This was a quartet of stories by separate authors & I blew through the entire book as I didn't seem to really connect with any of them. But I wanted to finish it to give the review. There is plenty of dark, creepy, horror, scary vibes in the stories and descriptive so it was right on with the sinister quality and that is sure to please readers of those genres and the name fits perfectly. I have nothing bad to say about the stories but it just isn't one my favorites at this time.
I received this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion from NetGalley.

4 creepy fae stories. Liked all 3 AN UNKINDNESS by Jessica P. Wick . Is a brutal faeries story. No punches are pulled so not for the faint of heart.. Amanda J. McGee’s “Viridian will likely disturb people the most because it is set in world like our own. The Comforter” by Mike Allen is a dark and twisted story that should not be spoiled. C. S. E. Cooney, “The Twice-Drowned Saint.” Use the best use of referencing without being overbearing. It truly feels fantastical

“You have arrived to join us in response to our invitation. Your entrancement, your trepidation, your fatal curiosity is our delight. The prelude has ended, and we open out our secret symphonies to engulf your senses, to welcome you.“

A Sinister Quartet is a collection of four short stories, ranging from roughly fifty pages to one hundred fifty pages each.

‘The Twice Drowned Saint’ by C.S.E. Cooney is the longest of the bunch and the most epic in scale. You will find yourself drawn into the mythical city of Gelethel, surrounded by an impenetrable wall of ice and ruled by fourteen angels and their chosen saints. But trouble has been brewing in Gelethel, and revolution is on the way.

‘An Unkindness’ by Jessica P. Wick is a dark tale in which a young princess travels magical paths to a fairy world and finds herself doing battle for her brother’s soul.

‘Viridian’ by Amanda J. McGee reads like a fast (but never fast enough!) paced thriller with a supernatural twist and was creepy enough to give me chills even on a summer day.

‘The Comforter’ by Mike Allen ventures into the realm of weird fiction with strange inhuman things that terrorize whole neighborhoods and a quilt made of faces. Yes, you read that right.

There are no bad stories here. Each one drew me in and held me captive. The whole book is a strange fever dream of a collection and the stories will leave you thinking over their events long after you have closed its covers.

A Sinister Quartet is published by Mythic Delirium Books and released in paperback and ebook format on June 9, 2020.

I received a free electronic copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This review was posted to NetGalley, Amazon, Goodreads, Instagram, and my personal blog.

When offered the chance to read the anthology A SINISTER QUARTET as an ARC via NetGalley, I jumped at the chance. While I am not necessarily a horror fan, I do love the weird. I love beautiful words and unusual descriptions. I enjoy unique places and stories that linger. Every story in this anthology met those expectations and I highly recommend reading more of each author’s work.

The anthology begins with a short novel by C. S. E. Cooney, “The Twice-Drowned Saint.” This is a strange and imaginative tale about a sacred city of angels, their saints, the citizens of the city, and the pilgrims who vie for citizenship among these privileged few. It’s a reminder of how power can twist even the divine.

“An Unkindness” by Jessica P. Wick is a hauntingly beautiful faerie tale about a sister’s determination to save her brother from a dark and mysterious unknown. Something has changed her loving and lighthearted brother, and when she catches him sneaking out at night, it’s so much worse than she could have ever imagined.

Amanda J. McGee’s “Viridian” has a sinister mood from the very beginning and keeps that tension throughout. While this story is the most realistic one in the anthology, being based in a world like our own, that is most likely what makes it the most disturbing. A grief-stricken woman moves to a small town in Vermont, where she falls in love with a wealthy widower. He’s keeping deadly secrets, however, and has a plan for his newest wife.

The final story in this anthology is “The Comforter” by Mike Allen. The title is amusingly deceptive. This story has the most characters, and it takes time for the reader to see how their lives weave together into the complex web of the story. The images that will haunt me the most are a girl’s sketches in a notebook, and a flap of skin under a school desk attacking a teacher and then spelling the word, “Run,” in his blood. That does not convey the plot of the story, but I’m not sure anything would to my satisfaction without giving the story away. Suffice it to say it is a dark and twisty tale.

This truly is a sinister quartet, though the introduction itself is a powerful opening. Beautiful imagery, and a story unto itself - it’s very well-written. The “About The Authors” at the end are also worth reading, as they explain more about the stories, and their inclusion in the anthology.

A SINISTER QUARTET is the perfect anthology for those who enjoy haunting stories that will stay with you long after you put a book down.

I have been following the progress of the publication of this novella for months and I squeeeee'd about it SO MUCH on Twitter that I was allowed to read the ARC on NetGalley in return for reviewing it. BUT I MUST ALSO CONFESS: It took me over a month to finish this book, because it really is that scary. I seriously considered locking my phone in the freezer. I slept with the lights on more than once. I love horror. And I love, love, love this book, in part because there is something here for every type of horror fan. So, let's review!

