“Snapshot” is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician,” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap.

A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. . . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in “Aloft.”

On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. “Rain” explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world.

In “Loaded,” a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning.

Firstly, a big thank you to Gollancz for sending me an arc copy of this book for review.

Secondly, apologies for taking so long to get this review out, it has been a manic few weeks and it was hard to find time to fit in some reading as well as writing reviews.

I have been wanting to read some of Joe Hill’s book’s for quite a while now so when Gollancz gave me the opportunity to review this short story collection I thought there would be no better way to experience his writing than this. After reading this I can say for certain that I am definitely glad that I took the opportunity to pick up this book.

Snapshot:

When it comes to horror films I am very much the type that enjoys  mystery and suspense horror as I find the horror you don’t see can be one of the most frightening of all as you are relying on your mind to determine what’s going on and what might happen next so when a scare does come along it’s all the more frightening.

Due to this when I first opened Strange Weather and came across Snapshot I was instantaneously drawn into the story, especially when we start to find out more about whats going on.

Snapshot for me seemed to have that perfect balance between horror, mystery and suspense and it reminded me a lot of the old school horror films because most of the main stream horror started relying on jump scares more than anything else.

One thing I discovered when reading this book is that there is nothing more horrific that what the mind can imagine when dealing with an unknown entity or person and it truly shows how scared we can be when cross paths with one.

It is due to all of this that Snapshot is my favourite short story in the entire book and when I was finished I was truly excited to continue reading Strange Weather.

Loaded:

When I first started reading Loaded and I came across the scene that this story centers around I was in complete shock. Without going into to much all I can say is that Joe Hill is an extremely ballsy and brave person to create a scene like with all the attacks that are currently going on in the world and I certainly admire him for doing so.

Joe Hill has taken something we are seeing more and more of every day and shown us what can happen when an event like this occurs. This certainly not horror in the traditional sense but it shows what horrors humans are truly capable of.

I enjoyed reading about the investigation around the incident and how it impacted the different people that were involved in it as well as seeing how they dealt with it. I recently watched the TV adaption of Mr. Mercedes so when I was reading this I found a few similarities in how the stories were done and I really enjoyed that.

If you are slightly squeamish about incident like these then I would maybe stay away from reading Loaded. However if you don’t mind reading that kind of stuff or feel you can get through it then you are in for a real treat with this short story.

Aloft:

When I first started reading Aloft I was somewhat intrigued about what was going to happen. Unfortunately for me this didn’t last very long because as I continued to read this short story I found myself becoming less and less interested in what was happening.

I think this was purely down to me not engaging with the character and not caring about what happens to him. When it comes to situational horror that predominately revolves around one person I generally find these quite boring.

Due to this I actually found myself DNF’ing this short story around the 50 page mark as I didn’t want to force myself to continue reading something I wasn’t enjoying. However I have come across reviewers who really enjoyed this story, some of whom actually liked it the most out of all the short stories and this just goes to show how much our tastes can differ with particular stories and an authors work.

Rain:

When I first started reading Rain I didn’t know what to make it but the one thing I could tell is that it was going to involve the use of gore horror, which I usually don’t enjoy all that much. However as the story progressed I grew more and more intrigued as I quickly found it contained other horror elements such as suspense, thriller and mystery. When these different elements started being brought into the story more I found myself enjoying it a lot more.

One aspect that really intrigued me was the rain itself as I was always wanting to find out more about it and what was causing this. When I did out the cause of it I was completely surprised by it.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about this short story but I think it is certainly an interesting one as it teaches us that many things can happen that we wouldn’t expect.

Summary:

I am really glad I picked up Strange Weather by Joe Hill as it has allowed me to get a idea of what he is capable of as a writer and I think he writing style and his stories are great. I may not have liked one of the stories but this detracts little on how much I enjoyed the book as a whole and I will certainly be picking up more of his books in the future. If you haven’t yet read any of Joe Hill’s work yet then I would highly recommend you do as and I think reading this would be great place to start as it truly gives you a great flavour of how he writes and his stories.