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Evil Jester Digest Volume One by Peter Giglio

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

I want to start this review by saying that it may not be entirely fair. I started reading this while a bunch of other stuff was going on, so it took me a long while to get through this book, which may have taken away some of my overall satisfaction.

I seem to be on a short story kick lately. After reading Attic Toys, Christmas on Crack, and Eyeballs Growing All Over Me, I’ve tackled Evil Jester Digest Volume One, edited by Peter Giglio. This book is a collection of mostly short horror stories, with a fantasy novelette mixed in at the end and marked “Best in Volume.” Most of these stories are quite good, but the mix of stories is much more eclectic than I’m used to. While books like Eyeballs Growing All Over Me is a collection written by one author, giving it a fairly consistent style, and Attic Toys and Christmas on Crack followed a theme, these stories have little to connect each other and have drastically different styles and themes.

Here, you have stories about a demonically possessed girl, a biblical Cain in the modern world, Lovecraftian horrors rising on the “Mayan Doomsday,” and a possessed GPS, among others. Most of the stories in this collection are of the horror variety, but there is one story that stands out in particular, both in style and tone, not to mention length. There are some stories that, while they’re not bad, are very predictable and didn’t quite work for me. For example, “The Girl Who Drowned” and “Dust at the Center of All Things” left me feeling a little cold. They were too obvious, which took away some of the horror element. “Lone Wolf” was a little better, but while it’s mostly a zombie story, the surprise doesn’t come from the horror at all, and makes it a better story.

At the end of this collection is the aforementioned novelette rather than a short story. “The End of Autumn” by Aric Sundquist (who also wrote “The White Knight,” one of the better stories in Attic Toys) is actually a very charming little fairy tale, following children as they attempt to stop the Timekeeper from reversing death and disrupting the natural order. There are strong shades of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to this story, and I dare anyone who has read that book to not draw the same parallel. This is not a bad thing, but it is something that immediately comes to mind. But, as I mentioned, the story is really rather touching. At the same time, it not only stands out from this volume because of its length, but also the tone and theme. Drastically different. As in “I’m not sure it really belongs in this volume” different. I would go so far as saying that I could see this expanded and published as a standalone novella.

Evil Jester Digest Volume One is a decent collection, and everyone should read “The End of Autumn.” I’m going to be watching Aric Sundquist’s career closely. He is definitely an author to keep your eye on, and has the definite standout story in this collection. But the collection as a whole is not without its issues. The quality, while good, is also a little too varied and unpredictable, detracting slightly from the overall quality of the volume.

Evil Jester Digest Volume One earns three and a half grains of hourglass sand out of five.

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Attic Toys, edited by Jeremy C. Shipp
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Pediophobia: The morbid fear of children or dolls.

If you suffer from this, you shouldn’t read this book.

However, if you have a demented inner child that needs to be entertained, then this book is definitely for you.

Attic Toys, edited by Jeremy C. Shipp, is a collection of short stories, all based around the idea of killer toys or killer children or killer attic spaces, mostly from the horror variety, with some noticeable exceptions being the stories from Piers Anthony and Mae Empson, which are more like grown-up fairytales.

There’s not a stinker among these stories, and all entertain in some form or another. While I enjoyed a couple of stories a little less than some others, this was more according to taste rather than any actual problems with those stories. And that’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy all of them. In different ways, they all satisfied the need to entertain my own demented inner child. A personal favorite was “The White Knight” by Aric Sundquist, which follows the adventures of a young boy and his rival/companion, a stuffed cat.

As I mentioned, noticeable exceptions to the horror theme were “Living Doll” by Piers Anthony and “The Tea-Serving Doll” by Mae Empson. These were interesting changes of pace that were curious additions to this collection. While they stuck with the “toys and attics” theme quite well, the tone of these stories was different enough to change the pace and almost give the reader a short breather from the other more twisted stories. In addition, the quality of the writing is so high that I can understand why exceptions were made.

I can find no significant flaws with this short story collection. All these stories are fun and disturbing in their own ways. If killer teddy bears, psychotic children, and haunted attic spaces appeal to you, then you will love this book, and the styles and stories are different enough that everyone will come away with a favorite among them. However, if you are a sufferer of pediophobia, you might have trouble sleeping at night.

Attic Toys earns five childish screams out of five.

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Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island by Cameron Pierce
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cameron Pierce is a sick puppy. Having read some of Pierce’s previous work, I knew was to expect in terms of the violence, gore, and sexy stuff, an expectation that I did not have the advantage of when I read Ass Goblins of Auschwitz. In addition, his short story in Christmas on Crack should have cleared this up. Which made Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island a bit unexpected. Hold on. I’ll explain in a moment.

