Review of The Lost Librarian's Grave

[Tony Official]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Lost Librarian's Grave" by Edited by Ann Wycoff.]

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3 out of 4 stars

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In the first story, Savage Night, in this horror anthology, Kushim, the medicine man, remembers how his tribe rejected him, how they accused him of unnatural practices and how his family also accused him of bringing bad omen. Akito, his dog, was his only companion in the valley as his own people were ostracizing him. Despite all these, he still devoted himself to healing their wounds and appeasing the gods for their successes.

On the day he heard the cries of his people, he left the valley and headed to his tribe. The whole tribe awaited his arrival; he went ahead to inspect the dozens of dead bodies lying around the fire and confirmed that wolves had attacked them. He set to burying the bodies in a mass grave after appealing to and hoping the gods to resuscitate them back to life. As he was resting near the fire all alone with his dog, he heard a mysterious sound from the direction of the grave. Kushim went closer and saw a hand spring out from the soil; he helped drag the resurrected Dragul out of the grave. He noticed that Dragul was severely maimed with some of his body parts missing. His look was like that of a person pleading for his life to be ended. Now Kushim tries to keep him alive in a bid to have a companion. He went ahead with the only solution he could think of by sewing another dead person’s body parts to the missing parts of Dragul. Unexpectedly this leads to unimaginable turn of events for Kushim.

The Lost Librarian’s Grave: A Horror Anthology Fiction is written by thirty-six authors and three poets all around the globe. It was edited by Ann Wycoff. I liked the fact that the stories were short and we're still able to create a real emotional effect. The style used by each author was unique and interesting. The creepy settings and situations used by the authors helped to expand my imagination, and I was extremely terrified at almost all the climax points. This book left me guessing and reading to the last page of each of the stories. For example, in Adrian Ludens's ‘Inside a Refrigerator,’ even though I was not expecting a happy ending, I still flipped pages to read to the last page. Honestly, everything felt so real, and it had an effect on my imagination and my emotions as well. Another good thing I liked about this anthology is how some of the authors maintained subtle cues and an air of mystery throughout the plot line until the end of the story. For example, in Tom Leveen’s short story ‘Face to Face,’ I never expected that the exorcist would have such motives until the very end. The storyline each author used was unique in describing a similar theme, and I was able to connect to each of the stories on a different level.

The only thing I dislike about this book is that some of the authors used ambiguous words in their storylines, which, I must say, made me lose interest in some of the stories. Well, apart from those uneventful ones, most of the short stories and poems in this collection are well written, from the style to the settings to the different plot lines, and it gave that creepy imagination expected from any horror book. So, I will be rating this book a 3 out of 4 stars. I am giving such a high rating because not only was this book exceptionally well edited and lacked errors, but I enjoyed almost all the stories in this anthology. I also learned why the editor chose the title of this anthology to be what it is. Also, on the last page of this book, the different authors' autobiographies were given, and I was able to learn things about my favorite authors in this collection. I deducted a star from my rating for the negative side of this book which made reading some stories difficult.

Well, I recommend this book to lovers of horror fiction and anyone interested in reading horror anthology. This book was able to achieve its purpose of terror and fear of the unknown while I read each story. Some of the stories in this collection have roots in religion, while some had roots in folklore. In contrast, others are basically historical, so I will give this work a thumbs up because of its versatility.

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The Lost Librarian's Grave
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[Zwelihle_Myeni]

Atleast some of the stories were easy to read and interesting. Thanks for your review.

[Elenimo Chembe]

I can somehow relate to this book, especially with the experiences of Kushim.

[Amy Luman]

I don’t really enjoy short stories. In my experience they are not long enough or involved enough to hold the readers’ attention. This is especially true with horror stories.

[Madu Abigail]

This seems like a great book by I'm not a fan if horror, so I'll skip it. Nice review.

[NetMassimo]

This seems like an anthology full of stories that are short and intense to maximize the emotional response. It's great to see that there are still horror stories that can have such an effect. Thank you for your great review!