Nightfall and Other Dangers by Jacob Steven Mohr
I would like to thank the author for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review
Publisher – Journalstone Publishing
Published – Out now
Price – £13.95 paperback £4.98 Kindle eBook
A flyboy volunteers for a suicide mission with a copilot from beyond the stars. A painter's body is possessed by a malevolent force to render a likeness of its hellish beloved. Hundreds of adults mysteriously drown themselves along a one-mile stretch of beach. Two bandits mistakenly steal a severed head-and inherit a nightmare.
These and more are the narratives within Nightfall & Other Dangers: stories of ecstasy and terror, memory and madness. Quietly apocalyptic, intimately brutal, and above all else devilishly frightening, this is the beginning of the Nightfall, from which there is no reprieve of dawn.
I still think readers tend to think of horror as just one particular strand – monsters and what they dimply remember of Stephen King but as a famous demon once said it contains multitudes. Horror can be schlocky, gothic, modern or folklorish. That’s the fun and when you get a short fiction collection where the author is doing well with all those strands its always worth paying attention and I really enjoyed reading Nightfall and Other Dangers by Jacob Steven Mohr is a fascinating new voice successfully experimenting with various parts of the horror genre and they’ll be one author I’ll be looking out for in the future with great interest.
Among the many stories I enjoyed reading were
Nostalgia – a great sinister weird flash fiction tale where a writer tells us of the garden of hands they witnessed their mother attend to. Such a strange unexplainable scene it immediately grabs you into the book.
You Are The Hero of Legend - a young boy finds a magical sword that promises they can be a hero. The price to be paid is unexpected and viscerally described. Be careful what you wish for! A delightfully evil concept is explored.
The Panic – a really well delivered found footage tale of how a large crowd o of people walked in to the sea and where never heard for again. I love the mosaic of emails, news reports and blogs that slowly build up hints what happened and yet the story never reveals everything. Delightfully sinister,
Mister McKenzie – One of my favourites is this tale of a babysitter and how she feels her charges are being influenced by a strange statue of a butler the kids call Mister McKenzie. Mohr does some very clever weaving of tales that cloud our view of what is happened. Children can be strange easily enough on their own or can they be possessed? Mohr also makes us re-assess our own narrator’s viewpoint a few times which makes us worry what we are missing from their narration. It’s a powerful strange tale.
A Real Likeness – This is very strange almost cosmic horror. A young art student draws a girl ‘s profile in class. Another student asks if he could draw the whole picture. What follows is a strange lost moment in time our narrator makes us feel their torment and also how their sense of reality is destroyed. That so little is explained makes it even more chilling.
Red Meat – Another tale that doesn’t like to explain too much which makes it work. A successful businesswoman pays a price once alone in the office. How the price works and what it costs are unexpected, and it is just an eerie set-up that hints at bigger tales that it makes a big impression on the reader.
She’s New In Town – a short tale of a tired shop worker encountering a furtive customer in their store. Mohr again delight in showing us the unexplainable and it’s the reactions of the characters that give the scenes life and a great sense of tension. What happens next is left up to us.
When It Rains – Another of my favourites. A young man in a storm is visited by his girlfriend. This tale captures young love and then swiftly also enters emotional exploration of grief and loneliness. Horror will not always end in pulse-raising fear but can also help us explore our own humanity.
As you can see this is a very accomplished selection of stories that also includes weird westerns, historical ghost stories, hunting nightmares and feasts at the end of the world. Mohr has considerably impressed me and I’ll be keen to see what further stories they have to tell us in the future.
