I don't think this was bad, maybe I'd have preferred it in a different frame of mind, just none of the stories really got to me. Only a few of the stories are typically horror, although they all have horror elements. Maybe I had slightly wrong expectations. I felt like I could see all the elements and how you'd expect them to come together, but by the end I always felt unsatisfied, like a bit was missing. A few characters are so obvious you're expecting something more to give them depth, most are hard to get a read on. Like in Wild Acre, it's obvious the main character faces a "test" of his own sense of masculinity with a horror element, which he fails, but then the rest of the story doesn't really develop it much behind just saying "yep he failed a test of masculinity, meaning he's not masculine in the same way any more". I dunno, hard to tell if I'm just judging it too harshly. I just felt constantly unsatisfied and didn't feel there was much depth even though I saw the setup for it. ( )

3.6 Good imagery ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2023/07/review-of-north-american-lake-monsters.... ( )

3 stories. That's as far as I got into this collection. I'm finally learning that I don't have to finish every book I start, and so I'm throwing in the towel on this one. The thing is... these stories aren't bad. They just don't end. They feel very much like the way that Monty Python skits used to go: Absolutely Brilliant, but they didn't know how to end it, so they'd just have the police come escort them off. I get it, though - not every story has to have a neat and tidy ending. That's not what I'm looking for. These stories feel unfinished. They are filled with horrible things, and the characters are in the midst of dealing with the situations, and NOW WE'RE DONE.
So I'm going to give this collection 2 stars, but with the caveat that I've only read 3 stories, and they were all powerful stories. But I'm left wanting MORE, and not in a good way. If the author's intention was to totally get under my skin and leave me with metaphorical (excuse me) blue balls, then he was successful. However, I don't feel like dealing with that for the remainder of the stories. ( )

Balanced on a ledge between dark fantasy and horror, this collection has some fantastic stories in it. For me personally, the collection felt a little less even than Ballingrud's more recent story collection, Wounds, but I suppose that's to be expected since these were earlier works. Even so, there are stories here which are simply breathtaking--I'd say "The Way Station" is my favorite, but "You Go Where It Takes You" and "Wild Acre" are also incredibly striking. And there are others which I'm still thinking on--"The Good Husband", for instance, is as strange and original as it is difficult to read, both for the gruesome nature of how it goes and the heart-deep emotion that carries it and makes it that much worse if you allow yourself to take it in.

I will say that animal lovers should beware the ending of "S.S." and the whole of the story "The Crevasse"--to be honest, "The Crevasse" will haunt me for a long time, and if I could go back in time to make myself skip over it, I would. In terms of quality, I'm actually not sure it lives up to many of the stories in the collection, but even aside from that, there's an animal death here that is masterfully written, but incredibly painful for a reader who loves animals. There's another hard-to-take animal death at the end of "S.S.", but it's over and done quickly--I suspect I'll forget about that one quickly, much as I didn't enjoy reading.

Regardless, it's clear that Ballingrud is a contemporary miracle-worker when it comes to dark short stories that bridge literary speculative fiction and horror. From here on out, I'll pick up anything he writes.

Absolutely recommended. ( )