He is much better at setting than he is at character, but even here he is limited, excellent at evoking the outdoors (wilderness areas, small isolated forests, a half-built hotel in the middle of a jungle) but mediocre at interiors. His characters, no matter how painstakingly fashioned, have little inner reality: even his most lifelike creations-the he-man protagonists-are difficult to distinguish from one another, and the rest-the damaged women, the uneasy gay men, the affluent euro-trash-are little more than masks, mere engines to propel his plots in motion. As a consequence, he must be held to a higher standard, and, when he is, I believe he falls a little short of the mark.Īlthough Barron’s style is filled with memorable images, the sonority and rhythms of his prose are severely limited-surprising for a poet!-and particularly impoverished in their musical effects. Laird Barron is not just a 'horror writer,' he is a “writer,” someone whose gifts extend beyond the customary limits of the genre. Mysterium Tremendum (original to this collection) Pitting ordinary men and women against a carnivorous, chaotic cosmos, Occultation 's eight tales of terror (two never before published) include the Theodore Sturgeon and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated story 'The Forest' and Shirley Jackson Award nominee 'The Lagerstatte.' Featuring an introduction by Michael Shea, Occultation brings more of the spine-chillingly sublime cosmic horror Laird Barron's fans have come to expect.

He returns with his second collection, Occultation. His debut collection, The Imago Sequence and Other Stories, was the inaugural winner of the Shirley Jackson Award. His stories have garnered critical acclaim and been reprinted in numerous year's best anthologies and nominated for multiple awards, including the Crawford, International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, and World Fantasy Awards. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti.

Laird Barron has emerged as one of the strongest voices in modern horror and dark fantasy fiction, building on the eldritch tradition pioneered by writers such as H.

Occultation and other stories