Howls From Hell

If you read the  Howls From Hell anthology only for Grady Hendrix's introduction this book will be worth it! He opens with discussing his introduction to horror while providing his reflections on the nature of horror. However, it is definitely worth your time to read all of the stories in this collection written by members of HOWL. HOWL is an acronym for Horror Obsessed Writing and Literature society, which is an online community  for horror lovers. I love horror but only just found out about this community through the epilogue of this Netgalley ARC, which only shows the wealth of resources for niche literary communities online!  Since the stories in this anthology appeal to my literary interests, it is a resource that I will definitely utilize in the future!

I was sucked in with the first story,"A Casual Encounter" by Quinn Fern, giving the collection a solid start. There is a wide range of stories in this book. One of my personal favorites was "Manufactured Gods" by PL McMillan, which is a science fiction tale about an archeological dig that takes a horrific twist. My other favorite was "Duplicitous Wings" by Amanda Nevada Demels where a winged woman was summoned by a spell. But the range in stories are not merely in content, but also in style, as "She's Taken Away" by Shane Hawk read like a transcript between a patient and therapist and "Red and the Beast" by Thea Maeve invoked classic fairy tales. All of the stories in this anthology proved to be entertaining. 

The criticism that emerges from having such a wide range of stories is that other than being under the umbrella of the horror genre, there is no unifying theme with all of the stories. One of the thing that is appealing about the horror genre is that there are so many different types of horror, making it difficult to figure out what kinds of stories should go together in an anthology. In spite of this, having similar themes to stories in an anthology can make the stories feel woven together a lot better. My personal favorite anthologies are great for mood reading.

However, the combination of having a well loved author like Grady Hendrix writing the introduction to the anthology and emerging out of a large online community will likely make this a much loved anthology in the horror community.  The writers in this collection are worth paying attention to. Fans of horror fiction will definitely want this book on their shelves.