Frontiers of Fright (Quick Book Review)

I do have a more than passing acquaintance with one of the authors included within this anthology, presented by Denver Horror Collective, edited by A.E. Santana. And I’m considering joining the Denver Horror Collective. (Horror falls under the “speculative” label I like to use when people ask me what I write.) This may not be my most objective review of a book ever.

However, part of the reason I am considering seeing if I can join the Denver Horror Collective (despite being almost 1000 miles away from Denver as the crow flies – or snake squiggles) is because I was really impressed when I read through this consistently entertaining anthology recently. While of course, there were a few stories which did not work quite as well for me as the others, there are several stories included in this anthology which made a lingering impression – and I must give a special shout out to both the anthology editor and author Hannah Birss of “Swarm,” for recognizing that horror does not always need to include the supernatural as we generally think of it today, sometimes nature is itself sufficiently awesome, sometimes nature is supernatural. (“Swarm” is a story about a Rocky Mountain locust swarm, and this locust has long been somewhat fascinating to me. The Rocky Mountain locust are considered now extinct, but I am not convinced we will never see locusts again in North America. If the Rocky Mountain locust is extinct, then it seems to me that means there is a locust-sized gap waiting to be filled. And insects go through generations – and thus evolve – faster than we do.)

There are seventeen other short stories in this well-presented, roughly 250-page long anthology of horror stories set in America’s southwest, from authors working today. I happily swooped right through the collection over only a few days. There are vampires and ghosts, and some of them are hard to see at first, which is fun. There is a certain amount of gore in a few of the stories, but nothing I found particularly hard to stomach. While this anthology was released last year, I recommend it as a possible scary read for you this year, as we approach the spooky season.