Thirteen Stories of Truly Dark Fiction For years, J.R.’s stories have been acclaimed throughout the independent horror world. These are stories that challenge expectations and reject the staid conventions of the genre. These are stories that don’t compromise. Above all, what readers understood and appreciated was that these stories were about something. These are stories that, in the finest … in the finest tradition of H.P. Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, Dennis Etchison, and T.E.D. Klein, articulate what you’ve always suspected: that life is a losing proposition.
For the first time, after much demand, J.R.’s surviving stories have been collected in one anthology.
West Pigeon Press is proud to unleash these stories upon the world.
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A really fine collection of unsettling short stories. Eerie, with an eye on everyday things/circumstances that are slightly (or completely) wrong, and kept me guessing throughout. Well-written dark fiction, and I already have 2 more of the author’s collections to read, so that’s a happy ending.
In You Shall Never Know Security the author J.R. Hamantaschen tells tales full of depression, the mundane, inner thoughts, and Lovecraftian beings. It’s no exaggeration in the intro that tells you these stories weren’t written on the quick for the money, they aren’t very long, but each takes its time to tell what it wants to tell. They are never concerned with how a story “should” be told, the author does what he wants and makes them his own. I don’t want to get into any such obnoxious claims about how SPECIAL AND UNIQUE this makes the collection, but when you mentally compare it to other things you’ve read you can clearly see the contrast, and this makes it at the very least, refreshing … and also super weird.
The title of the collection, and the quote at the beginning set up the main theme of this, you will always fail. Life is just a losing game, no matter how true your love the newness will fade and turn into apathy towards one another, no matter how well you are doing at your job you’re just always fighting to maintain your position or improve but one day you’ll lose it, friendships will always drift apart, etc, etc… The characters are always thinking about their version of these things in each story, it’s just really depressing. It’s taking the Lovecraft cosmicism and instead of looking at things on a big scale and looking at all of humanity, puts it down on our mundane, normal lives, and our battle to live and get by in society, that’s all of course just utterly pointless. Also depressing.
Quite a few of the stories get very gory, and gross.. the author has a bit of thing with having to go with the bathroom. You’ll see in one story, and if you’re like me you’ll fail to start the story after that a few times because you’re thinking, “did I really just read that?”. You did. The descriptions of the gore and beings causing them are very imaginative, and also never that clear about what they are, so you’re left to fill in some crazy and weird blanks. If you enjoy this type of thing, you’ll happily do that.
Reading J.R. Hamantaschen for the first time was very jarring for me, he’s very wordy, or verbose if I were fancy enough to say that word, .. I’m not but he clearly is. Here’s a quick look at my kindle vocabulary builder after reading this collection: “dragooning, stentorian, ignominy, encomiums, sequacious, syncopation, dysphemism, ebullition, uxorious .. okay I’ll stop there but seriously. I’m sure you’re all smarter than me out there, but I was doing some serious long pressing on words.
The stories here just stick with you, they’re weird in a good way and depressing which is never good, but it’s easy to relate to and nice to see how well it’s dealt with. To do this review I’ve had to read the collection a second time, and in doing so I enjoyed it more now being used to the author’s style, and the themes. I wouldn’t look down on anyone who finds this hard to read, or isn’t interested in the horror of depression that this tackles over and over, but if you’re willing to give it a shot you’ll find some great writing and plots you certainly haven’t seen before. Strongly recommended.