Blair's Reviews > Only the Broken Remain

I reviewed this for Sublime Horror. Read the full review here: Only the Broken Remain by Dan Coxon review – ‘weird horror to chill, unnerve and, occasionally, raise a wry smile’

I don’t know whether we’re truly getting more good literary horror collections these days, or whether I’ve just had good luck in picking them out lately. Either way, Only the Broken Remain is a pleasing addition to the stack of such collections published within the past year, including London Incognita by Gary Budden, Where We Live by Tim Cooke and London Gothic by Nicholas Royle.

Coxon’s stories tend towards a theme – that of an outsider finding community, albeit of an uncertain sort, among other misfits, often eschewing reality as well as conformity. Sometimes this is inverted, as in ‘Baddavine’, a folk horror tale in which a group of villagers, tormented by the whispers of an unseen creature, form a mob to pursue it. My favourite story was ‘No One’s Child’, the richly, fascinatingly grim tale of a young evacuee forming a deadly alliance with a creepy cellar-dwelling being. I also really enjoyed ‘All the Letters in His Van’, which offers a macabre take on a certain kids’ TV show, and now I’ve finished the book, it’s this clever and devilishly funny story I find myself thinking about a lot.

I received an advance review copy of Only the Broken Remain from Sublime Horror, courtesy of Black Shuck Books.

TinyLetter | Linktree