Borderlands is chock full of a who’s who of horror stalwarts from the 90s/00s, and the quality shows. Cover to cover, this thing has some fantastic tales, which is so rare to see in anthologies. Normally you get a couple of good ones, a couple more decent, and then the rest is fluff. No so here.


The Calling - David B. Silva

A gut-wrenching 1st person account of a son taking care of his mother in the final throws of cancer. Powerful.

5 stars out of 5


Glass Eyes - Nancy Holder

When you’re an artist and diagnosed with cancer of the eyes, you’ll start to see all sorts of shit. Dot sure did. Weird and hallucinogenic story.

2 stars out of 5


The Grass of Remembrance - John DeChancie

Kirby is obsessed with obtaining the perfect lawn, so obsessed he loses his wife and his job. Oh, but Kirby gets a shipment of some grass seed that can never die, even when everything else around him does.

4.5 stars out of 5


On The Nightmare Express - Francis J. Matozzo

A beautiful artist is more than meets the eye when she’s hunted down by a passenger on the train. A fun take on an old classic trope.

5.0 stars out of 5


The Pounding Room - Bentley Little

The first day on the job can be a stressful one, but for Charles Nichols, this one is beyond words. What the hell did he sign up for? Little takes the corporate world and injects a whole lot of bizarro.

5.0 stars out of 5


Peeling It Off - Darrell Schweitzer

When Frank met Sam for drinks, he could tell his friend was still not over his wife leaving him. But instead of his normal whining, he told Frank a story so insane, he was sure Sam had to be cracking up. Or was he on to something?

5.0 stars out of 5


The Raw and the Cooked - Michael Green

Worship thee palace of fast food and thy clown god statue. Disturbing on many levels.

4.0 stars out of 5


His Mouth Will Taste Of Wormwood - Poppy Z Brite

Wow. Just wow! This story blew me away. Grave robbers get more than they bargained for when they steal an amulet from a New Orleans grave. Poppy’s use of the perfect verb and adjectives in every sentence is incredible. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go reread this sucker again!

5.0 emphatic stars out of 5


Oh, What A Swell Guy Am I - Jeffrey Osier

Donald left his wife and moved into a crummy apartment. He knew he was going to go through changes. Oh, but how could ever know they’d be like this? I felt like I was watching an old White Zombie animated video.

3.5 stars out of 5


Deliah And The Dinner Party - John Shirley

Deliah and her dead friend, The Telling Boy, have a special gift, the ability to look through walls and see what people are really doing and saying.

4.0 stars out of 5


Suicide Note - Lee Moler

A stream of consciousness rambling from a man who can’t inflict enough pain while having sex.

4.0 stars out of 5


Stillborn - Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Little Brother isn’t content until Big Brother and him are close. Real close.

4.5 stars out of 5


Ladder - T.E.D. Klein

Life takes you on a journey of random steps, or are these steps a predestined trip on the rungs of a ladder?

3.5 stars out of 5



Muscae Volitantes - Chet Williamson

Alan wants his lover, Randy, to leave his wife and live with him. Randy knows that can’t happen. But even when Randy thinks he’s solved his problem, Alan refuses to leave Randy’s sight. Very Twilight Zone-ish. Love it.

5.0 stars out of 5.0


The Man in the Long Black Sedan - Ed Gorman

Tom is convinced death has come to his small town to give his son an incurable disease. He has visions, and his latest premonition told him so. But is the man he’s cornered in a local motel actually death or a traveling salesman named Larry? Another great Twilight Zone-ish tale.

5.0 stars out of 5


His Frozen Heart - Jack Hunter Daves, Jr.

Running over a boy changes a man’s life. 15 years later, he’s still running from the boy.

4.5 stars out of 5


Evelyn Grace - Thomas Tessier

Tim goes to the wake of a classmate he hardly knew, Evelyn Grace. She was a beautiful girl that Tim never was good enough to hang around with her or her circle. When he discovers that very few people are attending the wake and her parents have been estranged from her for the last 20 years, he innocently concocts a story to comfort them, but the lies keep falling out of his mouth. He should’ve kept them bottled up.

5.0 stars out of 5


By The Light Of The Silvery Moon - Les Daniels

A unique take on a werewolf tale in that we’re left to watch as the reverse happens, a wolf turns into a human during the full moon and must attempt to coexist with other humans in order to feed his family.

4.5 stars out of 5


A Younger Woman - John Maclay

When a man leaves his wife for a much younger woman, he can’t stop the hands of time as they drive across the country.

3.5 stars out of 5


But You’ll Never Follow Me - Karl Edward Wagner

The burden of taking care of his elderly parents with their failing health has fallen on Michael. Maybe he wasn’t the right choice.

4.5 stars out of 5


Stephen - Elizabeth Massie

When Anne started her volunteer work at the hospital, she expected to help people like Michael. What she didn’t expect was to encounter was Michael’s roommate, Stephen. Such a wonderfully twisted story.

5.0 stars out of 5


Alexandria - Charles L.Grant

Grant’s quiet horror is on full display as an elderly doctor retells his encounter with the woman in the cameo.

3.5 stars out of 5


The Good Book - G. Wayne Miller

The owner of a rural gas station comes out one morning to find a dead body impaled 30 feet up on the flag pole. How he got there or who he was? No one knows.

4.0 stars out of 5


By Bizzarre Hands - Joe R. Lansdale

A preacher travels around the Texas countryside looking for intellectually disabled children to save. His motives harken back to when he had a younger sister that was the same. No holds barred tale that only Lansdale can write. Though the writing was excellent, the ending wasn’t my favorite.

