Shadow Dreams

A friend of mine turned me onto Elizabeth Massie and now I can't chew up enough of the tasty stories she has to dish out, served tenderly on broken shards of glass. Massie is a horror writer that uses humans as her monsters, and the human mind as the instigator. This lovely book of short stories starts off with `I Am Not My Smell', a truly grotesque tale of a homeless woman accidentally injured, and tells of what extent a sick mind will go to in order to find relief. If you make it through this story, you're going to love the rest. There are seventeen tales of twisted minds and darkened dreams, easy to read and hard to put down, that will leave you shuddering at night under the feeble light of your lamp, wondering what kind of humans walk through the night outside your own doors. Some of my favorites are `Assault', where a family cowers together in order to stay away from prying government eyes (bit of a surprise here). `What Happened When Mobsy Paulsen Had Her Painting Reproduced On The Cover Of The Phone Book', a tale of strange and twisted jealousy. `No Solicitors, Curious A Quarter', a ripe tale of familial caring and secret desire. `Meat', a tale of family independence. `Crow, Cat, Cow, Child', a frightening psychological study into Animal Rights Activism, and `Shadow Of The Valley', a blistering look at a cruel prison guard and an innocent man. There's more tales to smack your lips over though, and Massie's easy writing style makes this book of shorts a great beach or travel book, or just something to curl up next to kitty with. Highly recommended. Enjoy!

Leisure continues its tradition of reprinting some of the finest genre fiction of recent years, this time publishing a slightly different version of Elizabeth Massie's Shadow Dreams, a collection originally issued by Silver Salamander Press in 1996. Although Gary Braunbeck's powerful introduction is gone, three stories, written contemporaneously with the others in the collection, have been added. A common theme running through this compelling volume is the way our family life shapes us, for better or worse. Ten of the seventeen stories in this volume deal with family motifs, running the gamut from the unsettling, but ultimately unconvincing "Sanctuary of the Shrinking Soul, " where the bizarre circumstances surrounding the death of a child still haunt her mother years later, to the superior "Snow Day," in which a child dreads, rather than pines for, a day off from school. All deal with the very human need for family, even when a particular version of the family unit is nontraditional or decidedly dysfunctional. All are strangely touching and thought provoking.Although she seems to prefer quiet horror, Massie can also hold her own with the more "extreme" writers in the genre. Prime examples of this ability are "Dibs," in which youthful promises come back to haunt those who made them, "Crow Cat Cow Child," where an animal rights activist's core beliefs are shattered, "Damaged Goods," whose twist ending suggests that absolute power corrupts absolutely, "Thundersylum," about the nature of fear, and "Fisherman Joe," a tragic tale of death and bloody retribution. The most moving pieces in the collection are "I am Not My Smell" and "Shadow of the Valley". Both deal with damaged human beings, who, for various reasons, have given up hope along with their sanity, only to have that hope renewed in bizarre ways. In "I am Not My Smell," a bag lady discovers a new purpose in life, one which requires her to make the ultimate sacrifice so that another being may find happiness; "Shadow of the Valley," depicts a prisoner in solitary confinement who unexpectedly finds redemption in the arms of a gentle woman thrust into his cell by a sadistic guard. In each, Massie shows seems to say that even at life's lowest moments, fate often finds a way to bolster our courage, to allow us to hang on long enough to do what we have to do. There are greater and lesser stories here, times when the climax of a particular story doesn't entirely satisfy. But at its best, Shadow Dreams celebrates the commonplace and the fantastic, subtlety and shock. Reading the stories in this collection creates a longing for more--hopefully, Massie will accumulate enough material for another collection sometime soon.

This super collection of horror stories will haunt me for a long time. They are well written, driven by both plot and character. Each story is about something deep and something haunting. Some will stay with me for a long time, such as "I Am Not My Smell" and "Valley of the Shadow." Massie has a keen sense of people, emotion, and circumstance. Recommended highly.

This is a great read. I enjoyed all the stories, and recommend this collection to anyone who likes odd, bizarre, and well-crafted horror fiction!

This is a super collection of short fiction by Elizabeth Massie, one of my favorite contemporary horror authors. Having read her short fiction in magazines and other anthologies, it's about time there was a collection of her work alone. These storie are disturbing yet always contain a surprising element of humanity that makes me care what will happen, which can be rare in short horror fiction. Other writers often seem more intent on the "boo!" or the gross out during short horror tales than they do on drawing us in more deeply so we are more affected by what we are reading. Favorite stories in this book are "Valley of the Shadow", "I Am Not My Smell," "Thundersylum" (a favorite from a long ago issue of The Horror Show!), and "Damaged Goods." I didn't really care for "Sanctuary of the Shrinking Soul" as it was sometimes confusing and a bit long. But the rest are gems! Check it out, fellow scare-seekers!