Have you ever heard a name and thought you knew who they were talking about but couldn’t figure out why? Joe Lansdale is that person for me. I have read The Drive-In, and the movie Bubba Ho-Tep is a guilty pleasure of mine, but for some reason I never make the connection to Mr. Lansdale. So when my wonderful friends on #BookSky pointed out this collection was available for an Advanced Reader Copy I threw my name in the hat. Thank you so much to the publisher Tachyon Publications and NetGalley for granting me this privilege. The book will be released on October 7, 2025.
How fitting to have a little Joe on Joe acation to kick this anthology off. The legendary Joe Hill writes the introduction to this collection. My favorite thing Joe Hill said in his introduction is referring to Lansdale’s writing style:
“Joe was painting with leaded gasoline, shitty beer, ruptured organs, and mother’s tears”
I completely know what he means. Lansdale’s writing is the goofy, gritty, for lack of a better term, trashy style that makes his stories so much fun to read. Check out the story list:
- The Folding Man
- The Hoodoo Man and the Midnight Train
- God of the Razor
- My Dead Dog Bobby
- Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back
- By Bizarre Hands
- On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks
- Love Doll: A Fable
- Mr. Weed-Eater
- The Bleeding Shadows
- Not from Detroit
- The Hungry Snow
- Dog, Cat, and Baby
- Bubba Ho-Tep
- Fish Night
- Night They Missed the Horror Show
This collection is not all pure horror, but compasses all kinds of Horror sub genres that even included some sci-fi horror. Some of my personal favorites were, Bubba Ho-Tep, The Folding Man, and The Hoodoo Man and the Midnight Train.
Each of these stories had something that resonated with me. Bubba Ho-Tep was so much fun to read what the Bruce Campbell classic was based off of. The folding man started out with a bunch of boys mooning a car full of nuns that reminded me of my own high school days, and The Hoodoo Man and the Midnight Train had kind of a Dark Tower Roland Deschain feel to it.
As for the review part. This book was a hard read for me. Where I loved the aforementioned stories and there were others that were really good, I struggled to stick with this one. I love an anthology and usually try to read a story a day, but this one I took long breaks to read other things in between stories. A couple of stories I also just didn’t care for which cased a struggle to just finish those. I will not say which ones were not my favorite so as to not put that seed of negativity out there for a future reader.
Overall this was a solid 🥃🥃🥃 read for me. I’m so glad I read this and would recommend it to anyone who a fan of the twisted and weird kind of story.
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