This book was absolutely brilliant. It's the third Laird Barron book I read inside the last twelve months and while I loved them all, this is by far the best. It probably is the only example I've ever experienced where short stories actually do something a single novel could never do: create a mythos from top to bottom. There are some major moments in this collection: Termination Dust, Ardor, Black Dog, Tomahawk Park Survivor Raffle, but it's how Laird Barron connects the dots and creates a terr...

It's not often that my first reaction to finishing a book is to sit and stare out a window in disbelief, but that was all my mind could summon my body to do after turning the last page in Laird Barron's new collection Swift to Chase. It is that good. I've been a fan of Barron's for a number of years now, and every time I think I've got a handle on the sheer breadth and scope of his fiction he releases a new short story, collection, or novella that blows my mental battleship straight out of the w...

I wrote an intro to the collection. Suffice to say, it's Laird's best book to date.

Barron's masterpiece to date.

With this collection of interconnected short stories, I feel like Laird Barron pushed the envelope of his weird, cosmic horror even further. The way he had played with non-linear narrative in "The Croning" (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...) is kicked up a notch with "Swift to Chase".Mostly set in his native Alaska, these stories are loosely centered around Jessica Mace, a rather enigmatic dame who flees the isolation of Anchorage, the complications of a fractured family... and the notori...

Laird Barron's Swift to Chase is marketed as the author's fourth short story collection (after the groundbreaking The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, Occultation and Other Stories, and The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All: Stories), but I believe that in reality it's a stealth novel. To be sure, each story in the volume can stand on its own, yet the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Barron seems to be going about the work of constructing a new mythology, or a new branch of the Old

Introduction by Paul TremblayPublishers Weekly top ten list for most anticipated horror/Scifi Fall 2016 releases.Laird Barron’s fourth collection gathers a dozen stories set against the backdrops of the Alaskan wilderness, far-future dystopias, and giallo-fueled nightmare vistas.All hell breaks loose in a massive apartment complex when a modern day Jack the Ripper strikes under cover of a blizzard; a woman, famous for surviving a massacre, hits the road to flee the limelight and finds her misadv...

This is yet another excellent collection of fiction from Laird. My personal favourites in this book are, Termination Dust, Ears Prick Up and Frontier Death Song. In May of this year (2018) Laird will have his first crime novel published by Putnam. I for one, am looking forward to that.

An excerpt of my review on This Is Horror: http://www.thisishorror.co.uk/book-re...If you’ve been reading horror fiction for any length of time, then you’ve likely heard of and even read Laird Barron. If you haven’t you should probably go see what all the buzz is about. Barron is the author of several brilliant collections and novellas, tales of the strange and cosmic with a heavy pulp noir flavor and literary sensibilities, and he’s pretty much the single author who sets the bar that likeminded...

There were a few great stories in this book of 12. Laird Barron has a unique way of writing and describing things. He relies heavily on the imagination of the reader. This is often very good thing, but sometimes it can become a little confusing, particularly in the stories that jump from scene to scene very quickly.Overall, 3.5 stars.

I swear his books get better with each new publishing - Swift to Chase continues this nightmarish trend of excellence! So. Fucking. Good.

Another dark and gloomy winner by Laird Barron. This time we are given loosely connected stories that in their entirety could be taken as a novel. There were moments that reminded me of Raymond Carver and Charles Bukowski, maybe even some Gilbert Sorrentino. This is cosmic horror for adults.My favorites were Andy Kaufman Creeping Through the Trees (What a title!) and Frontier Death Song.All of the stories are solid.

Some seriously stunning stuff that deteriorated into some mediocre half-coherent horror by the end of it. Was it worth spoiling a good flowing narrative with that freak show? Q: Me? Let’s say I prefer to rely upon a combination of native cunning and feminine wiles to accomplish my goals. Flames and explosions are strictly measures of last resort. (c)Q:I’ll put my life in mortal danger for a pile of cash. No shock there, anybody would. (c)Q:It’s as if the stars and the sky don’t align correctly,

Swift to Chase is a collection of interconnected Laird Barron tales, most set in Alaska.That's really underselling the collection. In Swift to Chase, Laird Barron performs a juggling act, pitting the bleakness of life in Alaska with the mangled nature of time and cosmic horror that lurks just around the corner. The interconnected nature of the tales and the fact that they aren't presented in chronological order drives home Barron's concept of time that is as twisted and deformed as a wrecked car...

In one of the most ambitious books I've read all year, author Laird Barron presents us with a collection of stories that not only play with the mixing of pulp genres like hard-boiled noir, slasher thriller, and cosmic horror, but also build a whole horror mythology as they move along, compiling to become a mosaic novel in which everything is connected. All of the stories revolve around various people that live in a small, cursed Alaskan town, and the horrors that befall them. "There's a

Originally published at Risingshadow.Laird Barron's Swift to Chase is the author's fourth collection. It is a prime example of what modern horror fiction and literary dark fiction can offer to readers, because it contains beautifully written, disturbing, experimental and memorable stories that boldly break new ground.I can honestly say that Swift to Chase is one of the most impressive collections I've ever had the pleasure of reading, and I consider it to be Laird Barron's best and most exciting...

Review on the way . . . wow.

Before we get into this review I need to let you in on a little secret. Are you ready? Here it is. I may be a bit biased when it comes to works by Laird Barron.There is a bit of history behind this bias. I first came across Laird Barron about a decade ago. Up until that point I'd only been reading Tolkien style fantasy and the occasional science fiction. At that time I was working at a large chain bookstore and I came across an intriguing book with a beautiful cover. It was so different from all...

Laird Barron’s superbly decadent and goosebump-inducing fourth collection of short stories, “Swift to Chase”, could also be subtitled, as Paul Tremblay notes in the introduction, “The Alaska Stories”. I’ll go one step further and suggest another subtitle: “The Jessica Mace Stories”.In truth, not every story in this collection has something to do with Alaska. In some cases, the connection is negligible to the point of being irrelevant. Same can be said for Jessica Mace. Only a few of the stories

If you thought you knew what to expect from Laird Barron, his latest (fourth) collection – and sixth major publication – Swift to Chase, tears down all those preconceptions. He breaks a lot of new ground here, especially in terms of technique, structure and style. His Old Leech Mythos – which makes Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos look like the Teletubbies – is present and accounted for, but Barron attacks it from some unexpected angles. He seems to be going out on an experimental limb both with the i...