The story starts with four college students on break in the Caribbean in a boat being chased by pirates. After their boat is damaged and they managed to commandeer the pirates’ boat, the four students and one of the pirates wind up on a mysterious deserted island…or so they think. You know things are ominous when Oscar, the main character in the novel, tries to identify their position by the stars but can’t recognize any constellations.

The writing overall is very good. It’s very descriptive, both in scenes and action, and there’s a dark humor, too. I couldn’t help but laugh a bit when Oscar accidentally injures Allen. Or I’m just sick, and reading too much Bizarro fiction. Either way, it works in a sadistic way.

The first half of the book felt…normal. Way too normal. And tame, primarily focused on the pirate attack and then being stranded on the island and the relationships between the characters. This is what was so unexpected. Maybe this was Pierce’s goal, to lull the reader with a false sense of security and a change of style from his previous work. But the book is really divided into two parts, or could have even been written by two different authors. This first half is quite tame compared to most of the other stuff I’ve read by Cameron Pierce. It doesn’t feel like a Bizarro novel. The gargoyle girls of the title don’t even appear until around the halfway point.

Unfortunately, this is also where the book’s central problem comes in. The book changes gears way too fast. There’s little to no ramping up of the action or weirdness. Instead, Pierce smacks the reader in the face suddenly with what I have come to expect from him, reminding you that you are indeed reading a Cameron Pierce novel. It’s a bit like sailing relatively gentle seas with the occasional rolling wave, then getting hit by a tidal wave out of nowhere. This inconsistency becomes this book’s biggest failing, at least for this reviewer, as the dramatic change in tone pulled me off the page and reminded me that I was reading a book and not there with the characters. But I think what makes it so jarring is that what felt like the novel’s real story is way too short, and that there was potential for a lot more development of the gargoyle girls and the society on the island. They’re just sort of there. It felt less than undercooked, even half-finished.

It’s a decent book (in terms of quality, not morals), but unfortunately it doesn’t achieve greatness with this reviewer. The tone and style change too quickly, and it takes half the novel before the real action that you would expect from the title to even start. As such, Gargoyle Girls of Spider Island by Cameron Pierce earns three bottle of pirate rum out of five.

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Sausagey Santa by Carlton Mellick III
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If there’s one thing that you should take away from Sausagey Santa by Carlton Mellick III, it’s probably that you should never marry a woman named Decapitron because she will annihilate you.

“Sly Guy” Matthew Fry is in such a predicament. He marries a dominatrix who calls herself Decapitron, who is also into ultimate fighting by night (you can guess what her signature move is just by her name). But now it’s Christmas Eve, and their family is together to share in her Christmas traditions, which included the telling of the true story of Santa. You see, King Kringle was actually an evil man who hated children and the Baby Jesus, so after several acts in accordance with this hatred, he is cursed to live forever and spread joy to children on Christmas, which is a living Hell for him. He tries to kill himself several times, but he can’t die, and the elves being master worksmen simply repair him. Finally, he thinks he’s found a way out by jumping into a meat grinder. While the elves are perplexed for a couple of days, they finally just stuff Kringle’s meat paste into sausage balloons, reassemble him into a reasonable human shape, and put him back to work. Over time, he learned to enjoy his task, and became known as Sausagey Santa, or Santa for short.

And that’s just the beginning of the story. Things get a lot more complicated when Sly Fry learns the story is true. And Frosty is involved. And there’s a kidnapping. And a cabbage suit. And zombies.

This novel was actually really awesome. I loved this take on the Santa story, and found myself laughing quite a few times, particularly at the way Santa talks like pirate (and laughs like one, as opposed to the traditional “Ho ho ho!”). Great action, great sense of humor, and great at turning conventions on their heads.

A complaint I typically have with a lot of Bizarro books is the ending. That is not the case with this story. The ending was perfect, not necessarily wrapped up nice and neat like a Christmas present, but still perfect for the tone of the story.

If I do have a complaint, it would be two things. The kids were…okay, but frankly felt a little off. Don’t get me wrong, they fit well into the story, and yet it felt like they could use more development or have a couple of them removed altogether. The second is the villain. The only development or characterization we get is background info told by Santa and the elves. He doesn’t have much of a character himself. The old saying goes that an audience will hate a good villain, but love a great one. But this one I was nearly indifferent to and simply had a presence to develop the heroes, and had no real character himself, which was disappointing giving how clever his concept is otherwise.

So break out the television cake, put on those chainsaw angel wings, and fry up some oysters. This one is a good, if only minorly flawed, ride.

Sausagey Santa by Carlton Mellick III earned 4 fried oysters out of 5.

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