Folk Horror (Flame Tree Publishing, August 27, 2024)

Folk Horror is one of those terms that’s never quite fashionable or unfashionable.

To me there’s only either good or bad horror fiction, and that’s what really matters to the readers.

This anthology — part of the Beyond & Within series from Flame Tree Publishing — fortunately is very good, regardless of labels. So kudos to the editors (excellent horror writers themselves) for assembling such an amount of creepy and entertaining material.

To be precise the book includes two little poems and fifteen stories.

I’m not qualified to comment upon the poetry (provided by Neil Gaiman and Linda D. Addison) so I will stick to the prose, and in particular I will briefly focus only to the tales that I’ve found more accomplished.

• “The Well” by John Connolly is an outstanding, creepy tale about the unsettling events taking place during an archeological dig.
• “Rabbitheart” by Jen Williams is a disturbing story revolving around a weird small creature caught in a rabbit snare, rescued by a young girl and finally welcomed by her family.
• If there is a veritable example of “folk” horror this would be “ The Original Occupant” by Adam LG Nevill, exploring the events surrounding the mysterious disappearance of a Briton in the Swedish country.
• Benjamin Spada provides the truly excellent “The Great White,” featuring Cole West (the main character in the author’s Black Spear novels), teaming with an old friend to destroy a malevolent Wendigo.
• “Good Boy” by Allison Littlewood is about a peculiar “dog” whose presence brings about disease and destruction.

The other contributors to the volume are Lee Murray, Katie Young,Stephen Volk, HR Laurence, B Zelkovich, Helen Grant , Kathryn Healy, V Castro, Cavan Scott, Christina Sng.

Enjoy.

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Mario Guslandi was born in Milan, Italy, where he currently lives. He became addicted to horror and supernatural fiction (too) many years ago, after accidentally reading a reprint anthology of stories by MR James, JS Le Fanu, Arthur Machen etc. Most likely the only Italian who regularly reads (and reviews) dark fiction in English, he has contributed over the years to various genre websites such as Horrorworld, Hellnotes, The British Fantasy Society, The Agony Column and many more. His last review for us was Dastardly Damsels edited by Suzie Lockhart.