Earl Messer (Reviewer) has just completed feedback for Insanity By Increments.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Full Text: Insanity By Increments is a collection of stories by Alaric Cabiling that is dark yet also thought-provoking. From what seems like nothing more than a summer visit with relatives to a story of a macabre photographer (or perhaps his employer is the macabre one? Or the wife?).
What is particularly effective is the way that the darkness (and there are definitely different shades of darkness here) can inhabit both obvious places, say a room with a few corpses in it, as well as the common places of everyday life such as a family home. Perhaps what Cabiling really shows us is that the darkness resides within us, all of us to some extent. It is when that darkness tries to enter the material world that things can go from strange to downright horrific.
Highly recommended for those interested in the short story form as well as character driven stories. Perhaps one line from "Frailty" sums it up for me when reading Cabiling's words: whatever was not being said...couldn't be pretty.
Reviewed from an ARC made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
