Occultation and Other Stories by Laird Barron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I do think that all of these stories are quite good and tickly my cosmic horror funnybone (do you hear the insane laughter right behind you?) I think I might have reached my saturation point for:

A: Satanists
B: dark insectoid horrors
C: otherworldly visitations

To be entirely fair, all of these stories are quite excellent for these themes. Much better, on the hole, than most. In fact, I totally recommend this for those of you who want a little extra Lovecraftian horror in their lives and want it dark, neat, and self-aware. :)

However -- each story, even for the really excellent treat of deep worldbuilding and thorough characterization, still tends to run the same formula for each story within this collection. Maybe that's a good thing? Maybe it's too much of a good thing? Good for theme, but not so much for reading them through back-to-back?

Not sure.

But still, this is very worth reading for fans of the subgenre. :) Barron has a real knack.


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