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Atrocitas Aqua: Horrors of the Deep
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Product Description
Herman Melville said it best when he proclaimed that every path eventually leads to the sea. For it is the sea that holds our most sacred and terrifying fears, yet it also holds a glorious mysticism over us as a race, an attraction so strong that most of us flock to beaches, river banks, creeks, and lakes at every opportunity to stare out into the vast blueness and wonder: what's out there? Take my hand, Dear Reader, and swim with me through this journey of sixteen tales of watery terror. As we swim, if something reaches out of the darkness and gropes for your ankle, if something pulls you deeper into the depths of liquid madness, if your breath is stolen from you and you find yourself inhaling nothing but muddied water... do not fear, for it is just the ocean reclaiming what is already hers: your soul.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #3117552 in Books
- Published on: 2003-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 212 pages
Customer Reviews
Brutal Dreamer aka Peggy Jo joins horrors of the deep!
I (Brutal Dreamer) aka Peggy Jo Shumate, joins the watery deep horror group in my tale: "Living Doll: Jewel of Lost Souls" in Atrocitas Aqua, edited by David Bowlin.
This collection has made a major SPLASH and has received a vast amount of reviews! Below is a portion from THE HACKERS SOURCE Magazine review:
Hacker's Source, Reviewer Michael Purfield
Copyright Issue:
Issue 13
81520-01171
"...The bottom line, I always got the sense that the ocean is old and most likely evil, an evil you can't stop. (You ever think about the polar icecaps melting?)
So, if I'm starting to freak you out, well, that was nothing compared to the collection of short stories bundled together in "Atrocitas Aqua."
Justine Stanchfield kicks off the book with a private investigator searching for a runaway girl and not only finds her, but the ghosts of "Bone Lake." In Megan Powell's "Stooshie by th' Loch" a kid backpacking through Scotland discovers the Catholic Conspiracy involving the Loch Ness Monster. Paul Melniczek has a man searching for a hunter only to confront the "Shadow of the Swamp." Bob L. Morgan, Jr,'s Texas working stiff inherits a castle over-seas as well as the darkness "Beneath the Loch." A recently separated woman finds the secret of youth in a lost treasure from the Titanic in Peggy Jo Shumate's "Living Doll: Jewell of Lost Souls." Jason Brannon's diver searches for sunken treasure but instead finds evil rising through a "Halo of Blood." A trapper not only runs into a child-killer and his young Native American victim, but also a creature known as the "Swamper" in Walt Hicks' tale. L.J. Blount sets up a team of divers and priests into the deep ocean to find "Atianqua" only to find more than heaven. Hoboken drug thugs run into something more dangerous than themselves in Shawn P. Madison's "On the Water Front." Susanne S. Brydenbaugh's tale has a couple visit the "Water of the Rock" where they confront their horrific destiny. A young man swims across the waters to a Celtic camp and exercises his ceremonial right of becoming a man in Steven L. Shrewsbury's "Creating a Barbarian Man." A kid on Spring Break steps on a "Black Thorn" at the beach and suffers the infection in Christopher Fulbright's tale. Horns introduces us to "Captain O'Grady Blues' Key West Aquarium" were a young man acquires a job and discovers where the past employees went. A lowdown book detective attempts to repo a magic book written in the future in G.W. Thomas's "How Deep is Your Love." Steve E. Wedel says that "When Lady of Byblos Calls" you back to the ocean, you better listen. Finally, Dave Bowlin tells a tragic tale about a man suffering the guilt of accidentally killing a group of children and sets out to pay "Old Debts." .........
***
Pick up a copy today and have it in time for your Halloween campfires!
--Brutal Dreamer (aka Peggy Jo Shumate)
Water Logged
Production values in p.o.d.'s usually are bad, but this collection from double dragon is put together well.
Nevertheless, good production does not a good anthology make.
For the most part, the stories are predictable and made me lose interest quick.
While a couple of stories read well, several were not in the sphere of professionalism. The concept was fine: The selected stories could have been better. Were they memorable? The one with pirates and voodoo was good, and the story about the English channel read different and catty, but seemed not to belong here.
Waterlogged Terror
"Atrocitas Aqua" is an anthology containing 16 murky stories of waterlogged terror. The tone is set with Justin Stanchfield's Bone Lake, a hauntingly romantic tale which deftly switches between modern day and frontier past to tell two stories at once. Halo of Blood by Jason Brannon is fraught with high seas suspense featuring madness, sharks, pirates and voodoo...not necessarily in that order.
You'll find plenty of tales about deadly beasts that make water their home. Perhaps the best of these is Walt Hicks' The Swamper which sheds just enough light on the swamp to scare you silly. For a lesson in the power of desire mixed with vengeful spirits look no further than Peggy Shumate's Living Doll: Jewel of Lost Souls.
The creepy tentacled world of H.P. Lovecraft rears it's ugly head in Black Thorn by Christopher Fulbright. Steve E. Wedel tells an equally mysterious tale of calamity in When the Lady of Byblos Calls which proves even the water within the human body holds fear.
Although the quality of the writing and the ideas is not consistent in this the collection the stand out stories are well worth the read.
Jennifer Barnes, www.dreampeople.org
