It’s rare that a themed anthology excites me, but Grey Friar Press’s Terror Tales of the Ocean just amazed me with the quality and variety of the stories contained. It has this genius layout where the stories are alternated by short articles about real life oceanic horrors like the Bermuda Triangle, Giant Squid, and other dangers of the mysterious depths. Anyone who grew up reading about stuff like ancient aliens or psychic powers will have a lot of fun with this. And the fiction within is first rate, all the stories are either truly disturbing tales representing the cutting edge of weird horror, or are classic takes on the subject manner that embrace their pulp roots and go all out with the genre tropes. The deeper you go into the book, the weirder and stranger this book gets, just like the unexplored depths in the sunless voids of the ocean. I give this collection my highest recommendation. The best themed anthology since Grimscribe’s Puppets.
Some of the standouts to me were:
Adam Nevil’s Hippocampus - An incredibly creepy story which pulls a trick I have never seen a author pull off, his story is devoid of any characters. You will have to read it to know what I mean.
Conrad Williams’s The Offing - A nebulous fever dream of loss and menace.
Simon Strantzas’s First Miranda - An attack on the reader with it’s freudian delving of the subconscious and the horrors you may find there.
Adam Golaski’s Hushed Will Be The Murmurs - Another brilliant nightmarescape from one of the most talented, and underappreciated, writers in the field of weird horror fiction.
Robert Sherman’s And This Is Where We Falter - A chimera of surrealism and high pulp action.