Book Review: “Twisted Anatomy” short story anthology Edited by Sci-Fi & Scary
Twisted Anatomy
Sci-Fi & Scary
I love a good anthology, and Twisted Anatomy does not disappoint. It’s a really solid, fantastic anthology, put out by a brilliant team, and one you really should check out if you haven’t done so already. Even the TOC is a shining example of the sheer talent in this community, including Laurel Hightower, S.H. Cooper, Hailey Piper, Cynthia Pelayo and Tabitha Wood to just name a few. The stories contain imagery you won’t be able to shake from your head, starting right off the bat with a fantastic tale by Red Lagoe, as a young woman experiences her worst period ever.
I swear I’m going to think about that one every month.
Before we get into specific stories, I just want to touch on the anthology as a whole. Body Horror as a subgenre is not something I’ve read a whole lot of. But I know isn’t totally easy to pull off. There’s a definite skill to writing it, where you tread the line between effective and over the top. Yet it is a core part of horror, and a subgenre with a lot of scope. It can be used to explore so many different aspects, and the strongest parts of it are demonstrated in Twisted Anatomy.
Before this anthology, if you’d handed me a book and said, “This is body horror,” I probably would have been indifferent. But now, if you hand me something from any of these authors and say, “This is body horror,” I’ll gleefully take it.
These stories will disturb. They will get under your skin – as happens to a few particular characters – and burrow their way so far down you won’t realise you’re thinking of them until they erupt like a particularly painful boil. Let’s go through a few highlights, shall we?
Tabitha Wood I already know to be an excellent short story writer, proven once more here with “Little Teeth”. It hits the right notes, and will make you think twice next time that particularly troublesome tooth begins to throb. “The Foal with Two Heads” is a brilliantly written tale from Andrew Joseph White, in a post-apocalyptic world where mutants are all too common. There’s a really good Fallout vibe to this, and it explores some very present-day themes.
“With Teeth” is the kind of story I don’t want to say too much about, but again has some really solid ideas and images, an engrossing tale that sucks you in. J.A.W. McCarthy does an excellent job. “The Real Jurassic Park was the Gender Dysphoria We Felt Along the Way” is, well, hard to describe, but like “The Foal” it explores themes and ideas deeper than the story itself.
Other strong stories include (because I can’t go through them all) – “Lamb’s Lettuce” by Cynthia Pelayo, “Just Beneath Her Skin” by S.H. Cooper (this one made me cry), “The Little Head” by Laurel Hightower and “Black Out” by Patrick Barb.
And as if we haven’t had enough good stuff by the time we get to the last two stories in the anthology, we have an offering from Lily George with “The Second Coming (or: The Vagentacle Story that Started It All)”, in which a woman picks up something rather strange after sleeping with an astronaut. This one is…I don’t even have words for it, just trust me; it’s good.
And finally, there is “SUCCUBUS TIPS FOR SUCCU-BLISS” by Hailey Piper. If you don’t know how good Hailey is by now, you need to check out her stuff. This is absolutely fantastic, and the perfect end to an overall really solid anthology.
Sci-Fi & Scary really did a great job with this one. There’s a lot of stories packed into its pages, and of course some are weaker than others, but overall it’s an excellent anthology and makes me hope we see more from them in the future.
Grade: A
Review by Elle Turpitt
Twitter: @elleturpitt
I received this ebook from Sci-Fi & Scary for review consideration.