Two encompassing themes to this collection: primarily, the evil of solitude, or how solitude equates with or drives one to madness; then boundaries, blurring and pushing them (of reality, knowledge, perception, life and death, even geography)

Celephaïs: Gorgeous in spite of the cold reality. From Kuranes dreams to mine... yeah, that's not disturbing at all.

From Beyond: The type of story one expects when one hears "Lovecraft". And it's freaking good.

Hypnos: *blink* Erh... OK. Like this wasn't disturbing, a final twist. I would have said it bore serious homo-erotic tones, but then... Begs for a second read. Or a tenth.

The Temple: That's what I call a bit of Karma for a stubborn nationalist.
Note: for some reason (and what I mean is lazy translation), it's titled as Santuario (sanctuary) in my Spanish copy instead of the closer Templo.

The Tree: Did not take the expected turn. And sent me on a wiki-walk that ended landing me on the seven wonders. Pretty imagery.

Actually, the whole collection, for all the horror elements, is powerful on beautiful and vivid imagery. The kind that plays as a magic-movie on your mind, fills you with wonder as you read and stays with you.

That Crawford Tillinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator, for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair if he fail in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed. Tillinghast had once been the prey of failure, solitary and melancholy; but now I knew, with nauseating fears of my own, that he was the prey of success.

Disturbing spook of a story. Now here I have the horror Lovecraft *grin*

Cinco amigas, escritoras, después de muchos años de trabajar con las palabras, decidimos tener nuestro propio libro. Así nació Cinco mujeres y otra cosa.
Seleccionamos tres cuentos de cada una y escribimos un cuento a diez manos, titulado "Otra cosa".

Ilustración del cuento "Otra cosa".

My first introduction to Edwin Stark's work was through The Karaoke Duo Vs The Karaoke Zombies and Aftermath and Other Zombie Shorts so you may understand that I was expecting more of his tongue-in-cheek humor in Cuentos. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Edwin's talents also lie is more serious fiction as well, as Cuentos shows.

Cuentos is a collection of short stories that entertain you starting with vampires and ending with a device that can change the Universe. In between, you see a few more vampires, a few stories of ghosts and cannibals and then he ends the book with a Science Fiction collection that contains clones, colonization, and a "vacation" through the mind of someone so completely insane that nine other therapists have either become trapped in his mind... or have been eaten. I'll let you decide which.

I highly recommend this for anyone who wants something a little darker but still fun. Edwin has a unique writing style that shines through all of his stories, and he finds a way to make you laugh even when you know that you really shouldn't be laughing at what happened. This short story collection has also made me interested in some of his other books that he mentions (where the short stories were the starting off point for other longer stories to come) so I will be happily adding more of his works to my collection.

NOTE: If you enjoyed my review, I would appreciate if you could mark it as being helpful on Amazon as well.  I have included the link to the Amazon review in the Source section at the bottom of this review.  You can also purchase the kindle edition of Cuentos by going to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HILPTQ/?tag=shasworofboo-20

Linda selección de historias de varios autores. Es interesante leer historias que inspiraron algo en un autor que nos gusta. Saber que, así como nosotros tenemos autores favoritos, cuyas historias nos acompañaron en determinados momentos, ese autor también tiene escritores predilectos y también fue inspirado por ellos. 

Una lectura que realmente se disfruta.