Enter at Your Own Risk: The Dangerous Art of Dennis Cooper

The following review may contain spoilers and is based on the PDF edition of Enter at Your Own Risk: Fires and Phantoms from a librarything.com giveaway.

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Enter at Your Own Risk: Fires and Phantoms is an anthology of supernatural, semi-horror stories with both explicit (in the newer stories) and implicit (in the classical stories such as Edith Wharton's "The Eyes") LGBT elements. The stories are of varied lengths, written in a variety of styles, and (as to be expected from an anthology of stories written by different authors) contain varied levels of quality.

I didn't find that any of the stories were particularly scary or surprising, though a few of them do have "twists" that might come as a surprise to some readers. Most of the stories show more fit perfectly into the anthology, and it was really interesting to see how the LGBT elements were incorporated into each one. Sometimes they were necessary for the plot; other times they were just there to add flavor, but it was a nice change from all of the literature out there (especially within the horror/supernatural genre) that doesn't include LGBT characters or themes.

My favorite stories of the collection were "Country People," for its interesting, well-paced plot; "The Neglected Ones," for its lovely written style; and "A New Heart That Tells a Tale," for its clever and convincing take on an old horror favorite.

Overall, I found the book to be satisfactorily entertaining. It isn't an absolute page-turner or a literary work of art, but it is a good read for a gloomy day.

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On a side note, one quotation that really stood out for me (from "The Neglected Ones") is as follows:

"The school didn't have a football team; he wore a letter jacket anyway. It once belonged to his dead father. You could still see the blood stain from the bullet."

I really wish the author had done more with this. It's got such fantastically creepy potential! show less