I'll never complain about receiving a free book though - and this did look pretty damned good, especially with that killer quote from Chuck Palahniuk.
The next question is of course, were the contents of the book as nice a surprise as receiving it in the first place?
Happily, the answer to that is a definite yes.
These are literate and well thought out stories and the horrors are subtler and more refined than a lot of collections I own.
There are 14 stories (despite the back cover saying 15...) and even the least good is rather fine in its own way. There are definite stand outs in the collection.
Clown Face is a scary clown story unlike any other that I've experienced. It was the first story in the book to give me that little frission at the end. As it's only the second story, that's not a bad hit rate so far,
The next story - Requital - also gave me that delightful little shiver. A man awakes time and again in a shack in the middle of a desert and is faced with different dangers each time. As the story progresses, it becomes more nightmarish and strange. It feels like a good episode of Black Mirror transposed to the page.
Open Waters has a similar Black Mirror feel. A man stuck on an island that proves to be so much more and less than it appears. I loved the ending to this (and the fact that the lead character's cat is called Isabella which was my Nanna's name).
Nodus Tollens meanwhile, feels like an exceptionally good Twilight Zone episode. Be careful what you accept as a prize in a poker game. You might get more than you bargained for.
In his house takes the form of a letter from a follower of the great elder being Cthulu himself. It's an effective ploy to creep out the reader. Lovecraftian fiction can feel cliched but this manages to feel new despite the the use of an overfamiliar trope.
This is a common thread throughout the collection. A lot of the ideas flying about aren't new in the slightest, but Thomas's style means they stay interesting and fresh enough to avoid the cliché.
Undone has to be mentioned for the bravery of writing a story in only one extraordinarily long sentence, a gamble that pays off as this one achieves an immediacy and urgency that drags you through at breakneck pace - and throws out some really great imagery as well.
How Not to Come Undone is a cracking little story about the symbiotic relationship between a pair of twins which is disrupted when the boy twin gains unusual powers.
Hiraeth was a good story till the last page. I'm afraid that ending didn't really work for me although I can see what he was going for and it's a brave choice to end it the way he does. In the afterword he admits that it could divide the audience.
The final story is the longest and also possibly the best. A man is alone in a testing station, with only the occasional visits from the enigmatic Rebecca to relieve the monotony (stranded people is quite a common theme in this collection). Through some interesting narrative choices we find out that he's a test subject for... something.
This is a great collection of stories by a writer with a truly distinctive style to his writing. It's weird, surreal and occasionally pretty damned chilling.
The book comes out in February 2022 and my recommendation would be that you go out and buy it when you can.
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