The Temple of Battered Bones – Jackson Arthur

3 stars

The Temple of Battered Bones is a collection of stories exploring different sub-genres of horror. There’s a little bit of something for everyone, no matter what you’re in the mood for.

That being said, I didn’t get a huge horror vibe from a lot of the stories. They didn’t give me that hit of adrenaline and spookiness that I look for in my horror reads, and some of them felt a little unfinished; they ended pretty abruptly without really wrapping anything up.

A lot of the stories are told in first person, which is an interesting style choice that I don’t see super often. However, it made a few of the stories blend together as it was a lot of I/me/my and it was hard to attribute different characters to different stories and not try to merge them together into one story.

I did enjoy Orange Eyes Watching and Titan, though I felt Titan needed more development for the ending. Both stories had engaging characters and fun storylines that felt more fleshed out than some of the others.

This book was a quick read, the stories all went pretty quick, but I really wish it would’ve had more horror elements to get my pulse jumping and my anxiety kicking.