Kit Powers posted this on my birthday, what a lovely present:

Let’s get this out of the way upfront: Yes, these are dark tales. In them, gruesome and grotesque things frequently happen to people. Some will make you question the limits of human endurance. Some will make you question what you had for lunch, or kill your appetite stone dead. My experience of extreme horror writing is fairly limited, but if there’s stuff that’s hugely more extreme than these tales, I’m certainly not in any hurry to read them. However, there’s something which for me is far, far more important than the darkness of these tales: namely, they are very, very good. Throughout this collection, Mr. Bark demonstrates a considerable level of ability to write in different voices, to tell vastly different tales. There are superlative first person narratives (Taking The Piss and Haunting The Past), tales from both sides of the Atlantic, one short story (Mouthful) told, appropriately enough, entirely through dialogue, and even a trip back in time, albeit it to the weirdest Wild West I’ve ever encountered. Mr. Bark moves between these prose styles and voices effortlessly, with the skill of a true storyteller, selecting the most appropriate or interesting mode of delivery, and then just nailing it …”

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