New Treasures: Swift to Chase by Laird Barron
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In his review of the 2014 Laird Barron tribute volume The Children of Old Leech, James McGlothlin wrote:
If you’re not familiar with Laird Barron, you really should be. He’s a multiple Shirley Jackson Award winner and currently on the 2014 World Fantasy Award ballot. I’ve raved about him several times on Black Gate, including here and here and here. Barron’s writing is often called Lovecraftian; but not in a pastiche sort of way. Rather, Barron is really good at capturing a cosmic-horror-feel in his stories that many believe Lovecraft perfected.
In addition, Barron is also like Lovecraft in that in his stories have recurring regions, locations, characters, and even a recurring evil book… [Barron is] one of the true masters of the weird that we currently have.
Barron is not resting on his laurels, however. In the last 12 months he’s released two novellas, Man With No Name and X’s For Eyes, and his highly anticipated fourth collection Swift to Chase arrived in hardcover, trade paperback and digital format earlier this month. Click on the images above to read the complete back cover copy.
Swift to Chase was published by JournalStone on October 7, 2016. It is 294 pages, priced at $29.95 in hardcover, $18.95 in trade paperback and $7.95 for the digital edition. See all our recent Laird Barron coverage here.
Most of the way through this. I like it a great deal, but perhaps not as much as his earlier volumes of short fiction. There’s a few stories here that rely more on an hallucinatory mood he generates, which can be very effective, but if you’re looking for a narrative that makes sense, then maybe not so much (I grant you I’ve been ill while reading the collection, so my interpretation is coloured by that!) That said, he’s better than just about everyone in the field of horror who isn’t named Ramsey Campbell, so go buy!