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(More customer reviews)My introduction to Laird Barron came quite by accident, when I was attending Norwescon and decided to listen to some of the authors' readings. I walked into the reading room and saw Laird for the first time, and listened to him read. I was instantly fascinated and affected by the power of the prose that I listened to, and I made a point to remember this young man's name and attend any panels that he was participating in. My next recollection was meeting him at World Horror Convention in San Francisco. I had just bought the new FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION in which he had a story. He had brought me the issue of F&SF in which his story, "The Imago Sequence," was first published. I read the story during the convention and honey I flipped! This guy was brilliant!
That brilliance is evident on every page of this amazing second collection, OCCULTATION AND OTHER STORIES, beautifully published by those rad youngsters at Night Shade Books. The front cover is especially wonderful and is the first published book cover of Matthew Jaffe, whose art will be showcased in a forthcoming hardcover edition of Arthur Machen to be published by Centipede Press.
I have read the majority of this book before, when the stories had their initial publication or were reprinted in Year's Best anthologies, and in one case as a file sent me by Laird. To read them in book form is so delicious, and to reread them a second time is instructive, because they have not lost any of their evocative power, a power that is conjured from richness of imagination, powerful prose, and pure genius. Laird Barron is, quite simply, one of the most powerful new writers in the horror genre, as his solid reputation attests. In a very short time, he has been hailed as a major new talent in the field, and this second collection will strengthen that estimation.
I had just finished reading "The Broadsword" in its appearance in S. T. Joshi's wonderful anthology, BLACK WINGS--NEW TALES OF LOVECRAFTIAN HORROR, and found it one of the finest "haunted house" tales I have ever read. The "haunted" motif is a powerful and recurring one in this collection, perhaps best expressed in what is, to me, the finest tale in the book, "Mysterium Tremendum." This was my second reading of the tale, but it caught me, absolutely, this second reading, and it scared me half to death. Know this: Laird Barron will creep you out! His horror fiction is everything that excellent weird fiction must be to be effective, and first and foremost that is fiction that spooks you, that conjures forth such a sense of fear that you are too freaked out to get out of bed to turn out the light. The haunted house motif, so beautifully expressed in "The Broadsword," is also superbly manifested in the book's final story, "Six Six Six," in which a couple have inherited an old family manse. The story is told in a simple style, and it is extremely effective. Laird has the ability to create characters that become very real. I did not care for the man and woman in "--30--", but I came to care absolutely about their horrifying and brutal fate.
I am indebted to Jody Rose for Jody's really amazing review of this book, which if you haven't read I urge you to do so now. It was, I confess, utterly amazing to have the narrator of one of the stories bear a name similar to my own; and the love that Laird has expressed in that tale is returned tenfold. Being friends with an author, in the view of some, taints reviews one may write of their buddy's book. This is nonsense, in my eyes. I praise Laird not because he is such a wonderful friend and brother in the genre of weird fiction, but because he is fantastic as a writer.
I am so looking forward to reading Laird Barron's first novel, THE CRONING, forthcoming from Night Shade Books.
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