This was an excellent anthology. A good mix of genres and enjoyable stories. Only a couple misses for me, the rest were great. My favorites were "God Damn You to Hell, John Glenn" by Frank J. Oreto, and "Are Monsters Real?" by Gabino Iglesias, both of which are outstanding. Highly recommended!

I really enjoyed this anthology. There were a lot of stories that I liked, and some that weren’t my cup of tea. There were a few scifi horror mesh ups as well, so if you’re into any of those two genres, I think there’s a good chance you’ll find at least one or two stories that you’ll love in here.

I discovered some new authors whose work I’ll be following in the future. Recommend this to the lovers of the genre, and also to those who, like me, would love to sample short but to the point stories that’ll creep them out as well as make them think.

Creature features aren’t usually my thing. But when I saw the list of authors involved in Novus Monstrum, an anthology of monster tales from Dragon’s Roost Press (edited by Douglas Gwyilym and Ken MacGregor), I slammed the “Read Now” button so hard. Old-school heavyweights Joe R. Lansdale and Ramsey Campbell appear alongside many amazing horror writers of the current generation, such as Gemma Files, Gwendolyn Kiste, Gaby Triana, and Gabino Iglesias, plus many other names that were previously unfamiliar to me.

Let me tell you, this is a strong collection. So strong that when I was trying to select standouts from among the Table of Contents, I ended up highlighting more than half of the stories–and that was me attempting to be conservative. Rather than focusing on the stories by the bigger names, I’d like to highlight a few of my favorites by the new-to-me writers: “God Damn You to Hell, John Glenn!” by Frank J. Oreto, a delightful romp about mutated sea monkeys; “A Grace of Finer Form” by Sarah Hans, a fable about what awaits humanity in a climate-change riddled wasteland; “Critical Mass” by Jonathan Maberry, which takes on the mysterious creatures that lurk in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch; “The Path of Skulls” by Jeffrey Thomas, about the formative legends of the Unnamed Country; “I Clean the Monster That Killed My Husband Every Morning” by Marco Cultrera, which presents an extreme method of dealing with man-made climate change; and “The Thirsty” by Tim Pieraccini, about an exploration of a great necropolis gone horribly wrong.

Naturally, there are many man-made horrors reflected in the story, including environmental concerns, artificial intelligence, and the soullessness of corporate life. If you like gore, there’s plenty of that too. Ditto for stories set in outer space. I would recommend the collection not just for people who love monsters but for any readers who love horror and weird fiction. Every story is engaging and well-paced; my attention never flagged. I think I may have come around on creature features, after all.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing a digital ARC for review.

I love horror and I really love monsters. An entire book with original stories about monsters by some of my favorite authors? Sign me up please! The quality was consistent, I would be surprised if anyone who enjoys horror will have trouble finding a story they really enjoy here.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this

I really enjoyed reading this book and the collection of stories, I’ve been a fan of a bunch of the authors and glad the tales worked together. It was a great introduction to Midnight Zone. I enjoyed how deep the stories were and left me wanting to read more in this series.

Well done horror anthology and I found almost every tale in here impressive. Especially watch out for God Damn You John Glenn

I’m a huge fan of short fiction, especially in the horror field. Most of my favorite authors excel in the form. This anthology does not disappoint- lots of visceral horror, grotesques galore and just a load of great horror. Get it!

This was a pretty solid collection of short stories revolving around monsters. I picked it up mostly because I saw that stories by Gabino Iglasias and Gwendolyn Kiste were in this anthology. I absolutely love both authors.

I will say that the biggest issue that I had with the cover and description of the book is that there was no mention of sci-fi stories. It did not explicitly say that it was a collection of horror stories, and I understand that monsters can be in space related tales, but I'm honestly not the biggest fan of sci-fi. I would say that maybe a third to a half of the stories were sci-fi. Even Gabino Iglasias' story, "Are Monsters Real?" was in the sci-fi genre, but I felt that that one was well done. My partner loves sci-fi and I showed him the title and description and asked him to guess what percentage of the stories were sci-fi and he guessed 0%. So, I think that maybe the description should mention that there is a lot of this genre in this book. That being said, some of the stories were excellent, most were just okay, and some were just terrible. For that reason, I give it 3 stars because the ones that were excellent made it all worth it.

The stories that really stood out to me were:

"Wonce I Was a Woman" by Douglas Ford - this was kind of a strange Margaret Atwood-esque story about women in the workplace

"God Damn You to Hell, John Glenn" by Frank J.Oreto - what a fun monster shrimp tale!

"The Sea Witch of the World's Fair" by Gwendolyn Kiste - this one was my favorite of the collection; a story about a real mermaid type creature posing as a fake mermaid at the world's fair; it's a story about friendship and acceptance and also Salvador Dali is a character

"Are Monsters Real?" by Gabino Iglasias - even though this is a sci-fi story I just love Iglasias' writing

"The Pike" by Pris Sears - a surreal trucking story set in the part of North Carolina that I live in

"Catfish" - by R.A. Busby - an interesting take on sirens with a good "catfishing" pun

I do feel that these stories were worth the read, but most were forgettable. I hated a couple of them, but I won't call those out; they just weren't for me.

A fun, scary grouping of monster stories

I enjoyed this collection of 22 monster short stories, some by horror authors I know well and some by new authors just getting a start.

I had favorites, of course, like The Sea Witch of the World's Fair and Are Monsters Real? But actually most of the stories in this horror anthology were well worth reading. And that's the thing about short stories, those stories I didn't especially care for will be someone else's favorite.

I received this Digital Review Copy from Dragon's Roost Press through Net Galley. I appreciate the chance I had to read and leave a review for this book.

I originally picked this one up for the stories by Jonathon Mayberry and Gabino Iglesias, but they were lol good. A really entertaining way to put all the monsters in your nightmares on paper. I can almost imagine some of them came from actual nightmares. I hope they come out with another anthology, I would definitely read it!

Huge thanks to Dragon’s Roost Press and NetGalley for sending me this ARC for review! All of my reviews are given honestly!

Had enough stories from writers I already know and enjoy and sprinkled in a few from people I had never heard of that I now need to keep an eye out for. Very good collection with a fun theme to tie everything together.