The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All: Stories

Brilliant book for settling down with in front of a fire, whiskey and cosy slippers. Not so brilliant when you need to mong out after a hard day at work dealing with the ever flourishing morons in the world. Needs a little concentration but is worth the effort unlike 40 hours of my life a week wasted on morons

Not the best written stories, but still manage to convey a sense of dread. Wish the prose were better.

Another fantastic collection of stories from Laird Barron,every bit as good(if not slightly superior the The Imago Sequence),Barron continues to improve and build on his own personal Mythos.Although you dont have to have read The Croning to appreciate this book,I have found that both works are enhanced by the experience.

Laird Barron's universe is perfectly realised, unremittingly grim and hugely addictive.These books are superficially short story compilations but are fundamentally glimpses of the same hidden world experienced through the eyes of those who rub up against it. Excellent!

Terrifying to the bone

Sexual intercourses with forest animals, heads being crushed like cabbages, loons screaming in the night! Spooooky. If you’re a child you may find this scary, but children shouldn’t be reading about bestiality. Cosmic, weird, horror, all words that have nothing to do with this lacklustre sack of potatoes. If you enjoy the stunning works of Howard Phillips Lovecraft I’d highly recommend you skip this drivel.

Another fantastic collection from Laird Barron.This has everything that you'd expect form any Laird Barron collection. Horror, suspense and tales of the occult and cosmic horror.Laird has the ability to make every story completely different but maintain such a high standard of writing.I'm not saying that every story in this collection was a 5* read, as there will always be some stories that aren't as strong as the others. But the stand out ones for me were The Men from Porlock, Blackwoods Baby, Carrion Gods in their Heaven.Overall, it is definitely one the strongest collections from Laird so far. My favourite being Occultation. But I recommend that you pick this up if you are in need of a scare or just a damn good horror collection.

This is the third collection of stories from Laird Barron. It maintains the high standards that he set with 'The Imago Sequence' and 'Occultation'.Barron is one of the few writers working in modern horror who has managed to transcend his influences. Although he is working broadly within the Lovecraftian tradition, Barron stands out from the hordes of pasticheurs as a powerful and literate stylist who is well on his way to developing his own fully-realised fictional world. Some of the stories here feature recurring characters and motifs, and Barron has a grasp of the grimier side of American history, which lends his fictions an unusual and convincing depth of detail. These are not simple penny shockers.Evil in Barron's stories is recognisably human in origin, rooted in the old sins of lust, greed and cruelty. His protagonists are often violent or criminally inclined; all the more disturbing, then, when their tendencies bring hard men up against less familiar forms of harm.I greatly enjoyed this book, and look forward to its successor. Recommended to anybody who enjoys literate modern horror.