Since changing my genre to Dark Fantasy, I’ve been focusing more on Fantasy and less on Horror. For the most part, I’d given up on the genre after the last couple of modern Horror stories did nothing for me.
I couldn’t pass on a collection of stories about the Apocalypse. I’ve seen plenty of movies on the subject but haven’t read any books about it. The novellas were amazing. I devoured them in a couple of days. The book is a fairly easy read- easy in the sense that it’s short.
The stories themselves were more than a little disturbing, brilliant but disturbing. People were getting mauled or having their heads spit open by some object or spilling their intestines or being sliced in half. It was hardcore. The authors didn’t hold back but, as someone who doesn’t like gore just for the sake of it, I didn’t have a problem with this. The gore served a purpose. It added to the stories.
The authors weren’t afraid to push some boundaries. Absolutely no one was safe. You know that saying writers need to kill their babies- well these authors took that to heart. They were brutal to their characters. You didn’t know who would live or die. The endings were far from predictable- they weren’t all rainbows and sunshine either.
Outside of books by Bentley Little, these are the only modern horror stories I’ve read that had any kind of effect on me. Like most long time Horror lovers, it’s difficult to find books that actually scare me. The horror of the situation never infects me. The last novella in Elements of the Apocalypse about all the water of the world drying up- I could really feel what the characters were feeling. I was getting super thirsty.
One thought on “Elements of the Apocalypse”
Wow, sounds intense but good!
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