Archive for July, 2017
A REVIEW: THE FORSAKEN
July 18th, 2017 | 
Author: Hi All. Here’s a review by Piers Anthony for the anthology, The Forsaken. Give it a read. Several very credible authors have contributed to this work.
Herewith my forthcoming review of The Forsaken. Interesting volume.
I read The Forsaken, Stories of Forgotten Places, edited by Joe McKinney and Mark Onspaugh, because a story of mine is in it. I wrote “The Privy” in 2010 but the volume has only now been published; sometimes these things take time. I like to know the company my stories keep. My story concerns an outdoor privy that still stinks a decade after it stopped ever being used. Think about that a moment. A rich uncle left the property to our protagonist. Was it contempt for him, or something else? The other 21 stories range from horror to humor. In general they are finely detailed; I really got the feel of those abandoned places and yes, their creepiness. They aren’t necessarily all the way dead, you see. I’m not a horror fan, but for my taste the stronger stories came later in the volume. This is not to say the others don’t have their points, just that it’s really not feasible to discuss them all, so I am focusing to the harder hitting ones. Such as “The Pressboard Factory” by Peter N Dudar. Ryan is a girl in a boy’s body, bullied by others, finally hiding out at the haunted Pressboard Factory where intruders tend to die. He cuts off his male anatomy; does he become a girl? We can’t be sure. “Mother’s Nature” by Wally Runnels. This one’s a shocker. Rocky goes to check on the woman Moya for a friend, but instead encounters Pomona. He helps her in a night of healing sick animals; she’s doing good work. Then she gets interested in him, and her sex appeal manifests and she forcefully seduces him, but during the act starts to bite off his head. She’s a kind of praying mantis, and she wants some offspring. “Hollow” by Michael C Lea. Thomas is on a moon mission, and discovers that the moon is shrinking. In fact it is hollow, and inside is sort of like a planetarium that shows a remarkable story of the war waged between God and Satan for the future of the world. Thomas will return to Earth, but which side is he on? This is a philosophic shocker. “Lullaby Land” by the second editor. A plot of land seems haunted, and a boy flees to it. Those pursuing him are intercepted by the Sandman, who is not at all nice. “Ghost Town” by the first editor is a tough minded police story with verisimilitude: that is, believability. The abandoned place is part of the city itself, and cops are plagued with alcoholism and guilt. I get the uneasy feeling that this is the nature of many police departments, hidden from the public, not good or bad, just grim. Overall, this volume is more than just obscure places; there are disturbing concepts and things to think about.
— Piers Anthony
It’s on Amazon so give it a look.
Best, Wally
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