The Monster’s Corner-Edited by Christopher Golden

The Monster’s Corner
Edited by Christopher Golden
St. Martin’s Griffin, Sep 27 2011, $14.99
ISBN 9780312646134

The Monster’s Corner is an entertaining collection of nineteen tales in which monsters (in our eyes) tell their respective story as heroes in their eyes (or whatever orbs they have). All the entries are quite good adhering to the Frankenstein legend that asks who the monster is. David Moody's "Big Man" is a well written nod to Mary Shelly’s classic while Kevin J. Anderson updates the Frankenstein's to 1938 Germany in 1938 in "Torn Stitches, Shattered Glass". Gary Braunbeck’s “And You Still Wonder Why Our First Impulse Is to Kill You” looks deeply and amusingly at what makes up a monster as the other side has nightmares about humans hunting and stalking them. Two centuries of slavery has a "Rakshasi" (by Kelly Armstrong) seeking freedom. Finally Simon R. Green takes a close look at Satan’s attempts to recruit Christ in "Jesus and Satan Go Jogging in the Desert" while John Maberry stars Saint John in his entry that even monsters are God's creation. From sexual predators (see Tananarive Due’s “The Lake” and David Liss’ “The Awkward Age”) to the gorgon Sarah Pinborough’s “The Screaming Room) to a faerie changeling starring in “The Cruel Thief of Rosy Infants” (by Tom Piccirilli) to Kate Shugak in “Siren Song” by Dana Stabenow, the monsters want their time in court as they demand the media especially authors stop spinning lies about them.

Harriet Klausner