Review of "20th Century Ghosts" by Joe Hill Item 16 - Finish 30 22 books

The first thing that I ever read by Joe Hill was his phenomenal comic series "Locke and Key" and from the first issue I was in the tank for him. This was my first experience with his prose and it was a good one. Hill has a way with short stories that very few modern writers can match and while there may be an impulse from some to qualify that with some nonsense about the horror genre (mostly from the same quarters that start reviews of every graphic novel comic book with phrases like "comics aren't just for kids anymore") I won't. I think he's a fantastic writer and every story in this collection, horror or otherwise, shines in one way or another.

In fact, he uses a few of the stories in this collection to subvert some very ingrained horror conventions; "Best New Horror" in particular plays with the tropes of the psycho family, not to mention the classic horror writer go-to of the publishing world. I honestly can't recall the last time that I felt as tense while reading a suspense story as I did while in the grip of "In The Rundown". And "Voluntary Committal" reminded me so much of "House of Leaves" that I couldn't help but love it.

That actually gets to one sticking point with this set of stories: I wanted more with several of them. Not just in the sense that I would have loved to explore deeper into the world of "Voluntary Committal" (already a fairly lengthy section) but also that a few of the stories just end. And while in some cases it could be argued that they do so in a way that does subvert those same tropes as mentioned before (again, here I'm thinking of "Best New Horror"), in the end I felt let down when it happened. Overall, however, I was so pleased that I didn't care. Joe Hill is the sort of writer who has such a strong command of the storytelling process that anything short of fantastic feels almost disappointing.