by Daniel Pyle (Editor)
Publisher: Blood Brothers Publishing
Release Date: 31 October 2011
ISBN: 0615565123
Format: Kindle book
Pages: 168
Genre: Horror; Short Stories; Anthology
Time to read: 4 hours
Source: Amazon (Free at the time; One Hundred Free Books) [2 January 2014]
aStore Link (Real Book): Unnatural Disasters
aStore Link (Kindle Book): Unnatural Disasters
Summary
(from Goodreads)
Floods. Earthquakes. Tornados. Asteroids. Nature can be vicious. But when you combine natural disasters with the very unnatural imaginations of the authors in this collection, you get terrors worse than anything Mother Nature has ever thrown at us, forays into nightmarish worlds that make a hurricane look like a light summer breeze.
Join Scott Nicholson, William Meikle, Daniel Pyle, Robert J. Duperre, Danielle Bourdon, Keith Gouveia, Ruth Francisco, J.A. Titus, and Robin Morris for nine horrific tales that will leave you cringing, gasping, and so scared of the outdoors you’ll never want to leave your house again.Stories:
"39 Days" by Robert J. Duperre
"The Meek" by Scott Nicholson
"Sourdough" by Ruth Francisco
"Rickman's Plasma" by William Meikle
"Twist" by Daniel Pyle
"Wild Release" by Keith Gouveia
"Whiteout" by Danielle Bourdon
"Resurrecting Eve" by J.A. Titus
"Narobrian Afternoon" by Robin Morris
My Reaction
I didn't know what to expect from Unnatural Disasters. I had just become a regular visitor of One Hundred Free Books, a site which lists free Kindle books available on Amazon several times a day. To be honest, I'm still a reluctant participant in digital book reading, mainly because it's new, and new scares me. But, I also started going to the gym (also new and scary) and was finding trying to hold a book while also trying to burn calories took too much concentration.
When I began to read the first story I didn't really pay attention that I was going into an anthology of nine very creative short stories by various authors. with a connecting theme. This first one began with people stranded among water. I thought: simple lost on an island story. How wrong I was.
As each story unfolded, the central theme of a natural disaster (or for some stories, what seemed to be natural disasters) in some fashion linked every story together. Snowstorms, tornadoes, floods, and the like became backdrops to tales with more of a horror/sci-fi feel than disaster-survival epics. As a result, the book title is very appropriate for the contents within.
At points within a couple of the tales I was a bit lost, and I think that could have been because the authors may have been shooting for a smaller page count to fit in the compilation; that also may be because I am not an avid follower of horror stories, so I may have missed some things that are fairly common in the genre. Some of the stories were a bit more graphic than I was ready for, but nothing I probably haven't seen on television. I'm not a big fan of anthropophagy (even if fictional), and it happens a bit more than I would like throughout the anthology. Speaking of television: SyFy channel needs to grab the filming rights to a few of these stories, because they would be a delight to watch.
I would certainly recommend this short story anthology to any horror fans or frequent watchers of sci-fi. I had nothing invested since at the time this version was free, but given the enjoyment I had reading, the current price for the ebook is still a bargain.
Reading Challenges: 2014 Read Your Freebies! Challenge
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