That Which Grows Wild

–>I received a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review.
This a well written dark fiction and horror collection. The stories are incredibly varied and I love it when these collections have little to no repetition like this one. They were all pretty original to me and had a lot of violence and gore, as well as great characters and meaningful moments.

“A Case Study in Natural Selection and How It Applies to Love”, the Earth is heated up from global warming and sometimes people spontaneously combust, or as the people in this story call it, fireball, which sounds so much cooler. The author wordplays with this ‘fireballing' quite a bit, my favorite being the remark about people heating up and popping like popcorn. Gave me quite the visual.

Also, mankind somewhat reverts back into smaller nomadic tribes, and often wars with one another in competition for dwindling supplies. In this terrible world, a young teenager comes to age and finds himself and it's quite moving despite how messed up everything is.

“A Serving of Nomu Sashimi” is about a salesman invited to a special restaurant with his high scoring coworkers, who let him in on the secret of their success. I won't spoil what that is, but oh man this story. I imagine this one would be the attention grabber and the one people remember the most. It's so dark and imaginative and that ending... This is one of those stories you want to talk about but can't cause you'll ruin the fun.

“Those Who Watch From On High”, the last one I'll pick out was my favorite. We follow Bruce, a drone operator in the military. He is tasked with watching the same patches of the Afhaghni desert for twelve-hour shifts and his job is mind-numbing and boring. Until of course, he is ordered to pull the trigger on a target there. He hates his job, and his commanding officer and his inner dialogue and insights about everything were excellent.

He watches a little boy, who he continually remarks on having perfect teeth. You find out his backstory, and why he becomes so fixated on this boy, and everything is so perfectly paced and revealed to the reader I thought. Such a great story about a man losing his mind to past trauma.

Well, I could be here writing about this one all day. There are sixteen stories and so much going on in each one. There's also a gunslinger battling alien creatures, a Beauty and the Beast like story, only the prince becomes an undead creature that craves flesh, even one about a grandfather telling his grandson about the time he and his hunting buddies encountered and fought Bigfoot...

Just a great collection, and with the varied plots, there is something for everyone to enjoy. The author had a lot of ideas and pulled them all off in my opinion. If you like dark fiction, horror, and short stories, this one is a must-read.