HORROR

Northern Nights

Undertow. Oct. 2024. 296p. ed. by Michael Kelly. ISBN 9781988964478. pap. $19.99. HORROR
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With stories that explore the frontier after the sun sets, this collection features Canadian authors whom readers might recognize, along with authors awaiting discovery. Some might know Canada through big cities like Ontario or Vancouver. However, there’s plenty of creepy, desolate wilderness in Canada to influence many of the stories in this collection, from a woman who discovers something unsettling about her marriage when she and her husband relax on the Canadian Gulf Islands, to British soldiers in the 1800s encountering a cottage occupied by a French family and home to a strange tradition. The stories chosen by Shirley Jackson and British Fantasy Award–winning editor Kelly feature well-known Canadian authors like Silvia Moreno-Garcia, David Demchuk, and Premee Mohamed, as well as up-and-coming writers like Nayani Jensen, who starts this collection off with a story in keeping with this book’s theme of quiet horror. The real star of this anthology, however, is the Canadian landscape, which feels both empty and teeming with horrors.
VERDICT Fans of speculative anthologies will want to read these stories on cold nights, particularly if they like stories where the land is as much an antagonist as a monster with sharp teeth and claws.
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