3.5

I didn't like a single story in this collection.Perhaps it was my mistake going in, thinking I was picking up a horror book, when instead I was actually reading weird fiction. There are few things in the world I hate more than weird fiction. And the stories in this collection were certainly weird.Many of them feature flat characters who become completely obsessed with bizarre phenomenon or who are approaching the edges of madness in some way. The utter flatness of the characters would have been

Before you read this book : Prepare for the Crazy The writing is great, it's hard not to be a fan of the style, it's all very descriptive but I must admit the first few stories (the first 5 - yikes!) didn't immediately grab my attention or give me want/will to brag about my time spent reading them (and who doesn't love that? ) They start off a bit YA for my taste, a little bit John Green (if y'know what I mean) dare I say a bit Stephen King in one of his recently published flops Bazaar of B...

Some truly, wonderfully twisted and creepy tales in this collection of shorts. Standouts for me being: Namesake Skein and Bone Preservation Wordsmith SenbazuruV.H. Leslie's short tales are definitely a recommended read.

An amazing collection of fiction, not one clunker in the bunch. Every single story will unnerve the reader in one way or another.

VH Leslie's is a writer who I first became aware of via her work in Black Static and Shadows & Tall Trees, in which her stories were consistently among the best featured. So I've been looking forward to her debut collection for a long time, and by god Skein & Bone from Undertow Publications doesn't disappoint. In fact, it's one of the best collections of quiet, strange horror I've read for a long time.Namesake, the opening story, perhaps sums up Leslie's approach: the story of a woman named Burd...

This was recommended to me by the Amazon email bots a couple weeks back, and I was in a "why not?" kind of mood at the time, so I picked it up. Kudos to the targeted marketing programmers, because this book delivered in every possible way. What an incredible and accomplished collection of thoughtful, sinister, mournful, and very smart tales. Gorgeous, ornate writing without a whiff of pretension. Characters who immediately feel genuine and believable. Stories that stay exactly as long as needed....

A promising and thoroughly British debut collection from V. H. Leslie, Skein and Bone already demonstrates her own voice within the nebulous area of strange tales and quiet horror, notwithstanding shades of Aickman and - pleasantly surprisingly - Dunsany.There is the occasional monster to be found, but for the most part these are intimate tales of human relationships and the pain of loss, with relative subtlety in their supernatural twists. Many also feature a layer of abstraction, or rather of

“The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”Though he likely wasn’t aware of the fact, William Faulkner summarized a good majority of horror fiction with this eloquent little truth. The artifacts of the past constantly surround us. They are buried in the soil of our land, the stone of our homes, the flesh of our minds, stubbornly refusing to relinquish their hold on us, grafting themselves to us with strings of impenetrable scarlet thread.A more recent narrative trope popularized by film is...

A Great First CollectionAs a route to this wonderful collection I should thank Priya Sharma's fiction blog, and James Everington's The Hyde Hotel. There tales are of suspense wrapped in emotion, an exploration of trapped human spirit.

Underwhelming. Poorly edited (spelling errors ahoy), sometimes not straying beyond poorly masked triviality. Probably the best - but still not mind-blowing - was the tale that gave the title to the entire collection, a neat update on an old-school formula.

Some of the stories were ok, others just didn’t make sense. Overall I got through half of the book. Not a book of short stories I would recommend.

Table of Contents:05 - "Namesake"21 - "Skein and Bone"51 - "Ghost"61 - "Making Room"65 - "Family Tree"85 - "Time Keeping"111 - "Bleak Midwinter"117 - "The Blue Room"135 - "Ulterior Design"159 - "The Cloud Cartographer"187 - "Preservation"211 - "Wordsmith"229 - "The Quiet Room"263 - "Senbazuru"

Having been a fan of V.H. Leslie's since reading 'Senbazuru' in Shadows And Tall Trees, I was very excited to pick this collection up. It's a truly beautiful volume, elegant as befitting the fluid, flowing prose Leslie writes. Thematically, it's quite wonderful - precious little gore and violence but an abundance of horrors all the same, from the indirect psychological warfare of Ulterior Design to the short, chilling and so very clever Bleak Midwinter. Namesake begins with intrigue and paranoia...

Sadly, the praise within this book doesn't do it justice. This was by far one of the best short story collections I've ever read--and I've read a lot. V.H. Leslie is a fantastic author, in more ways than one. Every story was unique, and creative. Every ending was a nail in the coffin. Her writing style is both haunting and humorous. This author has a masterful, lyrical way with stringing words and paragraphs together, which very few writers ever obtain. Also, in this collection are exquisite exa...

These stories remind me a lot of the work of Kelly Link or Elizabeth Hand, perhaps a bit of Helen Marshall in there too. They tend to be milder weird fiction of a more emotional bent, tinged with melancholy and often with a magical, other-worldly feel to them. Leslie can generate a good scare when she chooses (see "The Blue Room" and especially "Skein and Bone.")Unfortunately those scares are few and far between. There's some good stories here, but the only ones I really _loved_ were "Skein and

There are some interesting ideas here... badly executed. It feels like everything exists purely for the denouement, which is where the idea is laid out. Never fully explored. The writing doesn't excite, it isn't poetic, it simply is. I think these stories would have benefitted from the editorial process.

A great short story collection. I think these stories compared to the usual horror short's that I read were nicely spread out and come to a nice conclusion. Sometimes a heart wrenching one compared with the usual shock and gore, they made me think alot more and sympathise.

Why Did I buy the book? - I respect the publisherI had never heard of this author before. I am reviewing the stories in order from my least favourite to favourite. Making RoomA young relationship can be destroyed by the past under the bed. Sometimes quite literally! This one has a clever idea at the centre and the prose is very nice as it is across the collectionbut I do think it is the weakest story. WordsmithVernon is a Wordsmith who understands the power of words more than most. Filled with a...

SENBAZURU“The Lady of Shalott at least had her tapestry to keep her busy.”This is an exquisite coda to the book’s stories as a gestalt that I have read over the last few days, and to its stories that I once read a year or so ago that still reside in my mind if in a less defined form, with such elements of misty memory and focused immediacy creating, I claim, a theme-and-variations on time keeping and time losing.A blend of the senility into which I must enter if the body doesn’t get me first, li...