“The Last Stair Into Darkness,” by Cliff Barlow
Pros:
- It was free.
Cons:
- The work is stuffed full of horror clichés (“voodoo,” cannibals in the woods, the “deranged killer,” etc)
- The work is full of less-than-stellar writing (stories told in summary and not scene, jarringly regular use of the word “however,” and vague endings that are more confusing than scary).
- The voice acting is wooden.
- The work offers a reductive, offensive portrayal of a person with autism, parroting some of the worst tropes often associated with the diagnosis in media (e.g. only speaks in stilted sentences, hyper-fixates on a single object, etc).
Conclusion:
This work fails as a piece of horror fiction in two key ways: 1) I never cared about the characters, and so I had no emotional response when they were in danger. 2) The story never really provided lurid spectacle as a substitute for the lack of character building. Ultimately, the story seemed to even lack a thought provoking message beyond, “don’t get stabbed or whatever.” Even a heavy-handed theme (beyond “watch out, bad stuff’s happening!”) or overarching plot thread would’ve been better than what this work provides.
Seriously, you can skip this one. If it wasn’t free and short, I would’ve DNF’d and returned it.
Check it out here (but I wouldn’t recommend it).
“Inside Jobs: Tales From a Time of Quarantine,” by Ben H. Winters
Pros:
- It was free
- It tries to be topical by using quarantine and isolation in each of the the stories; how successful it is in doing so is another matter.
- There wasn’t anything overtly problematic … is what I would say if the story didn’t include a gay serial killer (yikes). God forbid an LGBT character be able to be something other than a murderer, a drug addict, a sex worker, or a victim of a hate crime, right?
Cons:
- The first story’s humor (about a heist during quarantine) utterly failed to land. It didn’t seem to have much to say other than, “quarantine hard,” and, “teenagers dumb and hungry.” Yikes.
- The second story’s ending lacked verisimilitude; (spoilers for an unsatisfying story), but I just did not believe that the POV character would shoot his own brother. Also, the fact that he did made the POV character extremely unlikeable. Also, the “gotcha,” of having a kid with a GoPro on the scene (at 5 in the morning) also felt contrived.
- The third story’s ending clashed with the tone of most of the story (it came across as much too happy and action-focused for the attempt at a tense story that preceded it). Ultimately, this work came across more as farce than anything satisfying.
Conclusion:
Maybe I’m being extra hard on this one because the pandemic is ongoing, but these stories just did NOT work for me. Even at a cost of zero dollars, I would still pass on this one.
Check it out here (but I wouldn’t recommend this one either).
Here are some books you may enjoy, instead of these stinkers:
- “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
- “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern
- “Through The Woods” by Emily Carroll
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