The Croning

The Croning
by Laird Barron
read: 2016

In some ways, The Croning is a love story (albeit a twisted, horrific one), but I don't think Barron quite stuck the landing. He establishes a strong sexual connection between Don and Michelle, but I don't see a lot of depth beyond that. Plus, she's been lying to him and manipulating him for decades - that he would consider the moral sacrifice he's confronted with late in the novel didn't ring true to me.

Barron is a master of conveying that something incredibly creepy is going on on the outskirts of our world, and I was intrigued and weirded-out through the novel. The tie-in with the classic fairytale of Rumpelstiltskin is a nice touch.

Occultation

Occultation
by Laird Barron
read: 2015

This is a creepy collection of stories to read, having moved into an old house and having a three-year that has nightmares every night. The final tale, "Six Six Six," about a couple that moves into a house that is literally and figuratively haunted, was especially a bad choice for me right now.

All of these stories are creepy, but "Strappado" and "Lagerstätte" are unusual for Barron in that they may not even be metaphysical.

Almost all of these stories have love as a backdrop. In "The Broadsword" and "Six Six Six," the lack of trust between romantic partners becomes an issue. Lack of trust is even more dramatic in "--30--," where two ex-lovers find themselves at each other's throats while in isolation on cursed land. "The Forest" is about terrible forces that doom all of humanity, but it's also about rediscovering lost love. In "Catch Hell," the occult elements are just a backdrop for a marriage torn asunder by the death of a child.

The past returning also shows up again and again. The protagonists of "Mysterium Tremendum" and "The Broadsword" are each haunted by a death witnessed years ago. The heroines of "Lagerstätte" and "Catch Hell" deal with grief over dead relatives. In "Six Six Six" the husband inherits his Satanic family homestead and returns to a life he believed left behind.

The Imago Sequence

The Imago Sequence
by Laird Barron
read: 2015

I don't think the high points in the The Imago Sequence were as insidiously creepy as some of the high points in The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All, but it had some standout moments. The sad, paranoid ending of "Probiscis" sent a chill down my spine. I liked the threads that tied some of the stories together: the Mina Mounds, the idea of portals between parallel worlds in Parallax and the title story. Like H.P. Lovecraft, Barron keeps you in the dark as to what the horror is, but by tying the stories together into the same mythology, you get to feel multiple parts of the elephant .

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All
by Laird Barron
read: 2015

The United States covers a wide, often sparsely populated area, and modern civilization sprung up relatively recently. What dwells in the spaces that haven't been paved over by mankind? What undiscovered ruins lay there? Who lived (or lives) there, and what strange gods did they worship? Barron answers these questions with a healthy dose of Lovecraftian horror. The empty spaces are full of dark, evil creatures and forces that want to destroy mankind and only spare humans so they can spread the tales of the terrors they have seen. Most of Barron's characters have figurative demons even before encountering the literal ones that people his stories. It makes for pretty dark stuff.