Books
It seems as if a demonic new subgenre has been appearing in the horror lit world in the last several years. Hell. Edward Lee visited it in City Infernal and Infernal Angel, Jeffrey Thomas has documented it in Letters From Hades, David Barnett took many writers to Hell in his limited Necro publication, Damned. Now, well known internet cronies, Robert N. Lee and David Wilbanks have brought Hell home to horror readers in the Hellbound Books anthology, Damned Nation.

I suppose that writing about Hell really isn’t all that new. Dante did it and it can be argued that The Bible is a fictitious story that deals with an afterlife of punishment and damnation.

The great thing (well, one of the great things) about Damned Nation is the cover price. You really can’t beat this deal. For a little more than the average massmarket paperback, you get this sulfur-infused gathering of known and lesser known writers. And this book is much more durable than the average paperback. It beats the devil out of a 20 dollar flimsy trade paperback or a deluxe hardcover that costs a reader an arm and a leg.

Lee and Wilbanks evidently gave their writers a lot of leeway in their depictions of Hell. Some are fiery and brutal, while other writers wrote of a damnation of tedium and utter hopelessness. Some stories may disturb or even frighten you, while others might make you smile or possibly even laugh out loud.

The opening story of any anthology should serve as a worm on a hook does to a fish. It should grab a reader and hang onto him or her and reel them in for the count. I had never heard of A. H. Jennings, but I can’t imagine a weirder or more suitable beginning for a fiendish anthology than This is Mars. Other notable stories in Damned Nation are H.E. Double Hockey Stick, by Geoffrey Girard (another writer I was unaware of), Cul-de-Sac, by William D. (Bill) Carl, Tortures of that Inward, by Tom Piccirilli, a really different Doc Brite story by Poppy Z. Brite, the always reliable William F. Nolan’s Dark Return The Everywhere Man, by Norman Prentiss and Bev Vincent’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. My favorite story was a haunting tale of desire, damnation and snow cones called Kheller’s Treats, by yet another writer that is new to me, Eric S. Grizzle.

As with any anthology, some stories worked better for me than others, but I can say with absolute honesty that there isn’t a single story in Damned Nation that I completely disliked. This is a well-rounded assembly of new and established talent and is well worth purchasing for any reader of macabre fiction. Especially in a time when it is getting increasingly difficult to find anthologies of original fiction in inexpensive editions. Readers usually have to turn to the small press for their short story fix, and as I mentioned earlier, Damned Nation is a much better bargain than most of the stuff out there.




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