Soze Says

Full disclosure: I follow Edward Lorn here and on Goodreads and he even follows me back on the former. We have traded the occasional comment about books and films, but we've never met and I don't know him from Adam. But he likes these things to be known up front, so as a courtesy to him, I'm disclaiming with an intense fervor.

A very good collection of Lorn's shorter fiction, even if many of them have been released previously as stand alone tales (or, in the case of THE SCARE ROWS, within the pages of the excellent Bad Apples: Five Slices of Halloween Horror), Others & Oddities is extremely well titled. There is no single theme connecting the works contained within this collection, but rather, they serve to showcase the mind of a writer which is equal parts fantastic, clever, and fucked up.

Take, for example, BLAH-DOOP. In the hands of Lorn, a leaky toilet becomes an instrument of death within the space of four pages. Or how in THE SCARE ROWS a travelling show with a difference soon has the townsfolk of Bay's End running afoul of sodomising scarecrows. Other tales feature Lorn putting his unique spin on werewolves, leprechauns, water monsters, and the Rapture itself.

Particular mention must also be made of the awesome THE MORNING DEW, a story I had never before come across, which made it all the sweeter when it perfectly displayed Lorn's incredible imagination as well as his ruthless treatment of many of his characters (something else I truly appreciate about his writing).

At the end of 250-odd pages, I was more than satisfied. Of the fourteen tales on display here, I found only two that I did not care for. And that's a ratio I'd take every time when it comes to a short story collection.

Highly recommended to fans of bizarre horror with a nasty edge.

4 Throat-Originating Spikes of Golden Death for Others & Oddities.