3.5 stars out of 5


Overall: 4.29 stars out of 5

Honestly this book was just an all around good time. When you consider how many years this story has managed to span its just a great picture of what good story telling can achieve.

I appreciate having had an opportunity to read this book in ARC form. The appeal of this particular book was not evident to me, and if I cannot file a generally positive review I prefer to simply advise the publisher to that effect and file no review at all.

Anthologies are my passion and this one does not disappoint! The majority of these stories are extremely good. I especially love Bentley Little and Poppy Z. Brite. Will be looking at the rest of the Borderland anthologies!

Borderlands: Volume One is an anthology of weird fiction that is as great and weak from the sums of its parts. It is fairly uneven but there is some pure brilliance found within the pages. There are extreme highs from Silva, Little and DeChancie to name a few but there is also some stories that really didn’t connect.

It is often very difficult to put together an anthology whether you are talking of a novel or television show and there are some that are weaker than others. Not sure if the weaker ones are weak because they are found between stronger stories that weakens those. It is an interesting collection that does a relatively good job. The editor Thomas F Monteleone should be recommended by putting this collection together because this is never an easy feat.

Overall, this collection is the voice of new horror which includes a whole new genre of authors that have recently come to the fore within the last ten years. A lot of newly celebrated authors sitting along some authors who are are well established. Uneven but there is certainly something that will speak to everyone but you may have to sieve through the ones that don’t.

Borderlands is a volume of short stories that aims to chill your bones and disturb you. Some of them were intriguing and delectable, like dessert served to you after a warm dinner and makes you go “ah, now I’m ready to sleep”. Ones that made an impression were The Calling, Delia and the Dinner Party, Stephen, By Bizzare Hands, and some others I can’t quite recall. But I do remember most of the good ones were mostly in the middle of the book, and had they not come sooner enough, I would probably have put down the book.
The others were less interesting, or I don’t really get what the writer is trying to portray. I recall looking at the % of reading progress and wondering when will this book ever end.

Therefore, this stands at a 3 star rating- good enough to pick up and not regret the read, but not exceptional enough for me to remember it few years down the road.

This anthology of "weird fiction" is just that, fiction that is strange, edgy.....horror/dark fantasy that comes to life in these stories. Originally published 28 or more years ago, the stories collected here are still original, fresh and a reminder of the power of well written fiction and the imagination. This is a great anthology and a great collection to introduce other readers to this genre.
Favorites include Nancy Holder's "Glass Eye" (creepy); Poppy Z. Brite, one of my favorites, "His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood"; and Bentley Little's "The Pounding Room" but every story here is macabre.
Recommended
Thank you to #netgalley and Riverdale Avenue Books for this book for review.
#Netgalley #BorderlandsBookOne

DNF @ 24%

I had never heard of ‘weird fiction’ prior to reading this book’s blurb and was immediately intrigued. I usually enjoy stories that have unexpected twists and turns or cover terrain I haven’t encountered before. I love weird stuff!

So it both surprised and disappointed me that this book wasn’t for me. I did enjoy the first story - ‘The Calling’ by David B. Silva. It reminded me of Roald Dahl’s ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ with its macabre ending, so I had hope for the rest of the stories.

I found the second story so disjointed and jarring that I kept putting off finishing it. I finally decided I had to finish it to get to another story I’d connect with more so I pushed through to the end and then slogged through another three stories. I didn’t like a single one.

Perhaps if I’d read these stories when this anthology was first published in 1994 I would have found them shocking but most of what I read felt either clichéd or bad weird. I acknowledge that I may be missing out on some gems by throwing in the towel at this point (there are some really positive reviews for this book) but I think I can live with that, especially when I read some reviews commenting on the amount of stories featuring women being abused by men.

Whenever I rarely DNF a book I usually feel guilty about it and plan to give the book another shot in the future because I don’t want to miss out on any magic that I didn’t find for whatever reason during my first attempt. I don’t think I’ll be doing that with this book and I’m probably more sad than anything because I was really looking forward to discovering this amazing new (to me) world called ‘weird fiction’.

Thank you to NetGalley and Riverdale Avenue Books for the opportunity to read this book. I really wish I had loved it.

I'm of a split mind when it comes to this book. While I found several of the stories engaging, there were others I felt were mediocre at best. It's always difficult to create character empathy when you're writing short stories, and several of the offerings just never connected with me in either an intellectual or emotional way. As a result, I find myself unable to give the entire collection more than 3 stars, short-shifting those authors whose short stories rose heads above the others.

Every reader has their favorite authors. When I saw that this anthology contained stories by Bentley Little and Poppy Brite I knew I had to read it, but the best part of such a collection is the ability to read not only your favorites but to discover works by authors you may not have otherwise read.
I enjoyed most of the stories but the ones that stood out as favorites for me were-
The Grass of Remembrance" by John DeChancie about a man who sends away for a very unique grass seed after his failed attempts to keep his lawn alive. "The Pounding Room" by Bentley Little in which starting a great new job isn't all its cracked up to be, "The Raw and the Cooked" by Michael Green was a dark and satirical look at how the makers of your happy meal stay so happy. "The Man in the Long Black Sedan" by Ed Gorman involves a family man who takes a day off work to protect his family.
I think all horror lovers will find something to enjoy in this volume. Borderlands is a symphony of dark and disturbing fiction and I hope there will be future installments.