If you've come across any of Tom Piccirilli's work over the years and enjoyed it, I heartily recommend tracking down a copy of this collection. As far as I am aware, it is a complete omnibus collection of his published work. And despite these being limited, signed (by artist, author, editor, intro writer, etc.) editions they are still out there for a relatively reasonable price. I ended up with #55 of of 1000 and it did not cost me an arm and a leg.
Like most of the collections Ken Abner put out through Terminal Frights, this is well laid out, well edited, well organized, and with some great interior art. And by the way, if anyone knows how to reach Ken Abner Jr. or knows what he's doing these days, send me a message.
The collection is rougly divided along the same lines that Tom Piccirilli thought of his work being divided, per an exerpt from a personal letter to Poppy Z. Brite included in her introduction. Sometimes this 'official' in that its labeled, other times its obvious that we have transitioned into another sub-set of Piccirilli's work. The final section may perhaps be the one the bulk of fans are here looking for, where the 'Self' stories are gathered. I will freely admit that those are the stories, featured in Terminal Frights, that got me hooked on Piccirilli, and its nice to have them all in one place. The only thing past the Self stories is a rather interesting interview with Piccirilli by Richard Laymon. The self stories are preceeded by 'The Devil's Wine', and while I am not the biggest fan of 'genre' poetry, several of these feel more like portraits of the real world horror of lives empty of anything save despair, regret, and perhaps booze. Regardless, it serves as a good transition and pallete cleanser to the more internally consistent Self stories from what I can best describe as the Gonzo or Bizzaro (though I'm not sure these terms were in common use when Piccirilli wrote them) stories before them. This is presumably what Piccirilli describes as '...all that gray area left to whatever doesn't fall into those other three categories.' I am not the biggest fan of Gonzo/Bizarro, and so for me this was by far the weakest part of the collection. The beginning of the collection is devoted to a combination of the dark fantasy/weird fiction and the erotic horror (though I feel the latter overlaps with all his other work).
Overall a very solid collection, though as all completionist readers know there are bound to be high and low points. Come for the Self stories, stay for what are some notable high points sprinkled throughout.
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