The Web of La Sanguinaire and Other Arachnid Horrors by Ronald Kelly
Where do the spiders go at night?
Do they creep and crawl through the bushes and trees?
Up the porch posts and across the eaves?
Do they scramble inside? Skitter soundlessly down the hall?
Do they enter your bedroom, climb the bedcovers and wall?
Do they drop from the ceiling, shivering and cold?
Do they find your mouth open and think
“What a lovely abode…”
Ronald Kelly, the master of Southern-fried horror, brings you eight, spine-tingling tales of spiders invading your comfort zone and behaving badly.
- An old Cajun takes a curious traveler into the dark depths of a Louisiana bayou, in search of a rare species of spider…
- A doctor discovers that his increasing forgetfulness is due to an ancient horror lurking in the basement of his house…
- An ungrateful nephew inherits his aunt’s home, which is supposedly infested by brown recluse spiders…
- Three boys spend the afternoon at a horror double-feature matinee, unaware of what’s taking place outside…
- A surgeon’s discovery of spiders inside human bodies leads him to an abandoned jail cell in a West Texas town…
- A family’s summer trip to the beach unearths traces of legendary gold… and the creatures that protect it…
- A teenage girl’s infatuation with an online friend lures her to a traveling carnival and the back booth of a sideshow tent…
- A nostalgic stop at an aged roadside attraction provides a family with an adventure of a lifetime, until their only source of escape comes to a screeching halt…
United StatesThe Web of La Sanguinaire and Other Arachnid Horrors, by Ronald Kelly
Themed collections and anthologies can sometimes be a hard sell, especially to readers who like being surprised by a story. If you’re reading a collection of, say, all vampire stories, then if the crux of any of those stories rely on the reader NOT knowing there are vampires in it, that surprise is ruined when the story is read in a collection of vampire stories. But sometimes the theme is too good to pass up. If you’re a horror writer, you want to write about fear, and the best way to do that and connect with the greatest number of readers is to write about the fears most common to the most people. Arachnophobia doesn’t affect a LOT of people (3% to 15% according to clevelandclinic.org), but if you’re a writer worth your salt, well, you know how to use words to greatest effect and create, if not outright terror in a reader, at the very least, a sense of dread. And my experience with Ronald Kelly is that he’s a writer worth more than just his salt, he’s got salt to spare. I’m gonna steer away from the salt analogy; it just sounds dumb. Anyway. Kelly’s got the goods, so if he says he has a collection of stories all about spiders, you read that collection if you’re not terribly afraid of them. And especially if you ARE. THE WEB OF LA SANGUINAIRE AND OTHER ARACHNID HORRORS is a solid collection of 8 stories—half of which are reprints, while the other half are new—all centered around one single monster: spiders. Obviously. Now, me personally, I’m not afraid of spiders, and good thing; they’re all over my house. But Ronald Kelly’s been at this a while, and he knows how to twist that knife and cause the hairs on the back of your neck to raise in just the right way so you think there’s probably something crawling on you right now. That is to say I very much enjoyed THE WEB OF LA SANGUINAIRE AND OTHER ARACHNID HORRORS. Ronald Kelly’s writing is solid, his stories are strong, and his characters perfectly relatable. Kelly writes about everyday people, he writes about US, the readers, then puts them in terribly unfortunate situations, like the family on vacation who stops at a roadside attraction the father used to come to when he was kid, only that was then, this is now, and you’re reading a collection of horror stories about spiders. Or how about the young boys out for a double feature at the movies who emerge from a day of childhood fantasy to a world suddenly thrown into chaos by, what else, giant spiders. Or the family man who suddenly finds himself missing whole days of his life, who can’t recall meeting people he’s had several dealings with, who has a chance encounter with someone who knows exactly what he’s going through: memory-eating spiders. Look, it’s not bad enough they crawl and spin webs and can drop down on you from the ceiling when you least expect it, now they’re eating your memories? Check, please! THE WEB OF LA SANGUINAIRE AND OTHER ARACHNID HORRORS is about as solid a read as you’re gonna find, by a writer who’s probably forgotten more about creeping out readers (the earliest story here dates back to 1988) than many of today’s new and emerging writers will ever learn. If you want fiction that’s going to make your skin crawl—and what horror reader isn’t constantly on the lookout for that story that’s going to make them shiver?—you could do much worse than Ronald Kelly’s spider collection (or anything the man’s written). If I had to find a negative here—and I don’t HAVE to, but it’s a review and I want to be as objective and fair as possible—it would only be that I, personally, was not scared while reading this book. But, like I said earlier, I’m not afraid of spiders. They don’t affect me in the least. If I see one climbing down from the ceiling, I clap it, kill it, wipe it off my hand, and continue on with my day. So I read this book as a fan of great writing, great fiction, great stories, but the spiders didn’t scare me, even though if I were in any of these situations for REAL, I would absolutely and very quickly change my opinion on spiders: these are some HORRIFIC creatures Kelly’s written into existence. But as a book I read while on breaks at work, in the bright light of the break room, nah. Now, if it was book about grasshoppers, we might be having an entirely different conversation.
United StatesFans of horror who also fear spiders?
The Web of La Sanguinaire & Other Arachnid Horrors by Ronald Kelly is a collection of stories that will make your skin crawl while reading. Long after you close the book, you will jump every time you think you feel little legs moving across your skin, or see something move out of the corner of your eye… This was an absolute blast to read! While I wanted to scream during most of the situations these characters found themselves in, I certainly won’t be forgetting these stories anytime soon… A must read for fans of horror who also fear spiders as it pushes you right in front of your fears and doesn’t shy away. If you love spiders, you’ll probably find a lot more joy in this one than I did! ;-D
Arachnaphobes Beware!!
If you don't like spiders, don't read this, or do...if you want to be scared badly! If you didn't like spiders before reading this book, you definitely won't now!! It's left me itching all over and seeing little black, scurrying movements out of the corner of my eye......brilliant!