https://read.macmillan.com/torforge/come-join-us-by-the-fire/
https://www.tor.com/2019/10/17/new-horror-imprint-nightfire-announces-come-join-..... TOC with stories, authors and narrators

I guess the editor that chose these stories isn't a good match for my reading preferences. Looking through my ratings you'll see near the end there are many DNFs. I likely grew less patient. How to describe my issue.... shit didn't make sense. Too much was left to infer. Not complete stories. This will be a great book to use to determine if we are compatible readers.

Most of these were flash fiction.

~ Alyssa Wong - Rabbit Heart 3*
Definitely interesting but not enough of a story for me. 7 minutes long.

~ Cassandra Khaw - Don't Turn on the Lights 2*
meh

~ Kristi DeMeester - A Life That Is Not Mine 1*
I have no idea what the point of this short story was. Narrator fantastic, story not so much :/ Everything starts turning gray. some people say it's due to the mundaneness of the teacher (MC's) life.

~ Lucy A. Snyder - That Which Does Not Kill You 1*
It's not in me to decipher metaphors. This one has the main character having her heart cut out for a 3rd time by her girlfriend. There her ex is, with the box cutter in her hand and the bloody arms. We meet her packing up her stuff in the living room.

Okay I can understand the metaphor of the above but she says she cut it out because she couldn't sleep hearing her heartbeat as she has told her many times. She stuck it up in a tree outside while the MC was sleeping. It was covered with ants by the time it is found. A friend came over and rinsed it off, you know to get rid of the ants and the MC put it back in her chest and put the skin back. They go to an adult arcade making googlie eyes at each other.

Stupid. Poetic? Not what I like to read. This is a horror story? How do I avoid this type of story telling. :/

~ Nadia Bulkin - And When She Was Bad 1*
The story opens with the sole survivor of a massacre "the final girl" dealing with the monster. She is going to bring his bloody, battered body to town and get justice for it killing all her friends.

The we get the MC re-thinking things. Why did she survive, is this monster her golem, did she create it? She ends up taking the monsters wings (one was broken) and puts them on herself and flies away (huh, one was broken). She flies away a "new" person. I think she lands on a barn like the original monster did. Is she now the monster?

Stupid, did not like nor get it.

~ Kat Howard - Dream Home 1*
huh? As an adult, a woman finally gets to buy the house of one of her childhood "neighbors". She dreamed of buying the house some day. She bought this real house from real people which means going through a home inspection and a realtor yet the house is actually a large beehive with shifting rooms and is somehow calling to her. Stupid. Was it not a beehive when the other people lived there or through all the other processes?

~ Brian Evenson - No Matter Which Way We Turned 4*
Well done. It's my favorite of the book so far.

~ Victor Lavalle - Daddy 2*
I liked the writing and I was very engaged but that ending ... that I didn't like that so much.

There is a twist that is unbelievable. There is the battle. There are some claims about the loser. Cut scene. The bad guy won. Just saying it is so, doesn't make it a believable twist.
"cock-a-doodie"

~ Chuck Wendig - This Guy 4*
I might be a little sick because I really liked this one. hahaha

~ Richard Kadrey - Flayed Ed 2*
ut-oh bad stuff happens when we lose knowledge of our history.

~ Paul Tremblay - The Pond 1*
a boy and his brother go to the pond and the boy dies just by standing in it or some shit.

~ Carmen Maria Machado - My Body, Herself
DNF

~ Gwendolyn Kiste - The Girls from the Horror Movie
DNF

~ Brian Evenson - Black Bark
DNF

~ China Miéville - The Design
DNF

~ Cassandra Khaw - These Deathless Bones 1*
I got frustrated when the witch queen comes across a victim in the kitchen. She refuses to tell us (the reader) what the prince did to the little girl but then the girl starts talking. wtf ? "We spoke, naturally, after her bones had been bathed in firefly gut and frangipani." what is that suppose to mean? Oh she is a witch and I have to infer that is witch stuff she did with the bones and the bones are talking to her?!? oh no wait, she can tell because of the damage to the bones. right?!? But what is the firefly gut and frangipani? She de-boned the girl and analyzed her bones? What she doesn't have a family that would like to bury her?

Here's another sentence for you: And the little prince's truth is this: He deserves all of it. His bones-pale, pristine-gibber across the floor in rage, incensed to have been ousted from their cloak of flesh. Even now, even in their current state, they are petty, petulant things.

She drops that in the next paragraph. Oh yeah okay she's a witch, she can do those things. I guess.

~ Brooke Bolander - The Beasts of the Earth, the Madness of Men 1*
female captain on raft chasing what i assume is the whale that destroyed her ship and killed her crew. the whale is dead and begs to be released. Confused.

~ Chuck Wendig - Beware Of Owner 1*
Meh just pointless for me. People being assholes then oooh a twist they are bigger assholes than you thought.
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Skipped
Priya Sharma - The Anatomist's Mnemonic ( )