Alectryomancer and Other Weird Tales - Penetrating Cosmic Horror
Christopher Slatsky was able to sign and send me a couple of his works and I was *really* excited to get into them. I started with this one.
Slatsky is clearly a very smart person with elevated tastes. There were many Latin and Spanish phrases I had to look up from these pages. The stories were often cosmic in their horrific nature. I found myself unable to grasp quite a few of the meanings and endings, but had an undeniably disturbed feeling upon completing them - kind of like that certain wavelength of sound that is meant to unnerve you and induce anxiety, without anything solid upon which to put the blame. Despite feeling like this was a tougher read for me, there were enough great stories in here to want to carefully push through.
The stories I enjoyed the most that left me blinking into the abyss were as follows:
An Infestation of Stars: "An existence governed by insect morality" sums up this story and its terrifying endeavors.
No One is Sleeping in This World: Dives into a new topic for me - architectural horror. I was completely upended by this story and it made me look at the buildings around me through newly terrified eyes.
Scarcely Have They Been Planted: Earthen horror. A play on the concept of "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return" with a malignant and unnatural component.
Alectryomancer: The book's namesake was fantastic, also very cosmic in its horror. I was the most immersed in this strange tale of cockfighting, existence within a world reliant on gambling, and the strange depths it all plumbed.
Slatsky is undeniably an impeccable writer. I really want to better understand and truly grasp the larger than life concepts he presents from the same level on which he is emitting them, so I will continue to read his work unabashedly.
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