Some books get booted to the front of the to-read list as soon as I get my hands on them. This was such a book. John Langan is one of my favorite living writers. There are people whose writing I love, and people who write about things that I love, in ways that I love. Then there are people who combine all of that. John's one of that latter group.His first collection and his novel were both pretty great, but it's in the stories that comprise The Wide Carnivorous Sky & Other Monsterous Geographies...

I certainly knew Langan’s work before this, from many anthologies and “year’s best” lists, but this new collection demonstrates Langan deserves to be considered at the highest level of modern horror writers. “Technicolor” is the narrative of a teacher telling his class about Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death,” both clever and gripping. The collection ends with a new novella “Mother of Stone,” less experimental than some of Langan’s ‘other work here (though it’s told in second person perspective...

I recommend starting Langan’s collection on page fifty-five. “Kids”, the opening story, is Langan’s amuse bouche: freshly zombified preteens eat their teacher in four pages. When a character bold-faced as STAGE MANAGER opens “How the Day Runs Down,” we are clearly in the world of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, only Grover’s Corners, and the rest of the world, has been taken over by zombies. Langan can excel with this sort of literary allusion and game-playing, but the long scenes that follow have n...

Apparently John Langan is not an author for me. A few years back I read his novel House of Windows and was bored to tears, but when I came across the fabulous "Technicolor" in a Year's Best collection, I thought that maybe he was a better short story writer than novelist. (Many authors are.) I was wrong. Most of the stories here are in the same tiresome, rambling style that made his novel such a chore. They don't even have any payoff at the end that makes you feel that it was kind of worth perse...

Rarely will I read a short story collection that pulls me in quite as completely as this one did. Or rather, it's a rare short story collection that not only pulls off truly excellent horror in every instance while simultaneously *deconstructing* the field, drawing in clever and wide literary techniques, WHILE also making it evocative and delicious. Sometimes the voice breaks the fourth wall and sometimes it drenches you in a very dry sense of humor. Sometimes it's written in an immediate, deepl...

I loved this book. Lots of lengthy, meaty stories with exquisite sentences and paragraphs that stopped me in my tracks. I had only read one story before ("The Shallows" in Ross Lockhart's BOOK OF CTHULHU) and while happy to read it again, it was a couple of other stories that really knocked my on my ass. "Technicolor" is an ingenious riff on/response to Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," and originally appeared in Ellen Datlow's anthology of Poe-inspired stories. The final story is original to...

The seed may have been planted in my head reading Adam Nevill's review, but this collection really gave me something to look forward to each evening. Most of the stories are the perfect length to read in a sitting and they are all excellent. The more Langan I read the more I like him and I certainly have a soft spot for the Hudson Valley setting. I'm even picking up on some of the connections between stories.

John Langan’s collection, The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies, is a broader abyss than Ogawa’s Revenge (as the title suggest). Langan’s prose shifts and deliberately incorporates modernist twists and variations that do not allow one kind of voice to sink in. Langan does have a formula: take on a literary trope, be it some modernist style meta-fictive, overlaying of different genres, etc., and then add in a genre limitation such as the vampire story or the werewolf story or

This collection started slowly for me, the first story did nothing and the second was a zombie tale which isn't on my personal favorite list. Langan did make it interesting by using the voice of the Stage Manager from Our Town. Then we start to pick up speed. The title story is a very cool take on the vampire legend where the beast makes his presence known to soldiers in the middle of battle on the streets of Fallujah. City of the Dog is a very good lycan story There was something about the way

Every insular creative scene has its personalities, its movers, its stars. It's like the cover of Tiger Beat magazine. Or a boy band... covered by Tiger Beat magazine. These personalities have labels: The Shy One. The Flirt. The Bad Boy. The Heartthrob.As mainstream publishing occasionally—and grudgingly—accepts while also further insulates indie press Weird fiction (not an easy bit of cultural gymnastics), a brighter light is being shed on the personalities in this scene, as well. The boy (and

really just loved this book so much. sank into it like a million dollar couch. great voice, just so masterful and certain, so sure. will read everything this guy writes forever.

I spent two weeks reading John Langan's two short story collections - MR GAUNT AND OTHER UNEASY ENCOUNTERS & THE WIDE CARNIVOROUS SKY AND OTHER MONSTROUS GEOGRAPHIES - and they made the last hour of the day something to really look forward to. Always inventive and intelligent and both collections were a constant reminder of what can be done with a horror story. 'Technicolour', 'The Wide Carnivorous Sky' and 'June, 1987. Hitchhiking. Mr Norris' were my personal faves amongst the shorts, but my w...

I've been reading Langan in anthologies for some time now and have always counted seeing his name in the table of contents as a positive sign, so I was thrilled when my sister gave me this collection for All Hallow's Read. Taken together, the stories in The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies are unsurprisingly terrific, with muscular prose, high literary brio, stylistic experimentation, and strong evocation of dread. Langan likes to pick--or sometimes borrow--old monsters and

I found this collection of stories, both short and average length, very different and interesting; the reason being that the author chose to deliver traditional horror tropes in a very original, multimedia kind of way. Some of them felt like reading a script for an old pulp movie, some like a first-person interactive novel, some like a fantasy or a dream. Techniques like the use of the second person or certain stylistic choices, made to involve the reader on a deeper level, worked very well for

October spooky read #7!This collection of short stories was brought to my attention by a fellow Laird Barron fan: I can’t get enough of that dark, existential, creeping dread, so I am always happy to discover new authors who have some cosmic horror stories to tell me. And with its amazing title and cover art, this book basically sold itself anyway.I am not always fond of the short story format, because it often fees rushed and compressed, but these are perfectly developed, balanced and satisfyin...

I often liked these stories, not always for the horror because the storytelling alone is very impressive. Langan was at his best when he was building characters, which isn't always my favorite part of writing, but I love it here. In stories like "The Shallows" and "City of the Dog" I liked the characterization most, but in a story like "Technicolor" he hits exactly the right balance between characterization and creating horror that's quite original.I do have to say this collection is a bit uneve...

John Langan's name has been in numerous "year's best" horror anthologies, and for good reason. The man can write, and the more he writes the better he gets. Langan's previous collection, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters, was an astounding set of stories. I've yet to read his novel, House of Windows, although I've heard nothing but good things about it.The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies has much to offer horror fans of all kinds. Langan enjoys playing with familiar hor...

This book opens with one of the coolest stories I've read in awhile: the short, brutal, and kind of hilarious "Kids." Within just a few paragraphs, Langan had me both howling with uneasy laughter and wondering if he was plundering my mind for its deepest fears, and that's very much the way to my heart. (Other than through my chest, natch.)The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies has been on my TBR list ever since it came out last spring. I can only say I wish I'd gotten to it so...

Originally published at Risingshadow.Before I begin to analyze the contents of The Wide, Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies, I'll mention that a lot has already been written about it and several critics and readers have praised it. That's why writing a review about this collection is a bit difficult, but I'll try to think of something new to say.John Langan is an author who probably needs no introduction to horror readers. Just in case somebody doesn't know him, I can say that he's

John Langan is an amazing writer. Ever since reading the story "Technicolor" a few years ago, I've been excited whenever I see his name in the table of contents of an anthology. I was overjoyed to get the chance to read the story again in this collection. It still had the same mesmerizing effect on me, very fitting considering the subject matter of the story. I'm always worried about re-reading a piece of literature I remember adoring, thinking that maybe I'll be disappointed the second time aro...