Under Rotting Sky

If one word summed this up gross would be it. Considering the constant drug use, weird sex stuff, and serial killers the sky isn't the only thing rotting here...

So as always with a collection, you get the constant repeating themes. Here we get drugs, characters that are psychopaths, Charles Manson references, families trying to set up a life living off the land, fighting couples, and he likes to throw in people talking in french too. It's full of violence and sex. Mostly this is just done to shock and gross you out, and I found it tiresome as I went through the stories. Once I saw how the author set these tales up the tension was gone, you know something awful is gonna happen but the shock of it had diminishing returns. I didn't really care for the mostly druggies and generally weird psycho characters enough to feel for them either.

Also, The Lifeguard was probably the most disgusting thing I've ever read. I'm sure someone can tell me there's worse out there, and I'd believe them, but I don't care, I'm not reading it. Yuck.

Now that out of the way, the author is an extremely great writer. The stories are well described and flow easily. The few stories he breaks out of the drugs/sex/serial killer stuff are creative and fun. There are two Cthulhu Mythos stories in here that were pretty good. The Number of Darkness was a great one as well, it had all his usual themes but he worked them in well around a possession story set in the 1860s. Honestly, it was only his great writing that kept me reading, most of the stories as I said became frustrating with constant bleakness for the sake of it.

Definitely, a good collection to read if you're in the mood for some extremely ugly and violent stories. The writing is great and the stories that break out of the usual mold of this collection are awesome.