John Langan

[G. S. Carnivals]

Well worth a look is the fiction of John Langan. He's had three tales published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction: "On Skua Island" (August 2001), "Mr. Gaunt" (September 2002), and "Tutorial" (August 2003). "Mr. Gaunt" got me hooked when I read it nearly three years ago. A welcome read at a time when I needed a Ligotti fix. (Beware: a second, very different John Langan also writes. He's a Jesuit, and writes on matters Catholic.)

[Nemonymous]

I am real-time reviewing "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky & Other Monstrous Geographies" by John Langan, here:
The Wide, Carnivorous Sky | DF Lewiss Gestalt Real-Time Reviews (2008 - 2014): Dreamcatchers

[Nemonymous]

Quote Originally Posted by Nemonymous

I am real-time reviewing "The Wide, Carnivorous Sky & Other Monstrous Geographies" by John Langan, here: The Wide, Carnivorous Sky | DF Lewiss Gestalt Real-Time Reviews (2008 - 2014): Dreamcatchers

I have just read and reviewed THE SHALLOWS in this collection.
Where has this story been all my life?!

[Nemonymous]

I have now started my review of John Langan's MR GAUNT collection:
Mr. Gaunt and other uneasy encounters | DF Lewis Dreamcatchers (2008 - )

[Druidic]

Interesting real time reviews.
I have to admit I'm in the minority; I like Langan's first collection far more than the second. Skua Island and Mr. Gaunt were just excellent stories.

[mgriffin]

I thought The Wide Carnivorous Sky was one of the very best books of last year, with several individual pieces that were all-time greats.

[faliol]

Yea I have yet to read him. An order from Amazon is in the horizon...

[ChildofOldLeech]

His debut novel House of Windows is definitely deserving of love and attention as well; I'm guessing it was too self-consciously literary for some horror fans and too resolutely a horror novel for the Litcrit crowd, as upon release it unfairly received something of critical shellacking (not unlike Whitehead's Zone One) and ended being shot by both sides. However, despite any attendant first novel flaws, I thought it to be a masterful supernatural novel and an excellent piece of work overall.

[Druidic]

Quote

His debut novel House of Windows is definitely deserving of love and attention as well; I'm guessing it was too self-consciously literary for some horror fans and too resolutely a horror novel for the Litcrit crowd, as upon release it unfairly received something of critical shellacking (not unlike Whitehead's Zone One) and ended being shot by both sides. However, despite any attendant first novel flaws, I thought it to be a masterful supernatural novel and an excellent piece of work overall.

I think, Childof OldLeech, you touched on the main reason the new stories disappointed me. After a critical trouncing, I suspect Langan decided to move away from the more 'Literary' style of his first collection. Unfortunately that sense of cumulative atmosphere such a style created seemed missing in these newer tales. The stories are clever and slightly experimental but I didn't find them particularly frightening; while the difference in style from the Mr. Gaunt stories can be plainly seen in "The City of the Dog."
I still like Langan and enough readers seem to really like this book. Unfortunately, it didn't work as well for me as his first collection which had several moments of excellence...

[ramonoski]

Haven't read either of Langan's collections proper, but I've stumbled upon some of his stories in diverse anthologies (i.e. Cthulhu's Reign).

I don't typically find myself enjoying vampire fiction, but I thought "The Wide Carnivorous Sky" was pretty good. "The Shallows" was great, though I had to read it more than once to properly get into it (one of these reads consisted in skipping all the memories and reminiscing and stick only to the present-day stuff). The one story I really enjoyed was "Technicolor". I thought it was a brilliant mix of real history, fake history, and some gnostic philosophy, all melding together into an exegesis of one of Poe's best stories. And I must admit I got convinced that Prosper Vauglais was a thing, and after I finished the story I went looking to see if some library had a scanned version of 'the green book' in their archives... Then there's a couple other stories I already have but have yet to read ("City of the Dog" and "The Revel" are both in one of Datlow's anthologies). But yeah, I think I dig Langan, though I haven't read anything from his first collection so I have no proper point of reference as to how his style has shifted/evolved since then.

addendum: just remembered "Into the Darkness, Fearlessly" from a certain tribute anthology to some obscure author. That was a good one too.