Reviews for By Reason of Darkness

The average rating for By Reason of Darkness based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-09-13 00:00:00 Peaches Mount Some of the tales were really good, but others were equally bad. That's why I gave it 3 stars. A book of short stories. The one entitled 'The Cleaning' is the most HORRIBLE short story I've ever read. He made a character, who's selfish beyond belief, even most Republicans aren't THAT bad. And what can you say about a character who's so detestable there's no way in the WORLD you can begin to like her. The woman ridded herself of her husband just b/c he had a stroke and she saw him as a complete burden. She was even disgusted b/c she had to help him learn to walk and talk again, and his failed efforts made her sick with disgust at him. So she gets rid of him for good. If people knew how many times this is true in my line of work, that knowledge would sicken them. I've treated several people who were incapacitated from strokes and I've seen several so-called relatives take the 'complete burden on me' attitude. There's nothing likable about it, and I thought one of the rules of writing was to create a character that the reader can sympathize with. I didn't sympathize with the asshole woman in this story one tiny bit. In fact, the story made me question its creator. I wondered if he would be another dimwit family member who thinks their relative's pain is about THEM and not the patient. BTW I think it's pretty damn presumptuous to compare one of this guy's horrible stories to anything Edgar Allan Poe wrote. Edgar Allan Poe NEVER wrote about a character who did something horrible just b/c they were a selfish asshole. The closest story, that IMO doesn't really come close, is The Black Cat, and even THAT was better than a woman who gets rid of her husband b/c she sees him as a burden. The guy in 'The Black Cat' was doing things while under the influence of alcohol, which he was demonstrating as a sickness, not just someone who thinks mentally challenged people have no place in a so-called 'normal' relationship. I find it offensive that the person writing about the writer had the nerve to align that story with anything Edgar Allan Poe wrote.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-19 00:00:00 Michelle Haag (3.25 stars) Harper's Mill, the setting for many of Simmons' stories, is much like Charles L. Grant's Oxford Run: a place whose facade of normality continually leaks with intense darkness. And were it not for amateurish excess, Simmons' prose style would be strongly reminiscent of Grant's. When a character in "Becoming October" is described as a "candy-corn soul of freedom," even forgiving readers might wonder if the author's sense of stylistic restraint hasn't been swept away by the autumnal winds whistling through many of these stories; which leads to this collection's main strength: atmosphere. The opener, "The Wind, When It Comes", along with "The Right Size" and "Following the Stones," uses the sensuous decay of autumn to reflect the characters' emotional turbulence, often to very haunting effects. Even in explicitly psychosexual tales such as "Skin" and "Daddy's Little Bitty Pretty One", Simmons' attentiveness to scene-setting, especially in terms of light and space, effectively dramatizes the dark, desperate desires of the protagonists. Littered with rudimentary errors of grammar and spelling, By Reason of Darkness certainly is not a truly exceptional debut; even its two arguable virtues--atmosphere and style--are sometimes excessive. However, for those who appreciate small-town horror which alternates between realism and surrealism, Simmons' only collection to date offers mood and violence in equal measure.