The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All: Stories

Another collection of Barron's ridiculously muscular and physical tales of ridiculously vast and cosmic horror. Hunky hunters get hunted! Sorority sisters get spooked! Gunny gangster gets gazumped! Loving lesbians go lycanthrope! Creepy corporate creep gets crepuscled! Lewd legbreaker gets... laminated! I think I'm making up some of these words! Geeky god gyrates! I'm sorry I started this! Wild Bunch turns into Fried Lunch! Last one! Angsting author adumbrates! Okay? Happy? No? GODAMMIT!

Great collection all the same. Ridiculous reviewer retires.

Reviewer relisten!

Reviewer relistens repeatedly!

This was my first collection of Laird Barron's short fiction and it was so good! I loved the mixture of hardboiled noir and cosmic horror, the playful thread that ran through the blood and guts of Barron's universal terror, the reoccuring characters and the final story--a thoughtful funny scary musing on both writing and living horror.

I make no bones about it: I’m an unabashed Laird Barron fanboy. He’s the best active horror writer in the world, in my opinion, and one of the best things to happen to the genre in a long, long time. This is his third collection I’ve read, (and fourth book), and while it doesn’t quite hit the heights of the masterful Imago Sequence and Occultation, it’s nonetheless a hugely potent work that I’ll no doubt be going back to in the years to come.

The stories in this collection run the gamut from corporate horror to subtle ghost stories to balls-to-the-wall action adventure. A couple of them reference events from his novel, The Croning, though it is to Barron’s credit that these pieces feel self-contained and only serve to show more deepen rather than dissolve the central mystery in that excellent and complex work. While each story employs a different technique to achieve its end, all of them are marked by that same persistent feeling of unease, as though the world we know is only a thin veneer to an infinitely more horrible reality.

This sort of thing isn’t anything new in the genre, though rarely has it been pulled off so effectively in a modern idiom. Barron writes with a supple, muscular style that slides effortlessly under your skin and shakes you to the core. His influences are wide and varied, from Jim Thompson, to Lovecraft, to Cormac McCarthy. As with Lovecraft’s work, Barron’s terrors are cosmic, in that they threaten not merely an isolated group of individuals but our very species itself.

This isn’t to say his stories lack characterisation. They have that in spades. Barron’s protagonists are dark and tormented, people on the very edge of society, ready to take one step into the darkness, and it is this conflict of internal and external demons that drive the narratives and imbue them with especial potency. One gets a feeling of inevitability, as though these characters were damned from the moment we see them, and through their journey, so too will we be. Nonetheless, we still sense a spark of redemption within them, which makes their descent all the more pathetic and emotional.

Of the stories themselves, I have to single out The Men of Porlock and The Redfield Girls as particular favorites. The Men of Porlock is a harrowing narrative of a doomed logging expedition that find itself lost in the forests around Mystery Mountain, a common location in Barron's stories. It's brilliantly written, and genuinely horrifying. A modern classic. The Redfield Girls is a subtle ghost story that works on a number of emotional levels and leaves a resonance in the mind. A very interesting development in Barron's oeuvre and evidence of his versatility as a writer. Other highlights included The Siphon, a piece reminiscent of the excellent Procession of the Black Sloth from The Imago Sequence, and The Hand of Glory, a meaty slice of hard-boiled terror that's probably the most fun and funny piece in the book. show less

I make no bones about it: I’m an unabashed Laird Barron fanboy. He’s the best active horror writer in the world, in my opinion, and one of the best things to happen to the genre in a long, long time. This is his third collection I’ve read, (and fourth book), and while it doesn’t quite hit the heights of the masterful Imago Sequence and Occultation, it’s nonetheless a hugely potent work that I’ll no doubt be going back to in the years to come.

The stories in this collection run the gamut from corporate horror to subtle ghost stories to balls-to-the-wall action adventure. A couple of them reference events from his novel, The Croning, though it is to Barron’s credit that these pieces feel self-contained and only serve to show more deepen rather than dissolve the central mystery in that excellent and complex work. While each story employs a different technique to achieve its end, all of them are marked by that same persistent feeling of unease, as though the world we know is only a thin veneer to an infinitely more horrible reality.

This sort of thing isn’t anything new in the genre, though rarely has it been pulled off so effectively in a modern idiom. Barron writes with a supple, muscular style that slides effortlessly under your skin and shakes you to the core. His influences are wide and varied, from Jim Thompson, to Lovecraft, to Cormac McCarthy. As with Lovecraft’s work, Barron’s terrors are cosmic, in that they threaten not merely an isolated group of individuals but our very species itself.

