Haunted Time Travel

THE PATCHWORK HOUSE by Richard Salter centers on James and his girlfriend Beth, who have come back to England to assess a piece of real estate for his dad. The patchwork house is a mix of various architecture...and it's haunted. So, naturally, James invites his friend Derek and his wife Chloe to spend the weekend at the house for some ghost hunting.

Unfortunately, there is more to the house than just ghosts. There is an entity which can control time travel, and the couples soon find themselves trapped in a nightmare. If they want to survive, they have to sort out the different timelines inside the house, keeping them prisoners.

I'm a fan of Salter, and this is my favorite novel by the author. I read this book in one sitting, during the day, and it still scared the crap out of me. I don't frighten easily - I really don't, but the combination of horror, sci-fi and drama is absolutely terrifying and hopeless...and the relationship histories between characters adds that extra gut twist.

Horror fans have met their match in Salter.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Fantasy Writers Fighting Cancer

Fantasy For Good: A Charitable Anthology
edited by Richard Salter

First and foremost, the proceeds from the sales of Fantasy For Good are donated to the fight against colon cancer. This is the second in a series, following Horror For Good, and both have raised a standard for charity anthologies.

This anthology brought me back to my childhood, when I fell in love with fiction, particularly the fantasy genre. In addition to many well-known authors, readers are also introduced to many other talented writers...it's like a buffet for the imagination: sword & sorcery, fairy tales, paranormal, etc.

The number of stories within is well worth the price, and readers can feel good about giving to a charity at the same time. However, what truly impressed me is the variety and originality of each and every story. Not once was I able to predict an ending, and when you read as much as I do, that, in itself, is an amazing feat.

I recommend this anthology to readers of all ages, and if you're not a fan of the fantasy genre, you will be after reading Fantasy For Good.

As always,
AstraDaemon

Are You Ready To Go?

The Collision is the worst disaster in human history. So far…

In the near future, an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider causes an enormous explosion, known as the Collision. The blast flattens a huge chunk of central Europe and punches a massive hole in the Earth’s surface. Over the next decade, unspeakable horrors pour from the rift: vicious creatures with a taste for human flesh, a terrible scream that drives all who hear it insane, a phantom entity that feeds on fear and paranoia, and a nightmare train from the pits of hell, to name but a few. This onslaught of terror causes the collapse of civilization and threatens to wipe humanity from the planet.

World’s Collider is a unique concept in short fiction, where all eighteen original stories are part of a common narrative, recounting the disaster and its aftermath. A true novel by many voices, including Steven Savile, James Moran, Aaron Rosenberg, Trent Zelazny, Jonathan Green, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Kelly Hale, Richard Wright and a host of new talent.

Fifty million people died in the Collision. They were the lucky ones…

WORLD'S COLLIDER, edited by Richard Salter, has been out for several years, but this anthology is still one of my favorite sci-fi/horror collections.

"An anthology posing as a novel? Or possibly a novel posing as an anthology."

I highly recommend reading the intro first, which explains the concept behind this anthology and is nothing short of fantastic. Salter did an amazing job of putting it all together. World's Collider is not only the best anthology that I read in 2012, but it's one of the most remarkable story collections I've ever read.

The individual accounts within this anthology, written by multiple authors with diverse writing styles, with various POVs and locations, create a mind-blowing larger story about a dimensional rift that opens in the middle of Europe.

While it reminds me slightly of the presentation of World War Z, Salter takes it even further by constructing a novel with short stories written separately within the same setting. Salter's introduction explains his painstaking process.

The stories themselves will both terrify and thrill sci-fi and horror fans, describing mankind's struggle to survive the onslaught of demonic entities spilling into our world from the rift.

If you enjoy novels such as Craig DiLouie's Infection series, or Read the End First (edited by Suzanne Robb), you will relish the nightmares within the pages of World's Collider!

As always,
AstraDaemon