Brian Evenson might have the most distinct voice in horror fiction and this collection might be his best one. There’s really no one that sounds remotely like him working in the genre. The comp that I always seem to come back to is actually Poe. Although he manages to evoke Poe’s signature motifs (paranoia and immersion into the logic of a mind breaking with reality), it never reads like pastiche. It’s more like he’s the second coming of Poe by way of Donald Barthleme.

Although the tales in Song for the Unraveling of the World didn’t haunt me quite as much as the best stories in Collapse of Horses, this collection is much more even and Evenson displays even more mastery of the absurdist style he brings to the horror genre. Evenson is also the best when it comes to the rhythm and cohesiveness of a collection in its totality. You can expect no less with these stories.