I received a PDF galley review edition of this book in October last year through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer giveaway, but have only just finished reading it.

Overall, a very good collection of 29 horror and "hard fantasy" stories the mixes those written by authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley with those from more recent authors. The overriding theme of this collection of stories - I only discovered last week that it is the third in a series using the title "Enter At Your Own Risk" - is environmental horror.

So we have stories about Mother Nature getting her own back for the abuse she has suffered at the hand of man, technological interference having unforeseen consequences, and just plain old strange things going bump in the night.

I have always maintained that it is much harder to write a good short story than to write a good novel. The novelist can waste copious pages outlining the backstory and the motivation of the main characters. The short story writer must be much more efficient and economical with words, and not let a single one go to waste. In this anthology, most of the stories work very well, a couple do not, there are also some that are excellent. "Sphere Music", "A Fine Day At The Zoo", "The Dreaded Hobblobs" and "The Eleventh Whale" for example.

The one thing I found detracting was the older stories written in "ye olde Englishe". With a novel you can get used the the slightly different styles and terminology before getting too far through the book, but in a collection of short stories where they are scattered throughout the book I found the stories almost over before I became accustomed to the style.

Overall though, highly recommended for readers interested in horror with a twist. ( )

En samling är alltid svår att recensera eftersom den består av delar som både kan vara bra och dåliga och så är det med denna samling. Att man börjar med en gammal dikt är lite pretto och sänker stämningen an aning. Fast en del kan ju gilla sådant. Temat för samlingen är miljöförstöring och man blandar både klassiker och nya noveller. Det är ju aldrig fel med en HP Lovecraft men jag tycker att de nyskrivna novellerna var lite väl lika och egentligen bara upprepade samma story med några mindre variationer. ( )

[Note: this review is for "Enter at Your Own Risk: The End Is the Beginning". For some reason this book seems to be getting mixed up with another book on LibraryThing.]

Anthologies, especially those featuring multiple authors, are very often a mixed bag. Usually I'm pretty content if there are at least a few stories that I enjoy. When I first opened the Early Reviewer file for this book and discovered that it had over two dozen stories spread out across more than 400 pages, I actually felt a little intimidated and was wondering how I was going to get through it all. By the time I was a few stories in, I was pretty well hooked and trying to find more time to read every day. I found the vast majority of these stories to be very enjoyable, thought provoking, and in a few cases, haunting. I really liked how the stories are divided into four distinct sections, each dealing with a common theme. There were a couple of stories (“So Many Tiny Mouths” and “Their End My Beginning (The Melting World Above)”) that I actually read twice before moving on to the next story. I’ll definitely be taking a closer look at those authors, as well as a few others. ( )