20th Century Ghosts
Joe Hill
PS Publishing, 2006
Limited Deluxe 200
340 pages
Nice, suitable jacket art (Vincent Chong) and a fairly nice limited. The signature sheet is clean but unexciting and I’m not a fan of PS Publishing’s spines; I don’t know the technique they use, but I’m always afraid a page is going to fall out. Now, I bought this book before I knew anything about Hill, but I found out who he was before I read this anthology. Did knowing he’s the son of Stephen King change my point of view as I read? Undoubtedly. I was even more critical. There were a couple of stories I really didn’t care for and I was surprised to find that this anthology is not all horror. But that’s nothing compared to how much I thoroughly enjoyed the majority of the stories and how well Hill put them to paper. This collection is wonderful. The stories are varied in not only theme but genre. There’s everything from mainstream fiction to magical realism to horror. And nearly every story is successful at achieving that penultimate goal: memorable. These are the stories that you’ll come back to on occasion to read again, not because you forgot them, but because you enjoyed them. A forest’s worth of printed praise has been published concerning Joe Hill and I feel it’s absolutely earned. He is both subtle and poignant—a terrific pleasure to read such stories and to appreciate fine, well-crafted writing. Fantastic stuff.
Joe Hill
PS Publishing, 2006
Limited Deluxe 200
340 pages
Nice, suitable jacket art (Vincent Chong) and a fairly nice limited. The signature sheet is clean but unexciting and I’m not a fan of PS Publishing’s spines; I don’t know the technique they use, but I’m always afraid a page is going to fall out. Now, I bought this book before I knew anything about Hill, but I found out who he was before I read this anthology. Did knowing he’s the son of Stephen King change my point of view as I read? Undoubtedly. I was even more critical. There were a couple of stories I really didn’t care for and I was surprised to find that this anthology is not all horror. But that’s nothing compared to how much I thoroughly enjoyed the majority of the stories and how well Hill put them to paper. This collection is wonderful. The stories are varied in not only theme but genre. There’s everything from mainstream fiction to magical realism to horror. And nearly every story is successful at achieving that penultimate goal: memorable. These are the stories that you’ll come back to on occasion to read again, not because you forgot them, but because you enjoyed them. A forest’s worth of printed praise has been published concerning Joe Hill and I feel it’s absolutely earned. He is both subtle and poignant—a terrific pleasure to read such stories and to appreciate fine, well-crafted writing. Fantastic stuff.
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