This isn’t to say his stories lack characterisation. They have that in spades. Barron’s protagonists are dark and tormented, people on the very edge of society, ready to take one step into the darkness, and it is this conflict of internal and external demons that drive the narratives and imbue them with especial potency. One gets a feeling of inevitability, as though these characters were damned from the moment we see them, and through their journey, so too will we be. Nonetheless, we still sense a spark of redemption within them, which makes their descent all the more pathetic and emotional.

Of the stories themselves, I have to single out The Men of Porlock and The Redfield Girls as particular favorites. The Men of Porlock is a harrowing narrative of a doomed logging expedition that find itself lost in the forests around Mystery Mountain, a common location in Barron's stories. It's brilliantly written, and genuinely horrifying. A modern classic. The Redfield Girls is a subtle ghost story that works on a number of emotional levels and leaves a resonance in the mind. A very interesting development in Barron's oeuvre and evidence of his versatility as a writer. Other highlights included The Siphon, a piece reminiscent of the excellent Procession of the Black Sloth from The Imago Sequence, and The Hand of Glory, a meaty slice of hard-boiled terror that's probably the most fun and funny piece in the book. show less

This awesome collection is only $1.99 today at Amazon U.S. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B0SBF1Y?tag=kiq-dds-20

Quote: "There are cracks in the world. These cracks are inhabited by...marvels undreamt of in our philosophies." From the short story, "The Siphon."

I've heard a lot about Laird Barron in various book groups to which I belong. Most especially I hear from fans of Lovecraft that Barron is even better. I have to agree. Ever since I read "The Light is the Darkness" I knew that I would be reading more of Barron's work. Last week I finally got the opportunity to do so, and I jumped on it. I couldn't be more pleased with that decision.

I submit this quote: "The canopy of the trees across the street shushed in the breeze, and fields show more littered with pockets of light swept into the deeper gloom like the crown of a moonlit sea. The starry night was vast and chill, and Lancaster imagined entities concealed within its folds gazing hungrily upon the lights of the city, the warmth of its inhabitants."

I won't go into a long winded soliloquy about each story, but I will briefly speak about the theme of this collection-cosmic horror- (see the quote above). Robert Chambers (The King in Yellow), Lovecraft and other authors created and loved this theme. I think it's exciting to see how Laird Barron makes it his own. The idea of ancient, alien invader Gods that live under the earth, under the sea, or somewhere in outer space is spooky by itself. To think that there are humans that live to serve them makes the whole idea even scarier. The cracks in the world mentioned above often serve as gateways...but for what is the question?

I loved the ancient, evil magician Phil Wary, who appears in a few of the stories. I loved Phil's answer to the question, do you serve the devil? "The Lord of Flies is only one. There are others, greater and more powerful than he. Presences that command his own obedience. You've seen them. I showed you." I loved the hidden village deep in the forest, (and what was in that tree??!!), in the story The Men From Porlock. I loved the mysterious, reclusive author Tom. L. in the last story. In short (too late!), I loved every story in this collection, but most especially The Siphon and The Jaws of Saturn. Outstanding!

I could go on for quite a while, but I am going to leave it off here.
The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All is worthy of my highest recommendation. If these themes are even remotely attractive to you, get this book now. You won't regret it.
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A really good collection of New Lovecraftian stories set in the Pacific Northwest, combining masculinity, crime, hard boiled characters, and the Cthulhu Mythos. There is also enough cosmicism and nihilism here for the hardened Lovecraft fan. His work combines Dashiel Hammett, Thomas Ligotti, with a bit of Steinbeck. This isn’t always easy reading, but is a very atomospheric, frightening series of stories. Recommended. I will be looking for other works by the same author.

A decent collection with several good stories. No standouts, and no stinkers - I guess that's a good thing?

This was my first contact with Barron. The overall impression was "somewhat disappointing", but I struggle as to pinpoint as to exactly why this is. Most of the stories felt more derivative of earlier authors than I expected, HPL in particular. Several of them was previously published in various Cthulhu-themed anthologies, so this is probably as it should be, but it nonetheless feels like a bit of a let down from an author hailed as "the most exciting writer to come along since Thomas Ligotti".

Also, several of the stories labored under over-long setups that, even though often intriguing and evocative, they ailed to deliver upon. I show more love a good open ending as much as the next horror nerd, but even so I felt that most of the stories either lacked that final punch, or that they just sort of... petered out.

That said, the collection satisfied me enough that I will probably look up more of his (earlier) stuff in the near future. show less