Shades of Horrific Humor: Anthology - Write Volumes - ★★★

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AUTHOR: Write Volumes
GENRE: Paranormal Anthology.
RATING: 3.1 stars.

In a Nutshell: Officially, a collection of horrifying humour. Practically, either horror or humour, rarely both. A mixed bag for me.


This is a collection of six stories, all promising a combination of horror and humour. Horror is not a genre I am fond of. However, when the title promised stories of “horrific humour”, my endorphins won over my amygdala and I decided to give this anthology a go.

The six stories are varied in content, I’ll give them that. None of the premises feels like a rehash of typical horror stories. The tales are imaginative and straddle multiple genres, so reading this collection doesn’t feel repetitive. The narrative styles are also varied, with an intelligent use of sarcasm in a couple of the tales. Many of the tales have Queer characters without going over the top about it – loved this.

However, when it comes to matching up to the theme of a horror-humour combo, most of the stories fall flat. The only one that truly delivered both chills as well as chuckles was the first story – “I want to suck your...” by Anton Lee Richards. I loved its concept of vampires attacking device-obsessed humans without any inconvenience as humans are too focussed on themselves and their phones. Funny at the start and macabre at the end - brilliantly done. Lin Boc’s ‘Recurso Cozumel’ delivered excellently on horror but not on humour. Nasrin Menalagha’s ‘Haunted’ was fantastic in its humour but barely there on horror. The remaining three stories didn’t work for me on either factor.

Overall, this could be a hit collection if you want to read an anthology straddling fantasy as well as paranormal with varying levels of spookiness. But if you are looking for both horror and humour to leave a strong mark in every story, it might not work too well. That said, I like anthologies to deliver on the promised theme, so I rated the stories mainly on that factor. You might enjoy this to a greater extent if you are more flexible about the genre and theme.

3.1 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each story.

I received a complimentary copy of this book through StoryOrigin. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

The digital version of this book is currently available free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

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