the act of writing, architecture, art or even nature, Vandermeer follows, documents and then reports with some of the most spectacular and sophisticated turns of phrase I’ve seen in non-fiction.