Sweet & Salty Reviews - It Calls From the Sky by Eerie River Publishing

The Dish
It Calls from the Sky is the third instalment in Eerie River Publishing’s ‘It Calls From’ series of horror anthologies. The book contains 23 short stories from several names that’ll be familiar if you’ve read Eerie’s other offerings, as well as some new names that pleasantly vary the content. The team at Eerie River, Michelle River and Alanna Webb, have done another excellent job picking the tales for this amazing collection.

The Sauce
Eerie’s contributors have really gone to town on this concept. It was already an impressive feat to have gotten so many varied stories out of two volumes of Forest. Sky is even more impressive with the mix of work within its pages. Flying monsters, killer rain, fallen gods, floating heads, voices from the sky, storms, aliens and vampire bats all make appearances, and more besides.

The Sweet
If Forest 2 was an overall improvement on Forest 1, Sky is an improvement on both. The strength of the writing is evident here, right from the off. ‘Ascension’ by R.L. Meza plunges you immediately into full-on horror. It’s shocking, it’s sinister, in places it’s absolutely disgusting, but it’s compelling and frightening and the pace marches to the same powerfully inevitable end as the characters themselves. It’s a great start and sets the tone nicely for the rest of the book.

Matthew Brady’s ‘Head in the Clouds’ is another strong piece. It starts out like historical fiction but spirals rapidly with the appearance of Mother Diamante into something surreal and grotesque. Like ‘Ascension’, the sense of foreboding builds to something truly terrible and leaves a strong impression. Edith’s reaction to seeing her brother again is perhaps the most powerful aspect of the story.

You know I have to talk about ‘Tenure’ by V.A. Vazquez, who won my pick of the anthology for Forest 2. Told from the perspective of that guy who appears in every urban fantasy story to advise the heroes of exactly how boned they are against their supernatural adversary, the ‘action’ in the story is relayed via phone while Milo Banerjee struggles with his tenure application. It’s a delightful twist on every similar horror story you’ve read, complete with a strong female character and a frightening, uncertain twist. V.A. Vazquez continues to impress. Additional points for use of the futakuchi-onna, which is a demon I’m personally quite fond of.

Christopher Bond’s ‘Follow You Into the Dark’ stands out to me because of its characters. Bobby and Darlene are, on the surface of things, the kind of white trash characters you see in a lot of horror stories, usually depicted as being dumb, greedy or downright evil. Instead, these two are drawn as loving and kind and it amps up the horror of the story significantly. I mentioned in a recent blog post about the importance of humanism in horror stories and this is a prime example. The horror in this strikes so much harder for how nice the characters are. A brilliant read.

‘The Forgotten Prince’ by Elizabeth Nettleton is another excellent example of this. Pim’s willingness to help a stranger in need makes the terrible events of the story so much worse. This tale’s core concept is how frightening a spoiled child can be when they have exceptional power. The only thing more terrifying than a god with unknowable motives is one that acts like the very worst human beings we know and the threat implied in the ending is chilling.

‘Flying Home’ by Joel R. Hunt is one of those stories that just fits right in here at the Basement. Trapped aboard an aeroplane with a sinister creature, Emma engages in a battle of wills, unable to rely on anyone but herself. I love this kind of story so much and this is a brilliant example of the genre-without-a-name. Emma’s eventual ‘victory’ over the creature is what made this story so compelling for me. Exactly my cup of tea and one of the main reasons I loved Sky so much.

‘Raindance’ by Kimberly Rei hooked me deep. A picture-perfect couple with a nasty, abusive undercurrent. The story teases apart the complicated emotions and conflicts of abuse, all the while delving into a delightful storm allegory. This story’s use of the Wild Hunt was a particularly interesting twist on quite a common piece of mythology, which Kimberly Rei acknowledges herself in Kara’s narrative. The overarching implication being that the Wild Hunt might actually be a similar phenomenon to the avenging Furies of European mythology. A powerful and moving tale.

The Salty
Look, you’re not going to hear me level this criticism at an anthology very often in my attempt at balanced reviews, but Sky has caused me serious problems while writing this. Very few of these stories aren’t exceptional and I found myself scrolling through my Kindle thinking, “I’m going to need to pick and choose here. I don’t have room in this review to talk about all 23 stories”. So what you’ve just read are my cherry-picked favourites, the ones that are more relevant or most appealing to me specifically.

I could wax lyrical about the poetic majesty of Rebecca Gomez Farrell’s ‘Thlush-a-Lum’, or the cathartic strength of Jay Sandlin’s ‘Hate Sky’, or the open-ended novel potential of the likes of ‘Thorn in My Side’ or ‘Keep One in the Chamber’. If I was writing an essay, I could maybe give all of these stories the attention that they deserved, but I’m not. All I will say is that, as I mentioned previously, the level of prose in Sky is an improvement on that in both volumes of Forest. Maybe it was the additional challenge of the anthology theme but I was blown away by the calibre of the stories in this book and the sheer variety of concepts.

The Aftertaste
My pick of the anthology this time goes to Joel R. Hunt for ‘Flying Home’. It has some very stiff competition but, in the end, I had to go with it for being so ‘on genre’ for me personally.

The ‘It Calls From...’ series has always been, in my opinion, good value for money. Sky is a particularly impressive collection and now I’m even more excited for Sea when it eventually arrives. In the meantime, buy your copy of Sky now!