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| Book Cover via Amazon.com |
Opinion
All right, I’ll admit it, Edgar Allan Poe is not the master of romance. I realize that. However, I did want to do another collection of short stories that I love. Did you know that there always will be a horror story on Valentine's Day in the theater? Horror stories are to literature what chilies are to food, they add spice and make you enjoy your life more when you survive it.
So with that in mind, I picked up this collection of Poe and snuggled up to it. My first impressions of this collection are that I adore the cover and the story markers. I also really enjoyed the layout of t his collection.
Let me go into the critiques of this book, and they are in the “Story Structure, Foundation and Presentation” part of my scoring. First, let’s talk about the em dash love that Poe has. I have written about this in previous reviews, but I think there must have been a hot trend back in the day to use as many em dashes as possible.
My next critique is for the same category, and that is for the excessive use of italics in the narrative. It’s eye-catching and painful at times especially when it’s next to a lot of em dashes or parenthesis. I genuinely believe this has to be a stylistic choice from the time the stories were written. It’s just so unheard of now to see this much punctuation in a sentence. Moreover, yes, it’s possible some of this is allowed in the laws of grammatical proficiency, but if that’s the case the stories in here are encumbered by the punctuation. I mean yes, anyone could walk out of the door to work wearing body paint with rhinestones on every inch of their skin, and holding a neon sign with their names on it, but that doesn’t mean they should. I almost feel like it’s a detriment to have this much punctuation over the words written by a master of horror stories. The problem is, I have no idea if this was Poe who did this or someone who came in to clean up his works and added it later.
Now let’s go into what I truly enjoyed about this collection of horror stories. Though some small stories were not connected, there was a section of the book that fit together. I feel like whoever put the collection together set a small series story with several other small independent stories that Poe had written. Thankfully they all fit together. Of the story, I enjoyed how fun it is. I enjoyed the way that the series stories are like something that Sherlock could have worked on. I enjoyed the puzzles and the intrigue that was in there.
Most know Poe for his tales of murder and horror, but what they don’t talk about is how good he is at writing mystery stories. I feel this is comparable to Sir. Author Collin Doyle and even Agatha Christie. It’s top-notch, I got my mystery journal out and started to take notes when I realized what I’d stumbled on. I love mystery stories and this to me made the collection even better.
Some of the stories in this made me laugh as much as gave me chills, and I found that interesting. Poe could write logical stories, as well as mystery, horror and a bit of humor. His humor though was very dark as well as cynical humor. Case in point, in the second story, when the man thought he got away with murder and the climax happens in the story, I laughed. I thought that was justice. Another part where I laughed, in the story “William Wilson” there is a part where the mc of the story finds that he’s not alone with his colleagues at all. No, there’s something very dark in that room, and that darkness has a whisper. I giggled because it’s one of those horror cliche things now, but I find it amusing people think that if they are alone in a horror story, they are alone.
Score
For this short story collection, one I enjoyed, I have done some severe math here. I’m happy to report that this masterful collection received an 89/100 which is a 4-star review on Amazon and Goodreads. Do you need a scare? Well get this copy of Poe and enjoy the heat in your blood, a reminder you are alive, and many characters in this selection may not be so fortunate.
