I’ll be the first to admit that the horror genre is not
my cup of tea, having tried and failed several times in the past to enjoy the
scribblings of King, Lovecraft, Koontz etc., I’ve mostly resigned myself to
giving up on finding anything in the genre that I can find enjoyable.
I don’t know why this is, could be because I’m fairly
desensitised to shock, could be because when I’m reading the books I have
problems with suspension of disbelief, or it could be that I can usually figure
out what is going to happen after only reading a few chapters, thus the only
enjoyment I usually get from them in that instance is proving myself right, and
occasionally being surprised when I find I’ve made a mistake (which doesn’t happen too often).
So, back on subject, a friend of mine by the name of
George Daniel Lea recently had his first book published, and after seeing the
time and effort he has poured into it over the past 18 months or so, I decided
to give it a go, the end result of his efforts being the aforementioned “Strange
playgrounds”.
Strange Playgrounds is a collection of short stories (although it could be argued that some of
them are closer to being novellas) concentrating on the darker side of
human nature, specifically obsessions, deviances and lusts.
The stories themselves are written with a number of
influences, most notably the works of Clive Barker but also showing the subtle
influences of writers such as H.P Lovecraft and Bram Stoker, although a couple
of the stories would seem more at home as being described as being influenced
by TV shows such as The Twilight Zone and/or The Outer Limits.
To classify this book as simply being a “horror” novel
would do it a grave disservice (pardon
the pun), as it is
Many old clichés of the horror genre are given a new
twist, including new ways of looking at vampire and werewolf mythology, as well
as one story which bears some of the hallmarks of being a rather nice blend of
cyberpunk and psychological horror.
Unfortunately though, that said, the stories themselves
do suffer from one fatal flaw.
In many of the stories, the author explores the depths of
human depravity quite well, but many readers will almost certainly be put off
by the large amount of sexual content, particularly of the homoerotic kind,
which, and I’m going to be honest, I did find somewhat tiresome after a while,
especially so in some of the stories where it had an almost “tacked on” feel,
and offered no real benefit to the plot development as a whole.
While the author himself is openly homosexual (of which I have no objection to or opinion
on, before anyone starts) I do feel that a lot of the unnecessary sexual
content could be expunged and the storylines, as brief as they are, would
suffer no detriment.
That said, the prose itself does a wonderful job of being
very descriptive where it needs to be, leaving the reader to fill in certain
blanks as they please, but not so much as it makes you feel like you’re the one
doing all the work.
So, to sum up, Strange Playgrounds isn’t half bad for the
debut publication from a new author, and although it isn’t really my cup of
tea, it will almost certainly appeal to fans of this particular sub-genre of
horror, but I would not recommend it to those of a nervous disposition, or for
the easily offended.
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