Blog tour: Of Beasts and Bones, edited by Robin Knabel
This post is part of a blog tour organised by ZooLoo’s Book Tours. I received a free copy of the book in return for an honest review.
‘Creatures. Grotesqueries. Aliens. Cryptids. Ghosts. These are just a few of the anomalies we’ve unearthed.
‘Join us as we pursue monstrosities, unwittingly stumble upon unspeakable horrors, and bring terrifying abominations to life.
‘They’re all waiting for you – the monsters from your nightmares, the noises you ignored as a child, the shadows hiding atrocities you can’t fathom.
‘They’re all there – creeping in the darkness, waiting to be discovered.
‘Allow us to lure you in. Let us captivate and tantalise you with the unknown.
‘But beware, you might not be ready for what you find. Or what finds you.’
Of Beasts and Bones, edited by Robin Knabel, is more or less what it says on the tin: every story has at least one beast of some size and degree of visibility, from our planet or beyond, and bones also feature a fair bit.
With a whopping 43 stories, this is probably an anthology to dip in and out of as the mood takes you, and the pieces and themes that stood out to me might not even overlap with those of another reader!
Some of the stories have such an element of surprise, I wanted to applaud their authors. In Snug, by J. L. Royce, alien organisms picked up by a spacecraft unexpectedly find optimal conditions to interact with a pair of oblivious astronauts; in Local Guide, by Clint Collins, the shallow-seeming receptionist at a hotel hosting a cryptid festival reveals hidden depths; and in A Little Outside the Norm, by Daniel Fox, an unusual find affects an Edwardian palaeontologist in strange ways, with a brilliantly telling closing line.
Without giving too much away, these selections also relate to another of my standout themes: transformation. Other examples that particularly stayed with me were Hutam’s Lament, by Camellia Paul, and I Am Not Alone, by Alex Goldberg. The latter especially chilled me, as a sentient magnetic field takes over people’s minds – I’m a sucker for spooky stories involving mysterious transmissions!
On the flipside, I was captivated by a couple of stories where, rather than being changed themselves, characters find themselves transported to different – and dangerous – settings. This is exemplified by The Collector, by Corinne Pollard, and Swept Downstream, by David Jón Fuller.
In Fuller’s story, the unsuspecting protagonist encounters ants of abnormal size and intelligence, bringing me to my final standout theme: rogue bugs. Colony, by Sarah Chamberlain, also features ants, but these ones arrive from space, learn to (or already can) mimic spiders and wasps – and are hungry.
Meanwhile, another of my favourite stories from this collection, You Were Never Here, by Rachel Delaney Craft, stars bristle worms who have gorged themselves to outlandish sizes, and aren’t about to turn down extra helpings. While the nuclear accident that sets up this story isn’t directly responsible for the worms’ growth, it nonetheless tapped into a current interest of mine!
Of Beasts and Bones is a kaleidoscopic horror collection that’s full of surprises.
