First published as a complete collection in 2016, Small Horrors brings together fifty extremely short tales of horror and suspense. Some originally appeared in Coates’s limited-release Bites series; she later revised those stories and added twenty more to create this collection.
Darcy Coates is a master of creating an eerie atmosphere. Her novels draw readers into isolated houses, dark forests and other unsettling places until the outside world seems to disappear. The stories in Small Horrors are far too brief to become as absorbing as her full-length books, but she can still establish a disturbing situation remarkably quickly.
I was surprised by just how short these stories are. Coates was not exaggerating when she called them “small horrors.” Some are only two or three pages long, introducing a frightening idea, giving it a quick twist and ending almost before the reader has time to become comfortable.
The best comparison I can make is to a bag of chips. Each story is like one chip: delicious, quickly finished and perhaps not especially rich in nutritional value, but immediately followed by the desire for another. You continue reaching into the bag until you suddenly discover that it is empty, and then you are disappointed that there are no more.
Some stories are naturally better than others. A few create surprisingly memorable images, while others disappear from the mind almost as soon as they are finished. That unevenness is expected in a collection of fifty stories, especially when most have so little space in which to develop. Even when one story is less effective, the next begins only a few pages later.
Small Horrors does not attempt to offer deep character development or elaborate plots. Its purpose is to frighten the reader a little, entertain the reader for a few minutes and then move on to the next unsettling idea. It accomplishes that purpose perfectly. This was a quick, fun read, and just like a good bag of chips, it was over much sooner than I wanted it to be.
