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This is a great little collection of short stories. Overall I'd give it 4.5 stars and there are a few stories that I want to go back and read again. In my opinion the standout stories are Black Hill, The Seventh Picture, The Reading Room and The a Mysterious Flame. Grey provides a fresh take on weird tales and they're very engaging. The internal art by Bernie Gonzalez is also great and I enjoyed all of the author's notes at the end of each story. I highly recommend this book.
The first time I encountered Orrin Grey’s work, it wasn’t even his fiction! He wrote the introduction to the Valancourt edition of J.B. Priestley’s 1927 novel Benighted, and I was struck then with his knowledge and insight into classic horror. Since then, I’ve been following his work with interest and enjoyment, and was delighted to support the Kickstarter for a reprint and expansion of his original short story collection, Never Bet the Devil and Other Warnings (2012). Last night, on a flight ba...
It was Christmastime and I felt like reading about monsters: this fit perfectly. I enjoyed all the stories and liked that each one had a little "Author's Notes" blurb.The style is clever and subtle. I got the same, 'yaay, this is creepy!' from each, but they were all quite different. I didn't start to "expect" anything (plot-wise) and I didn't find myself trying to guess at the ending in the middle of reading, either.
This was cool, longer review coming later IY"H!Source of the book: Bought with my own money
In Nathan Ballingrud's introduction (which is pretty cool in its own right), he uses the phrase "...a genre of one" to describe Orrin Grey's work. I agree with that, if sadly so, because I wish there were more stories like these. There are influences, to be sure (Mike Mignola, Hammer Film Productions, Eerie and Creepy Magazines, etc.), but it's Orrin Grey's own particular stew. I can't narrow it down, not exactly, but it always reminds me of how I felt when I was a kid, watching a good monster m...
The first thing apparent while reading any story from this book is how much fun Orrin had writing them. His interests are apparent, without even having to read the About Author page. His love of old horror film, the occult, comic books, Lovecraft, and Mike Mignola's works is readily apparent.Some of his stories have a comic-book or B-movie feel to them, making for easy, fun reads. And fun is the key word here, because although these stories are horror, and deal with horror elements, they lean to...
The first few stories in this collection channel a lot of Robert Bloch. If you know me, you know that's one of the highest compliments I can give. The latter channel Mike Mignola, and somehow all of this adds together in one of the most fun and original voices in weird literature. Orrin Grey has earned a lot of accolades, and his debut collection is justification enough for such praise. This review is referring to the Strix Publishing edition, which is accompanied by some outstanding illustratio...
It feels like Orrin is writing stories crafted specifically for me. I am a sucker for tortured artists, uncompleted cult films, and monster stories. Orrin delivers these with excellent pacing and tension in “The Devil in the Box”, “The Seventh Film”, and “The Barghest” respectively. “Count Brass” is a great depiction of the devil, and shows what can be accomplished in a very compact space. “Nearly Human” is an excellent haunted house story. “The Mysterious Flame” strongly evokes Mike Mignola, an...
I enjoyed the stories I read, although I didn't get to read all of them before it was due back to the library.
By completing this collection, I have now read all three (as of the time of this writing) of Orrin Grey’s short story collections and he has quickly become one of my favorite authors in the horror genre. Something about his stories are so comforting. Like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket of horror on a cold night. His description from the afterword hits the nail on the head of why I love his writing. “I write the kinds of stories I want to read, the kinds of stories that are fun are those dar...
Note: I read the second edition from Strix. Great stories from Orrin's earlier work, paired with wonderful art by Mike Corley. The centerpiece "The Mysterious Flame" novella(ette?) starts slow but builds into a wonderful parade of everything I like about Grey's work. "The Seventh Picture" is everything I ever wanted to write, so I'm announcing my retirement from the field.
A very respectable first collection. My favorite pieces tended to be the shorter ones. The longer one, I felt, could have been tuned up a bit. Mr. Grey is mostly interested in making monsters, which is a bold way for an author to distinguish himself. I'm very interested in seeing him explore his themes in greater depth in future stories.
My acquisition of Orrin Grey's debut collection, Never Bet the Devil, started to feel like I was in my own little cliched plotline of obtaining a forbidden text. Out of print for some time, the only copy I could find on ebay failed to turn up. The seller was nice enough to refund me, and coincidentally the Kickstarter for this fancy re-printing went up about the same time and I was able to plough the same funds back into it.So for all that, was it worth it? Yes. Yes, it was. Physically, it's a b...
Orrin is another of the great writers delivering excellent work from the heart of the Great Plains. Skeletons, presumably, don't mind the less than ideal climate in these parts. "Black Hill" is even set in these often bleak, flat plains, and has some echoes of Bierce's "The Damned Thing". I would also place him alongside Kenneth Hite in terms of how broadly and deeply knowledgable he is on a wide array of subjects, so whether its this collection or another, if you come across what appears to be
