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4 to 4.5 for me. There are some truly inspired and creepy stories here. Well-written, engaging horror. I kind of hit a wall with "Mysterium Tremendum" and it took a while to pick this book up again. Maybe that particular story will be better on a second read through.Favorites include: Forest, Lagerstatte, 30, and six, six, six.
Laird Barron is unequivocally great. Pick whichever book of his and I'll be at least above average. OCCULTATION was, though, quite different from the literature Laird Barron got me used to.I would say OCCULTATION is more conventionally Lovecraftian than his other work, but I wouldn't do it justice by saying that. The settings are more timeless and emphasize man's relationship with a Carnovorous nature. It doesn't only look up at the sky, but down into the bowels of the Earth, too. There are some...
No one writes like this guy does.
Barron is a writers' writer. Believe me. Writing is hard work, and one can clearly see the results of Barron's efforts. It's a mean trick to be able to write so beautifully, and yet so brutally. The universe of Occultation and Other Stories fits in a dark niche between Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows," Brian Evenson's Dark Property, and Hemingway. It's a rough and tumble corner on the interstitial edge between body horror and high literary tradition, with some elements of cosmic horror. Though...
Short stories aren't really my thing, and this collection was a mixed bag for me. What I did like, however, was Barron's overall style. He avoids trying to shock the reader every other minute and doesn't try to be in your face with monsters and gore. Some authors can pull these elements off, but they more often than not misfire. Barron, on the other hand, provides atmospheric slow burns that are more in the style of Lovecraft in the fact that all of his stories take place in a cold, uncaring wor...
Laird Barron is not just a "horror writer," he is a “writer,” someone whose gifts extend beyond the customary limits of the genre. As a consequence, he must be held to a higher standard, and, when he is, I believe he falls a little short of the mark. Although Barron’s style is filled with memorable images, the sonority and rhythms of his prose are severely limited--surprising for a poet!--and particularly impoverished in their musical effects. His characters, no matter how painstakingly fashione...
Occultation and Other Stories is a collection of nine short stories by Laird Barron.My quest to devour all of Laird Barron's works by the end of 2017 continues with this book, Occulation. As befits a Shirley Jacks award winner, this is something to behold.While I'm reading Barron's works in the order I come across them, for the most part, I'm beginning to recognize all the Barronoid themes: isolation, loss, and helplessness. Barron's Earth, all but overrun by the cosmic horrors that are the Chil...
Quite a few people in the horror community have been encouraging me to read Barron for a while now. He's greatly revered in the community, and that made me want to read his work even more. It's safe to say that Occultation is one of the best cosmic horror collections I've ever read. So I owe a big thank you to everyone who recommended his work. Now I need everything he's written. Every story in this collection is amazing. As usual, some of them resonated with me more than others, but the collect...
This book contains some of the best writing I have had the pleasure of partaking in for quite some time.It amazes me as to Mr. Barron's ability to keep me off guard.A story can begin at point A, and with the lush and vibrant story telling take you to point B and before you are cognitive of the event occurring you have been deposited into somewhere really really strange with no possible means of re-orienting yourself. And the stories stick with you long after you have finished them.The stories ar...
While I do think that all of these stories are quite good and tickly my cosmic horror funnybone (do you hear the insane laughter right behind you?) I think I might have reached my saturation point for:A: SatanistsB: dark insectoid horrorsC: otherworldly visitationsTo be entirely fair, all of these stories are quite excellent for these themes. Much better, on the hole, than most. In fact, I totally recommend this for those of you who want a little extra Lovecraftian horror in their lives and want...
Laird Barron clearly knows how to unsettle his readers. If there was a universal theme of the various stories in this book, it would be that every single story was unsettling, albeit in different ways.Mr. Barron evokes memories of reading Caitlín R. Kiernan, HP Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, and even Algernon Blackwood in his tales in this volume. He finds the fearsome in such diverse subjects as the entities from beyond, the power of guilt, the overwhelming and uncomprehensible enormity of the natur...
More Laird Barron! I am currently on a short story roll, as I don’t want to start a new big juicy book right before leaving on vacation, so I make do with small juicy stories instead. And my, is Barron a juicy writer! Not in the buckets-of-blood-and-gore sense; his way is much more subtle, oozing and surreal.The prose has a strange and almost hypnotic rhythm. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of which character is talking and where they are, but when it comes together, it paints a wonderfully cr...
The first thing that struck me about Occultation was that, after having read it and the Imago Sequence – Laird’s debut anthology – for the first time, I immediately turned around and read them both all over again. That’s never happened to me before with any other book – not sure what it means, just taking note.Laird is often spoken of in the same breath with Thomas Ligotti, but they could not be more different. While I am in awe of Ligotti’s work, his universe is one of futility – of clockwork h...
At a first sight I'm not such a big fan of Laird Barron work, but when I finished this peculiar volume of his stories, I must conclude that he certanly delivers scares and offers shivers down your spine.I don't like his style with a lot, lot, of info about his characters and their situations, but I must admit that he has some very original & new ideeas and his thrills are on another level that those from others writers.Only two stories I didn't read, those in the end, but with the rest I was rea...
If you want the longer version, it's here; otherwise, read on.Laird Barron is probably the only recent author I've read who can put together a compilation of his stories and keep me totally involved, off balance and maximally creeped out through the entire book without any exceptions. He's also one of the few horror writers in my experience who writes his stories with prose to equal pretty much any literary author, and he does not rely on cheap thrills, hack-em/slash-em gratuitous gore or gross
I've never forgotten my first encounters with certain horror collections, at different times in my life, that resonated with me - Lovecraft, Machen, Blackwood, Barker, T.E.D Klein, Ramsey Campbell, M John Harrison, Ligotti, Robert Aickman, among others. But they were books that transported me and made me want to write. I've come to Laird Barron relatively late, but I'm adding him to my pantheon of greats (and I don't use that word lightly). Just finished his first two single author works - THE...
Weird fiction and cosmic horror is a lot like rocking a rhyme that's right on time. It's tricky. When its done well, it's one of the most effective forms of genre fiction because it communicates a fear and curiosity towards the world that is universal. But when done even slightly wrong it runs the risk of being a shambolic, knee-slapping, coffee-spitting, parody. Or me on a Sunday. Cosmic horror and weird fiction touches on abstract (and very real) feelings connected to our condition and experie...
This was my first reading of Barron, and I probably should have started with his first collection, but the library only had this one. The standout stories for me were 'The Forest' and 'The Lagerstätte', both of which were award nominees, if that says anything—maybe, maybe not, depending on how much stock you put in such things. As other three-star reviewers have noted, many of the other stories just involve two or more characters passing the time as things get increasingly weirder and then somet...
I don’t know what it is about Laird Barron’s work that I enjoy so much. Yes, the dude can write. Yes, his characterizations are really good in short formats and his monsters are crazy cool. He also uses a lot of big “old-timey” words and that would usually turn me off, but LB makes it work and gives his stories their own voice and flavor. Dark, brooding and bleak. I realize he may not be for everyone, but I have enjoyed everything that I have ever read by him. This guy is fuckin’ good, man. Real...
barron is a masterful writer with a distinctively flowing and hallucinatory style and i really loved this collection in the beginning. after a while, though, the hopelessness of the universe became not just overpowering but sort of silly. well, let's see how these poor schmucks get fucked over i started to say at the beginning of each story. which, okay, maybe i should've spaced them apart... but every single one was just "bad to worse." i need a little hope to feel the horror of hope's ruin.but...