Preliminary Horrors

Given the generally high marks this book has received (mostly from the contributors and their acquaintances I see), I figured it safe betting that this collection would be an enjoyable read. Toe Tags doesn't feel like it even made it past a quick cursory glance from its proofreader. With stories switching from past to present tense with no reason other than the author's sloppy oversight, to (somewhat baffling) spates of a clear inability to distinguish between "than" and "then", this book is riddled with Grammar and Punctuation 101-level mistakes. I had the strong impression that very few if any of the authors were asked to make revisions beyond their first drafts. Needless to say, it made for a lot of distractions while reading.

The stories themselves, while for the most part unique at their core, are neither frightening nor very enjoyable. That's not to say there aren't a couple of good stories in the collection. However, there seems to be both a lack of story development and general writing style from the large majority of these tales, and the overall work suffers for it. I often found myself bored as I read through this book, which to my mind read like a high school writing project slung together by a band of friends rather than an anthology of new and talented horror authors. On more than one occasion I wondered how a good chunk of these poorly written and cliche-abused stories were approved for publication at all. I had higher expectations, and Toe Tags is definitely not one of the best horror anthologies out there.