This was the type of book full of short stories, where I found myself skipping a lot of the stories after listening to each story for maybe two minutes.
Only three stories stood out to me, probably since they were the ones that wasn't about torture porn.
- Joe R. Lansdale - Night They Missed the Horror Show - loved how the boys got their just desserts for basically being two degenerates.
- Ray Garton - Bait - this one was about just where all those missing children end up... a nice twisted little tale.
- Graham Masterton - The Burgers of Calais - Have read this one before, and still enjoy this story. Just where is that amazing hamburger meat from? ( )

A well rounded collection, with some great, some good and some meh stories across a range of Horror's subgenres. Predictably, G. R. R. Martin and Joe R. Lansdale lead the pack in terms of quality, but Mehitobel Wilson's "Blind in the House of the Headsman" was a delightfully awful story with tight writing and enough left unsaid to engage the imagination.

Worth a read for fans of all types, but nothing to run out and grab right away. ( )

Full review to come. ( )

You can read my entire discussion here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/necro-files-edited-by-cheryl-mullenax/

This was, all in all, a terrible collection wherein you will find five good stories. The rest is a sexist, misogynistic, poorly-written, inexplicable mess. I generally do not use feminist thought when I analyze extreme horror but parts of this collection were so stupidly anti-woman I had little choice in the matter.

Review snippet: I absolutely hated “Godflesh” by Brian Hodge. It was one of those stories filled with misogyny and questionable characterizations. And while I guess acrotomophilia was shocking and unheard of in 1995, it’s not so much now. The sexual desire for stumps, by the way, is not why I found this story so objectionable. Oh, and it features a secret sex club that meets in an old church. Yeah…

“Godflesh” features Ellen/Elle, a bookstore clerk and open-minded sex freak who, at the extremely advanced age of 35, is aging gracefully. But her coworker, Jude, who is much older, must be shamed for her facelifts. In fact, she is mocked several times in this short story for wanting to alter her face for her vanity while Elle (she drops the “n” when she goes to the extraordinary number of sex clubs that populate her city) decides to cut off her limbs for some higher purpose. Facelift bad, surgically becoming a stump good. Makes perfect sense, right. Jude and Ellen leave work one night and see a man in a wheelchair masturbating openly in the street. Facelifted Jude the prude is appalled but sexually liberated and far smarter Elle watches the display as a “Mona Lisa smile brushed her lips.”

But let’s discuss some passages. Jude is excoriated for having a facelift but Elle engages in all kinds of body mods including the removal of limbs and in the logic of this story, it’s supposed to make sense. Then there’s this realistic description of Elle:

"She was almost tall, not quite. Her raven hair, when unbound, contrasted with her pale luminous skin and ripe lips in delicious nocturnal severity. She had a twenty-three-inch waist but could corset it down to eighteen. Men and women alike loved to wrap their hands around it, or nuzzle over smooth tight curves on their way to the drenched heat between her thighs."

A 23-inch waist is half an inch smaller than a size zero. More to the point, if Elle had corset trained her waist to the point that she could reduce a 23-inch waist by five inches, it’s suspect that the author doesn’t discuss the impact such continual tight lacing would have on her rib cage and hip bones. In other words, the male author seems to have no idea how tiny a 23-inch waist is in and of itself. Women that thin are not going to have that much in the way of curves and the results of so much tight lacing would show on their bodies. And yes, this entire passage read like a description yanked from a Victorian bodice ripper, and yes, as that last line should indicate, this page ended in a sex scene so bad your grandmother would have rolled her eyes. The phrases “musky dew,” “petaled cleft,” “feverish clits,” and worse are used.

Then we have this. The old man in the wheelchair who was yanking one out in the street came into the shop and flirted with Elle as they talked about their favorite Marquis de Sade novels, and at the end of the conversation, Elle, sexy, intelligent, mysterious Elle, feels the following sums her up:

"Ellen’s laughter was soft, low, throaty, half-pleasure and half-challenge. Chocolate and sex. This man may have had no legs, but he most definitely had her number."

Get her chocolate if you want her to cut off her legs and join your sex cult. Bitches like chocolate! ( )