THE TWICE-DROWNED SAINT by C.S.E. Conney - I first discovered C.S.E. Cooney when Mythic Delirium published her collection Bone Swans in 2015, which contains her startling, beautiful, and heart-rending novella Life on The Sun. The-Twice Drowned Saint is set on the same world but so far in the future that the events of the former have passed into mythology, making this story latter a complete stand-alone. This story is both haunted and haunting, wonderful for fans of alt-universe fantasy spec-fic and body horror. I also see in it a deeply furious parable of modern war and climate refugees hanging on for dear life on the fringes of Western society in the US, Australia, and Europe, and and the ongoing nightmare that is the 'American Dream.' I expected a lot from this story because I have come to expect a lot from Cooney (https://csecooney.com/publications/), and I was completely blown away.

AN UNKINDNESS by Jessica P. Wick - despite her having been published many times since 2008 (https://jessicapwick.com/writings/), I'd never encountered Wick's writing before, and it is glorious. The heroine of this tale, Ravenna, has a fantastic voice and Wick captured in it my fiercest memories of being a late-teen-young-adult sister who would do anything to protect my #*&% brothers from whatever jackass thing they'd done this time. This is a glorious medieval faerie story in the truest, darkest, goriest sense - just the way I like it. ::evil grin::

VIRIDIAN by Amanda J. McGee - McGee is yet another author that I had never heard of, despite being rather prolific (https://amandajmcgee.com/fiction/). Clearly, I need to get my act together! Viridian is a retelling of an old, chilling tale set in modern-day Burlington, Vermont, a place where I Have People and know intimately. Burlington's particular form of identity angst has always been a bit of an enigma to me: a gun &ammo store operates alongside eye-poppingly expensive vegetarian bars just a short stroll down Church Street from a regular old shopping mall that I once got banned from by an angry teenage mall cop who got mad at me for breaking his buddy's drone when his buddy flew the drone into my head. (An appeal to mall management did not alter the situation, so I assume I'm still banned?) But also, Bernie Sander! Liberal icon and local hero! Viridian captures the strange dread of this angst and shapes the old story into new channels of lust and power and always, always control. ::shudder::

THE COMFORTER by Mike Allen - So, this is where my reading speed went completely off the rails. This story is so fundamentally distressing, nay disturbing, NAY - TERRIFYING - that I couldn't make myself read more than a few pages a day. If I had held my breath and clutched my cat and powered through it in one sitting, *maybe* I would have only had nightmares for days instead of weeks. No such luck, because what I was scared of the most was the ENDING. You see, I've read Allen's stuff before and the ending doesn't make it all better. But eventually, I did reach the end. And it definitely ended. But it is never, never, never over. As with Cooney's story, The Comforter is related to Allen's previous work The Button Bin (among others: http://descentintolight.com/), but stands completely alone.

My feeling is that perhaps the weakest part of this book overall is the introduction, which I think sets the reader up for a nice little read of peaceful stories by a pleasant brook in a sunny glen rather than the nightmare roller-coaster haunted house that it is. Which is maybe a good psych out???

Go read this book the *second* you can get your hands on it - three weeks from today, 09Jun2020!

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3314405090


I was fortunate enough to read an ARC of this anthology from NetGalley. I snagged it because I was familiar with a couple of the authors' writing, and boy, am I glad I did.

First up was C. S. E. Cooney's short novel "The Twice-Drowned Saint." If you're familiar with her work, you would not be surprised to find a world of menacing angels, missing gods, and gorgeous wordplay. It's a story that manages to be bizarre and terrifying and at the same time a comforting exploration of love and family.

I've read Jessica Wick's poetry and had the benefit of her eye as an editor, but this was the first fiction of hers that I'd read. "An Unkindness" is a dazzling blend of motifs from several fairy tales that I love on their own merits, and together they made something greater than the sum of their parts. Courage and the elegant menace of Faerie combine in an enchanting story.

This book marks my first encounter with Amanda McGee's work, and if "Viridian" was the most solidly settled in a world very like ours, it was also the most viscerally disturbing to me. A modern-day take on the Bluebeard tale, it combines supernatural threat with the more mundane horror of grief, and I will definitely look for more of McGee's writing as a result of this introduction.

Lastly is Mike Allen's "The Comforter," with its echoes of religious imagery and his own style of nightmares from beyond. Every time I read one of his stories, he makes me terrified of something that used to look normal to me, and this time its stage curtains, which I at least meet less often than buttons in my day-to-day life.

All in all, a book that delivers on its promise of both unearthly beauty and unnerving chills. 4 1/2 stars.

A Sinister Quartet is a collection of novellas and a short novel by four established authors and let me say right from the very beginning, this book has some very beautiful writing.
However! Collections of short stories should always start strong and with the first story for me was just so filled with description and beauty, complicated and compact adjectives, I found myself struggling to get through one beautifully composed description, before I was hit with another. Plus you're dealing with a different world, so some of the terms were fictional and made-up and never actually explained what they were, so left me sometimes confused and having to re-read sentences to understand where it was going.
For me, the second story of the quartet was the most enjoyable with its tale of the saints and angels, that was most compelling.
Overall I did enjoy the stories, but they were hard work to get through. If you like beautiful descriptions and scene setting, the this is the book for you.