Behind Blue Eyes

Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists by Adrian Collins My rating: 5 of 5 stars When this was announced by Arian Collins over at Grimdark Magazine as an upcoming Kickstarter, I couldn’t wait to jump on board. As I have always found myself intrigued by well written villains/adversaries, I knew this was something I wanted to experience. I’ve discovered while watching the Marvel shows on Netflix that the characters I’m most interested in, (Kingpin, Punisher, and Killgrave) are always the “bad guys”. These shows have great writing, such that they really dig deep into what made the villains..villains. While they don’t justify what they’ve become, these stories give some perspective, some insight on how they came to be the way they are. So yes, I was excited to have that experience In narrative form. Some authors have entertained me over the years with this concept, telling stories of the “bad guys” within the overall works that br...

Knee-Deep in Grit: Two Bloody Years of Grimdark Fiction by Adrian Collins My rating: 5 of 5 stars This book is a great taste of short grimdark stories, and though they're all classed in that "subgenre", there is a huge variety in this collection. The settings and styles are all different, but they share some common elements: blood and grit and darkness. I was actually surprised at the amount of sci-fi in this group of stories. All this time I thought of "Grimdark" as something one would get from Joe Abercrombie or Mark Lawrence, full of anti-heroes that cut and bludgeon people to death. You get that here, but the subgenre covers more ground in setting than I'd expected. It makes sense though, people die in space too. I received an eARC of this wonderful book from the amazingly cool editor, Adrian Collins. No strings, just a means to start early. I liked the first few stories enough that as soon as Adrian announced that p...