Blackwater: Two Stories of Horror & Science Fiction – Christian Galacar

Reviewed by Steve Stred

Christian Galacar was an author that popped onto my radar at the start of 2018. I was given a Kindle as a father’s day gift and as I started to explore how to use it, I found that Amazon offered up a number of free reads. I immediately went to the Top 100 Horror and looked through the free listings and his novel Gilchrist was featured. I kept putting it off and putting it off, before I finally jumped in and all I can say was wow. Gilchrist was superb. I quickly snagged this two-story collection from Galacar and… put it off and put it off! Why? I really can’t say, but I made it a priority read for the start of 2019.

This is a quick read, with the two short stories taking me about an hour to get through.

The first short is called Mercury Rain. This is the dark science fiction story from the title. I loved this tale. This story follows a military officer on patrol in the future. Steel has risen up in the form of machines to eradicate the human race. Now the soldier patrols at one of the last fortified bases. While this tale is short, it is bleak, dark and very unsettling. Discussing the effects of the mercury rain that falls from the skies now, Galacar does a great job of unnerving you.

The second short story is called Blackwater. This would be the horror story from the title. This tale is significantly longer than Mercury Rain, but not as a detriment. The story follows Hawkins, a new worker at a mine in Pennsylvania in 1976. Once a month each worker needs to work the night shift and do maintenance in the various mine shafts, and on this night Hawkins name has been drawn with a few others.

Galacar uses the setting equally as well as what lurks beneath the surface. An explosive conclusion to the tale wraps up this collection nicely.

Overall these two tales are great compendiums to each other. Galacar shows he can build suspense and create really unsettling atmospheres in a short page count, which I loved.

If you are looking for a fun, great, fast read, I highly recommend this one to you!

Star Rating (out of 5): 4.5*

BLACKWATER is a collection of two tales of horror and dark fantasy. In “Mercury Rain” a soldier fighting a new enemy learns the importance of holding on to his memories. “Blackwater,” the title story of the collection, is an homage to Stephen King’s short story, “Graveyard Shift,” and it tells the tale of Paul Hawkins, a mine worker who disturbs something terrifying in the Blackwater Hills of Durham, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1976.

You can buy Blackwater from Amazon UK & Amazon US

Steve Stred

Steve has a new book out will ALL PROCEEDs going to charity!

You can buy Dim The Sun from Amazon US & Amazon UK

Steve Stred is an up-an-coming Dark Horror author. Steve is the author of the novel Invisible, the novellas Wagon Buddy, Yuri and Jane: the 816 Chronicles and two collections of short stories; Frostbitten: 12 Hymns of Misery and Left Hand Path: 13 More Tales of Black Magick.

Steve also has a number of works on the go and enjoys all this horror, occult, supernatural and paranormal.

Steve Stred is based in Edmonton, AB, Canada and lives with his wife, his son and their dog Oj.

You can follow Steve on Twitter @stevestred

You can visit Steve’s Official Website here