 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today, we are talking about spontaneous human combustion by Richard Thomas. And no, not the Richard Thomas that played John Boyd Walton. Someone on Goodreads said that and it made me chuckle. But no, Richard Thomas is a seasoned professional, is author of like 150 short stories and three novels, award-winning, all that stuff. And he deserves all the all those awards from what I can tell from this book because the TLDW is, there's this, this collection is damn near perfect. This is now my number three favorite collection of all time, just below Clive Barker's Books of Blood and Mariana Enriquez's Things We Lost in the Fire. I loved every single story in here except for one and even that story was well written. I just didn't like the mythos and we'll get that, we'll get to all that here in a second. But first off, I want to say this. On the front, Chuck Pollanick says, in range alone, Richard Thomas is boundless. I agree with that. He says he is Lovecraft, he is Bradbury, he is Gaiman. I don't, I don't necessarily agree with any of those except for maybe Bradbury because he's far more interesting than Lovecraft and Gaiman writes a very, not a very simplistic, it's deceptively simplistic, but a very simplistic, he has a very simplistic style of writing and Richard Thomas does not. If anything, I would say he's more and this is a compliment coming from me. I know a lot of people give this author crap and ignore the genius that he actually was, but he, but Thomas is more David Foster Wallace meets Cormac McCarthy meets, let's see here, there was someone, oh, Clive Barker. Those three authors, I think, are closer, well, Thomas is closer to those three than to anyone else and especially the David Foster Wallace one because of the way he structures his sentences. Especially, I can't remember which story it is, but it is all one. See, it's called Undone. It is all one sentence, five pages, all one sentence with only commas and m dashes. I like stuff like that when an author can be creative enough and has the talent to keep a to keep one sentence going for five pages. That impresses me. I know a lot of people get upset about things like that. But just like to get a fifth set about Cormac McCarthy's lack of not punctuation, quotation marks, because he uses use this punctuation. And Thomas does use quotation marks, although there is very, very little dialogue in this collection. I have not read his longer stuff. I don't know if his novels are more, more dialogue heavy. I'm not sure the novella or novelette toward the back. The Ring of Fire is a it does have a lot of dialogue and it did break up the, you know, the chunk after chunk of text. So that one was far easier to read. In fact, I think I read that 50 page story quicker than some of the 20 page stories just because there was so much dialogue. But anyway, my favorite story in here period hands down is clown face. The the visuals, the atmosphere, everything was so on point. But also it was horribly is like you could feel the sorrow and the the angst coming off of the page. This is a very short story, but I think it's the best one in the collection. My second favorite would probably be Ring of Fire, even though I saw the twist coming. It's still a fantastic story and a great lead up. I think the only reason why I caught the I predicted the end the twist at the end is because, you know, I'm a writer myself and I kind of see where things are going once the way he built it up is something that I might have done. It would have been a path that I would have went down but that's that's beside the point. Other standouts, Notice Tollens, I think it's called. I'll be completely honest with you. I have no idea what half of these story titles mean, and I didn't look them up. But I noticed Tollens is another great one. Saudade, S-A-U-D-A-D-E is great. Let's see here. Let's talk about the one story that I didn't like. And I can't remember was it in his house? Let me let me check. I'm going to go back here to in his house and see if that's yeah. In his house is the only story that I did not like. And the reason I didn't like it is very simple. It has to do with the Cthulhu mythos and it is written as a letter. Two things I absolutely cannot stand. I can't stand HP Lovecraft and I can't stand a Pistolary, a Pistolary, whatever it's called, when things are written in dialogue entries and letters, text messages, that kind of thing. I don't like reading that. I don't I don't know why I don't like reading scripts either. So it's just something about the format that aggravates me. I don't want to be talked to directly like that or reading someone. I'd rather see the action playing out, I guess, is the best way to put it. But there is no action in the story either. It's literally like Clyde Barker's Mr. Be Gone. Whereas like, don't read this book. Don't, you know, don't read this story. Either the piece itself is talking to you or someone else is talking to you. And it's supposedly a letter or an email or whatever it might be. And it has actual quotes from Lovecraft's Cthulhu that that language no one understands. It but that's the only story out of 15 stories that I didn't like. That's insane, usually with collections. It's I would say upwards of five stories or more that I that I won't that'll be OK or I won't like. But this thing is easily as good as Night Shift by Stephen King. It has the range. It's very eclectic. The one thing I'm not sure about the first off the spontaneous human combustion. None of the stories dealt with that, nor were they called that. And also, unless one of those is is in one of those titles is a different language for that, I'm not sure. But the cover has a werewolf in red bursting out and shattering a woman's face or maybe it looks like a werewolf or maybe it's just a wolf. I don't know. Wolves are mentioned throughout the story. But the cover in those gorgeous. I don't does it fit? I don't I don't know. And I'm not one to knock off stars or anything for for cover art. But it's just I don't I don't know. I was looking for a werewolf story and I never got one. So but I got everything else. I got clowns. I got I got all that stuff. In fact, there's two clown stories. And if you read the end notes where he describes why each story got written, I think you'll have fun with it. Please read those after you read the called end notes for a reason. But Richard Thomas does something that I normally do not enjoy in short stories. He is 100 percent about atmosphere. Every single and theme, he gives you a certain emotion in a story. And that emotion carries all the way through. That is very, very impressive. And I think the lack of dialogue helped that even more because a lot of these have to do with isolation, has to do with solitude and sorrow and not redemption so much, but payment for past crimes. Like there's a lot of stories with that theme, the payment for, you know, the the comeuppance for past crimes. He is also a very obtuse and very vague writer. I had to read certain sections multiple times. I like doing this. If you don't, then, you know, you might want to stay away, but he's such a fantastic writer with so much depth and subtext to every single paragraph, every single line has punched to it. And some would some would call his stuff run on sentences. I don't call it that. There's plenty of punctuation. There's plenty to break it up. And it feels it's just all about inflection. So it feels right in this context. So I'm a huge fan of his style. His style is very Cormac McCarthy, other than he does use quotation marks. I don't want to scare anybody off with that. Very Cormac McCarthy is very stark. But sometimes you have to look closer. You have to look a little bit deeper than what is actually on the page. And I love stuff like that. I love puzzles. I love vague writing as long as it evokes emotion. And every single one of these stories evoked an emotion from me. Even the HP even the Lovecraft one, because I hated it. So every single one of these stories evokes something in me and got a reaction out of me. So this is an easy five star collection. Oh, by the way, Turner Publishing sent me a review copy for this. It has caused no bias. They've sent me books in the past that I haven't liked. But yeah, this one, I would definitely suggest if you are a fan of a fantastic writing and atmosphere, this is going to be the book for you. It is not a book that I suggest you read quickly. In fact, I read two stories a night and then I finished off the odd number with the novella at the end. It was perfect for that is basically the way they have it built up is it's the same amount of time to read two stories every night. So it worked fantastically. Thomas, if you're the if you're the one who set up the list, you did a fantastic job because you really nailed the tone and you nailed the time it would take to read each each each story is basically even if you read two stories a night, because some are on the shorter side, some are on the longer side. Sometimes those two stories would be the same length. So it is just something I enjoy when authors take that into consideration and whether or not he did take that into consideration. I don't know, but it sure as hell felt like it because the collection is perfectly paced. But have you read spontaneous human combustion by Richard Thomas? If you have, let me know down there in the doobly-doo. If you loved it, you hated it, you felt meh about it. But if you felt any of those things, let me know in detail so that we can have a discussion. But until next time, I have been E, you have been you. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye.