31 Days of Halloween - Day 1

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All  by Laird Barron

Night Shade Books. 2013.


Nine stories by Laird Barron is a great way to begin this season of darkness, and here you get two fistfuls of unsettling cosmic dread mixed with crime and the every day. What I like about these stories is that in most of them, Barron takes his time getting to the weird stuff, but even while he's setting up characters going about their every day jobs and concerns before they encounter that which will change them forever, that malevolence is there in ambient form. While the stories all stand alone, you'll discover common elements like a sinister black hole in the air looking back at you that makes it seem that it is the same darkness that is moving through this world highlighting examples of its dirty work for us to witness. That the stories themselves don't conclude with neatly wrapped up endings enhances that feeling that the bad stuff keeps rolling on.  I highly recommend any of Barron's work.

Also, kudos, to Norman Partridge for his entertain introduction.