I would be hard to come up with a group of stories less Poe like than these. I get where Straub was going with this...but, no. This book is filled with a bunch of pointless plots. Storylines are abandoned in favor of an artsy attempt. Most of these stories are obscure, ambiguous and random. You are left feeling like the Author didnt know any more than the reader about what was happening. There are a few standouts, most are just ok, a few aren't worth the time wasted grueling through the ramblin prose. I jotted down my thoughts on each as I read them.

The Bees: rambling, not interesting, not much else to say.

Cleopatra Brimstone: I see this one mentioned alot as a fave, so I was looking forward to it. Hmm...I personally think ppl just like the depraved sexual encounters. While it is a better, more well rounded, story than most of the others offered here...that's not saying much. It was interesting enough to keep me reading to find the conclusion, that never happened. No explanation of why this girl is growing antennas. In the end it was pointless.

Man on the ceiling: Hard to follow, absurd.

The great God plan: Again, absurd.

The voice on the Beach: Awful, rambling, couldn't even finish.

Body: WTF is this???

Louise's ghost: OK, this one is random, odd,.....I actually liked it :)

The sadness of details: I liked this one the most so far!

Leda: A modern take on a Greek myth, Leda and the swan....I liked it.

In the praise of folly: Meh.

Plot twist: OK

The two Sams: Far fetched, super disturbing, dramatic and unbelievable.

Notes on the writing of a horror story: WTF did I just read??

Unearthed: This one was actually very interesting......until it wasn't. It abruptly ended.

Gardner of heart: Meh

Little Reds tango: Good, but again, ended abruptly, made no sense.

Balled of the flexible bullet: OK, not as great as I expected from King.

20th century ghost: I have this book, have read it before. It's ok.

The green glass sea: Pretty good.

The kiss: Great! Easily my favorite in this book!

Black dust: OK, but again, pointless.....notice the pattern here.

October in the chair: Being a huge Gaiman fan, I have read this countless times before. It never makes any more sense than the last time.. But, written in typical Gaiman style, it stills pulls you along.

Missolonghi in 1824: Meh..... another ok, but drab story.

Insect dreams: Nope. Another rambling and obscure story that I couldn't even finish. ( )

Great stories. ( )

Review: Poe’s Children by Peter Straub.

This is a book of twenty short stories. The book features some creepy, fearful, and some are funny but also a few dreadfully boring. In this collection of stories the author attempted to prove that the horror genre is more than scary and frightening monsters, blood, and gore.

As Peter Straub put together these anthology of other writer’s work I thought he was showing how different this genre spreads over a combination of strange stories that really fits into this category. Some of the stories make sense and others stories leaves the reader wondering what they just read. The thing is that we keep on reading stories like this no matter what the stories are about. ( )

This book raised a difficult question for me. When do you give up on reading an anthology? I believe that I've been reading this book for over a year. I would pick it up, read a story or part of a story, dislike that story, and put the book down. I would want to give up and mark it as Did Not Finish (DNF) but then I would think that just because I disliked one story didn't mean that I would dislike another. So I would try again and do the same process of wanting to give up but not doing so. Some of the stories were too poetic and focused on the moon; at the same time, those stories had no substance, no hook, no story. Some were just boring. Most did not grab my interest. I did find five stories I liked enough to mention below but even two of those were reprints that I read elsewhere. That was another thing that frustrated me. For a book with a subtitle of "The New Horror", most of the stories were copyrighted in 2002 or earlier. As early as 1984 and 1990. Even granting time to pull the stories together and compile the book, that is not very "new" horror (for the original copyright of 2008). So as you can tell, I can't really recommend the book.

"Cleopatra Brimstone" by Elizabeth Hand - An attractive entomologist deals with life, a job in London, some men, and her love of butterflies.

"The Sadness of Detail" by Jonathan Carroll - A woman's drawings help her to accept life and to save the world.

"The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" by Stephen King - The story of a writer who goes mad and the editor who helps him. Told by the same, no-longer-mad editor.

"20th Century Ghost" by Joe Hill - A woman's ghost haunts a movie theater.

"October in the Chair" by Neil Gaiman - October tells the story of Runt and Dearly: a young boy and a ghost. ( )

Great pieces by Don Chaon, Elizabeth Hand, the Tems, Thomas Ligotti, Joe Hill and Jonathan Carroll. Really awful stuff from Brian Evenson, Glen Hirshberg, Benjamin Percy and Straub himself. Everything else is just about average. ( )