Sometimes I think it's a mistake to read everything in a short story collection back to back. It tends to dilute the power of each individual story, especially if--as in Nightingale Songs--they are variations on a single theme. One by one, the stories are, for the most part, well-written and compelling. In the afterward, the author states that he only writes stories about relationships. I would add that they are stories of relationships gone disastrously wrong. In several of these tales, the rel...

Strantzas excels at using the weird as a vehicle to discuss more everyday issues -family, relationships, and the dissolution of both- and it's a testament to his skill as a writer that neither element feels overshadowed by the other. Horror is ever present at the margins of his narratives, slipping in slowly as the fabric of his characters' relationships begin to come undone. "The Nightingale" seems the most classic example of the weird in this collection, calling back to the frequent concept of...

The genre of popular literature commonly known as Supernatural or Horror Fiction is going through somewhat of a Renaissance these days, and in doing so, its practitioners, consumers, and overall celebrants threaten to unknowingly abandon part of Horror Fiction's past in favor of a seemingly new incarnation that is really just the same creature dressed in a different set of clothing. Smaller hats and longer sleeves, to hide the scars and the rad tattoos purchased back in more classic yet looser t...

Well, this is now my second collection of short stories by Strantzas (unfortunately I have not gotten my hands on his first collection BENEATH THE SURFACE). Based on the afterward, I understand that this third collection is supposed to be an amalgam of the various influences that pressed upon collections one and two... that of Lovecraft, Ligotti, and Aickman. However those influences come to bare, clearly we have a highly original and innovative voice from this outstanding author who is really m...

Everybody’s talking about Simon Strantzas. Okay, not everybody, but plenty of writers and editors are talking about Nightingale Songs, released this month. After years of publication in fine magazines and anthologies–earning that rare reputation among his peers as a writer’s writer, an artist whose desire for popularity has not tainted his aesthetic principles–Strantzas has suddenly hit the ground running with his third collection of short fiction.Delightfully somber and full of doomed character...

Nightingale Songs is the third story collection from Canadian writer Simon Strantzas, following Beneath the Surface and Cold to the Touch. While these earlier collections might be characterized by more of a Ligotti or Lovecraft vibe, Nightingale Songs takes the reader into quieter, more restrained territory. The influences underlying these stories are acknowledged up-front, in John Langan's introduction, which mentions Ramsay Campbell and Robert Aickman. I perceive more of an Aickman feel here.

What follows is my opinion. It will probably be different than your's and that's alright.Strantzas has improved vastly since his self-described 'oily' works in Beneath the Surface. Characters are more developed, themes and plotlines more varied, and things generally just feel more professional.Instead, Strantzas appears to have developed an inability to complete: each story builds up with characters and oddities. Then, just as it all comes to a crescendo of chaos, the story is over - roll the cr...

In a 2014 interview with "The Arkham Digest" blog Simon Strantzas characterized his first short story collection Beneath the Surface as Ligottian and Lovecraftian, his second Cold to the Touch as Aickmanesque, and this third collection as a "hybrid" of the two where he came into his own.This is the fourth collection by Strantzas I've read, but it has been years since I read anything by him and this reminded me what a great writer he is. I thought "Her Father’s Daughter" was one of the best short...

Another fine collection of weird fiction from one of the most original voices in the field. Strantzas has been carving his own niche in the world of horror and dark fantasy for several years now, and he just gets better and better. Deeply influenced by Robert Aickman, Strantzas writes stories where the everyday is interrupted, often to devastating effect, by something beyond human understanding or explanation. This could leave readers who are looking for narrative cohesion, or indeed any sort of...

Free firstreads giveaway book. Great set of short stories! All are horror stories that start out quite normally, hiding the awfulness that's to come, and all are about very normal situations that we readers could easily find ourselves in. However, a couple of the stories were full of telling readers the narrator's emotions, instead of having them feel it. That certainly removed some of the horror.

I'm working my way backwards in time through the Simon Strantzas oeuvre. It hasn't always been this way. I started with Burnt Black Suns and worked forward from there. But then I ran out of new works. I wanted...no, needed more. So I've been seeking out his earlier works, and slowly but surely finding them. This collection was good, if pretty different from what I recall the later works being like. Still very much him, still weird fiction/horror. Looking forward to getting into the other early c...

_Nightingale Songs_ is a collection of weird fiction stories by Simon Strantzas, an important figure in our current Golden Age of weird fiction. This book, along with other books by Simon Strantzas, are now available as ebooks.Strantzas has an interesting approach. These well written stories usually start with a normal situation, for instance a wedding reception, but the story progresses with uncanny events, with the climax being the direct encounter with the supernatural menace. This is not spl...

Beneath the Surface, Cold to the Touch and Nightingale Songs have solidified Simon Strantzas’ position as a modern master of the strange tale. The stories in Beneath the Surface suggest a sense of hopelessness, an almost natural nihilism, hidden behind reality’s thin veil. The words are fiction, well crafted with unsettling intent but rife with possible truth. In that sense, Strantzas reminds me of Thomas Ligotti. With his recent collection, Nightingale Songs, Simon conveys that same sense of ho...

It is impossible to read Simon Strantzas and not think of Franz Kafka. There is always a desperate sense of not understanding the surroundings or the behavior of others that I find in Kafkas work as well. My first book by Strantzas was ”Burnt Black Suns”, and I have loved his work ever since. The books before ”Burnt Black Suns” are more subtle and slow, yet gives you a terrifying sensation of alienation just the same.This collection is really good, even though I miss som of the more action based...

New weird - quite popular term nowadays with Ligotti as the most recognizable "undiscovered" (as much as it can be said for someone who got published by Penguin) name. I got introduced to Strantzas through Goodreads recommendation and this collection is the first thing I read from him. Though it had a promising start - first two stories were quite atmospheric, though revisiting more than familiar ground of car breaking in the middle of nowhere or the haunted house across the street, it soon got

Stories of nagging shapes and anxieties, shadows and shuttling swarms, relationships and nightmares, closed boxes and empty despairs, some of which are close to genuine classics of their kind. The detailed review of this book posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.

Another excellent collection of creepy and thought-provoking stories from Simon Strantzas. Good stuff. Read this.

http://horror.thedeepening.com/2012/0...