Review: ONLY THE BROKEN REMAIN by Dan Coxon

Release Date	October 29,
Publisher	Black Shuck Books
Content Warnings	Gore, murder
Did I receive an ARC?	Yes
Links	Indiebound | Bookshop | Kindle | Goodreads

Short stories are tough—for writers as well as readers. With only a little time to make an impact, many end up falling flat and forgettable. Thankfully for us readers, Dan Coxon knocks it out of the park with the short stories in Only The Broken Remain, his collection of dark and disturbing fiction featuring the downtrodden of the world.

Coxon has an extensive publishing history, and it’s easy to see why editors are snapping up his stories. They are unique and well-written, and not a little unsettling. Although the overarching theme of Only the Broken Remain is loose, no story feels out-of-place and each feels a little like a dream—or a nightmare.

There are several stand-outs amongst these fourteen stories, not least of which is the opener, “Stanislav in Foxtown.” In it, an immigrant works day in and day out at a local chicken joint, until he befriends some foxes that live in the area. Stan and his foxes grab your attention immediately, and the descriptions in this story are indicative of the amazing prose that permeates the entire collection.

Coxon’s skill as an editor—his anthology was nominated for a Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Award—is apparent in the story order. Sometimes, especially in single-author collections, I find it hard to differentiate between one story and the next, but Coxon doesn’t hit that pitfall. From one story to the next, you encounter different narrative styles, different themes, and different vibes.

Not every story landed for me, though. Particularly towards the middle of the collection, I found that some stories didn’t commit to their premises, and the ending was a little too vague. A set-in-stone ending isn’t necessary for a short story, but in a couple, like “Far From Home,” the beginning of the story didn’t intrigue me and the ending also failed to make an impression. On the bright side, these stories were few and far between, and didn’t take away too much from my experience as a whole.

Without a doubt, I’d have to say that my favorite story was “No One’s Child,” a story about a young English girl who is sent to the country during the London air raids who finds a creature in her guardian’s cellar. The descriptions in this story, the setting, and the absolute brutality were absolutely phenomenal and this is a story that will stick with me for awhile.

If you are a fan of horror short stories, this is definitely a collection you should pick up. There is a story for everyone here, and Coxon will amaze and disturb you with Only the Broken Remain.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Review: ANOKA by Shane Hawk

Release Date	October 26, 2020
Publisher	Independently published by the author
Content Warnings	Murder
Did I receive an ARC?	No
Links	Signed copy from the author | Amazon | Audible

If you’re looking for new talent, look no further. Anoka by Shane Hawk is short, clocking in at only 84 pages and with only six short stories, but packs a big punch. Featuring the town of Anoka, Minnesota—purportedly the Halloween capital of the world—and exploring universal human themes through the lens of indigenous life, Anoka is a debut with astounding power.

The crowning jewel of Hawk’s arsenal is his prose. I didn’t completely have my bearings in “Dead America,” but his prose pushes you through page after page. You can see the amount of love and care that he puts into each and every sentence, leaving no word untouched and ensuring that every word counts, especially in the two flash pieces, “Soilborne” and “Orange.” In fact, one of the critiques that I have is that he might learn to restrain himself in some instances; at times the stories feel overworked, offering either too much or too little for the reader. At times the meaning is hidden a few too many layers beneath the surface, and at other times the reader picks up on the twist much sooner in the story than necessary.

My greatest grievance with Anoka is its length. I hemmed and hawed at holding this against it, since I know that Hawk had some technological issues which led to the abbreviated length; but at the end of the day we just didn’t get enough time with this collection. Where this is especially noticeable is the somewhat flimsy connection to the town of Anoka: although some stories really lean into the setting, like the finale, “Transfigured,” others make no mention of it at all and it seems difficult to truly feel like this is a collection of stories in and around Anoka. That’s not to say that the stories that didn’t explicitly mention Anoka don’t belong—they’re excellent—but additional stories might have established the setting more firmly.

And besides that, you just want more time with this writing. When reading collections and anthologies, I’m rarely surprised when I turn the page and encounter the end, since they are short stories, after all, and there’s an ending every few pages. But at the end of Anoka, I was surprised that we were done so soon. Perhaps this is partially because I found the finale to be underwhelming; I think a more definite and stronger ending would have fit better and rounded off the collection nicely. The open ending—the promise of a new beginning to a story—didn’t quite work for me.

