Project Fear – Season One: Dale Robertson
Reviewed By Steve Stred
I always love the way books ebb and flow in our lives.
I connected with Dale a few years back and since then we’ve interacted, supported each other’s releases and bantered back and forth.
Recently, I realized I hadn’t yet read his work, so I fixed that by diving into his dark ‘The House That Jack Built.’ It was really well done.
Not long after I’d read it, his newest collection ‘Project Fear: Season 1’ was offered for review on Kendall Reviews and I dove at the chance as his book was still so fresh in my mind.
What I liked: ‘Project Fear: Season 1’ is a collection of new and previously released stories, designed to flow or mimic a binge-watch of your favorite horror show. Think ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark?’ or in the literary world ‘Goosebumps.’
Dale covers a lot of ground here and each story quickly falls into dark territory which was great.
Standouts for me were ‘Worry Monster’ about a children’s toy. ‘Found Recording 1’ and ‘Found Recording 2’ which are pretty much exactly how you’d think those stories would read. #1 really reminded me a bit of 28 Days Later which was excellent. And ‘Wheeler Dealer’ which featured a new twist on getting the best bargain.
The highlight of the collection, which has each story labelled/titled as an Episode, was ‘Bottom of the Garden.’ A story about a young girl at home with her dog. Her parents will be arriving at any moment. The dog needs to go out to use the washroom but for some reason it’s afraid to go out into the back yard. Robertson completely nailed this one. I was creeped out so much. Loved it.
What I didn’t like: While ‘Bottom of the Garden’ was stellar, the very next story was ‘Stitches’ and the premise and how the story started was nearly identical to ‘Bottom of the Garden.’ I needed to go back to the start of the story to make sure my Kindle didn’t randomly jump back the story was so similar. I found this a few times throughout and while each story was an episode, I think the order could’ve been adjusted a bit to not have similar pieces back to back.
Why you should buy this: Robertson delivers here over and over again with some really great, brutal pieces. He has a way of driving a nail into your brain in short page counts and I loved how he didn’t hold back in any of the pieces. With this being labelled Season 1 I’m excited to see what else will be coming down the pipeline from him.
Definitely a worthy starting point for his fiction!
Project Fear – Season One
Included in this collection are 13 short horror stories for you to devour, some previously published but plenty brand new, so curl up and get comfy.
Ignore the creepy noises you hear.
Ignore the moving shadows you see.
It’s just your imagination…
…Right?
You can buy Project Fear – Season One from Amazon UK & Amazon US
Steve Stred
Steve Stred is the author of a number of novels, novellas and collections. He has appeared in anthologies with some of Horror’s heaviest hitters.
He lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada with his wife, son and their dog OJ.
You can follow Steve on Twitter @stevestred
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You can visit Steve’s Official website here
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