Friday, December 10, 2010

Review: Lessons by Michael Crane


Rating: 5 out of 5

When you have a collection of twenty-five stories, and they're all exactly one hundred words long, it's not really practical to give a full five-part breakdown of them. Mainly because, if a story is that short, it either grabs you or it doesn't. There's really no other way to judge them.

Lessons by Michael Crane is a wonderfully campy, disgusting, funny, and ironic collection of the aforementioned 100-word "drabbles". They snag you by the title and by the time you reach the last sentence, you excitedly turn to the next page, where even more snippets of horror goodness awaits you.

Every...single...one...of these short tales are fantastic. Some rise above others - such as the hilarious Grim, the darkly ominous Spoiled, the masterfully ironic Haunted, and finally the masterful and creepy slice-of-regret Simple, which might well be the best piece of microfiction I've ever read. But all of them are fantastic. There is not a lacking tale to be found.

This is a great - and brisk - little collection, folks. It's well worth the dollar you'll spend on it. I highly recommend it to any lover of horror out there. They'll grab you by the throat, shake you around a bit, and then spit you out wanting more.

Good times. Seriously.

Purchase Lessons by clicking the link below:

1 comment:

Karen Cantwell said...

I have read MANY of the 100 word shorts from Lessons and loved them all. I can't wait to finish as well as read some of Michael Crane's other short story collections. He is a writer to keep a watch on, to be sure. He'll be going places.