Ultimately, although Anoka had its faults, this is absolutely a book to pick up if you’re on the hunt for new voices in horror. I think that Hawk is definitely carving out a space in the genre for himself, and this is not the last we’ll hear from him.

Also—I didn’t find a way to slide it into the review naturally, but I always try to pick a favorite story, and my favorite from this collection was “Imitate.”

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Disclaimer: I am friendly with the author, Shane Hawk. I have done my best to try to review this book fairly and without bias, but it is inevitable that this has affected my reading experience.

Anthology Round-Up

After a month of end-of-year posts and last week’s bullshit, we’re back—however temporarily it may be—to our regularly scheduled programming. The world still appears to be on fire, but I read a lot of books in December and it’s about time to review them, so today I’ll be telling you about two literary magazines and one horror anthology!

Arterial Bloom, edited by Mercedes M. Yardley

⭐⭐

Rating: 2 out of 5.

Arterial Bloom is nothing if not ambitious, and offers something to fit all tastes—which is its greatest weakness. There are wonderful, stand-out stories in this collection, including “Kudzu Stories” by Linda J. Marshall, “Welcome to Autumn” by Daniel Crow, and “In the Loop” by Ken Liu, but I found that the primary reason I enjoyed them was usually the atmosphere they created, and upon finishing the anthology I don’t know how I would feel about them were they to appear in a collection of high-quality work.

Other stories fall short for various reasons. The opener, “The Stone Door” by Jimmy Bernard, has an interesting premise but that’s all it is—the premise doesn’t end up making much sense and doesn’t hold water, which detracts from the story as a whole. “Doodlebug” by John Boden feels like it’s been done many a time before, and “The Making of Mary” by Steven Pirie feels preachy.

My average rating across all stories ended up being a 2.8, which I rounded down to two due to what I feel was poor editing choices. Yardley did herself a disservice choosing not to have a themed anthology; there is no linking thread tying these stories together, and without consistent quality it feels less like an anthology and more like a mere compilation. My favorite story of the bunch was “Blue Was Her Favorite Color” by Dino Parenti.

FIYAH Magazine Issue No. 15 (Summer 2020), edited by DeVaun Sanders

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

I was very excited to give this literary magazine of speculative fiction by black authors a shot, because I’ve heard so many wonderful things about it. By the end, I think my unfortunate takeaway was that I’m not much of a fan of sci-fi/fantasy short stories, for various reasons. So, naturally, the stories with creepy elements stayed with me the most, like “Red Cloth, White Giraffe” by Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, which is about the ghost of a woman seeking peace while her body decays and her family delays her burial.

My overall enjoyment of this magazine suffered because I am not an avid poetry reader and don’t really get poetry. It’s hard to hold that against FIYAH; poetry certainly has its place in the literary fiction world, I just happen to not enjoy it. And, of course, it seemed to be (to my uneducated eyes) experimental poetry, which didn’t help me out at all. Props to writers who can create poetry, they are smarter and more creative than I will ever be, but they’re so out of my reading league.

Discounting the poetry, my average rating was a solid 4, so that is my final rating. If I were to include the poetry in my calculations, it’d probably end up as a three, but again, that feels unfair and I bought the magazine for the stories, anyway. My favorite of the collection was “Your Name is Oblivia,” by Vincent Tirado, which I still think about weeks later.

Nightmare Issue 98 (November 2020), edited by John Joseph Adams

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.

This was actually the first literary magazine I read, and it totally hooked me on literary magazines. Every story here was spectacular, and they kept me turning the pages in a way most short stories rarely can. And the magazine worked the way it was supposed to—upon reading “Night Doctors” by P. Djèlí Clark, I immediately went to my library and put Ring Shout on hold. That’s definitely the order you want to read them in, by the way, since “Night Doctors” is something of a prequel.

I do remember enjoying the nonfiction section well enough. It didn’t captivate me nearly as much as the fiction section, but that’s to be expected. It was well-written and interesting enough, although again, not what I had been seeking when I purchased the issue (though it was a happier surprise than poetry).

With so many outstanding stories, I couldn’t rate this less than 5 full stars. My favorite story was “Tiger’s Feast” by KT Bryski, which has such outstanding prose and was so unique and amazing. Bryski is definitely an author I’ll be watching.