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Engines of Ruin

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Engines of Ruin

By: Lucas Mangum
Narrated by: Sean Duregger
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About this listen

Thirteen dark tales from the author of Saint Sadist and Gods of the Dark Web.

The disappearance of his son brings a rock star home to atone for past sins. A bartending ex-preacher faces a terrible destiny when an former congregation member walks into his bar wearing a bloody shirt. A blizzard traps a suicidal writer at the Jersey Shore with a cult and its strange goddess. A woman shoots a pornographic video and the act shatters her reality. The zombie apocalypse forces three teenagers to take refuge with the school bully. An old poem connects a college student with her haunted past and her doomed future.

Lucas Mangum's debut collection Engines of Ruin will surely appeal to fans of Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, Sara Gran, Richard Laymon, Bentley Little, and John Skipp.

Stories included in this collection:

  • Ghost Music
  • Hell and Back
  • Our Lady of the Sea
  • Worlds Colliding
  • Video Inferno
  • Offerings
  • Hayride
  • Worm Magic
  • Occupy Babylon
  • The World Asunder
  • A Killing Back Home
  • Waters of Ruin
  • The Last Easy Rider
©2018 Lucas Mangum (P)2020 David N. Wilson Anthologies & Short Stories Horror Short Stories Scary Fiction Haunted

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Short stories are a strange thing. To try and present an entirely rounded setting, circumstance and outcome in about 20-30 minutes is not an easy thing to do, be it in written form of an anthology movie such as Asylum (1972- check it out) and it really does depend what the subject matter is.

I tend to find that sci-fi shorts don't really work as there is too much world-building to be done but horror is a perfect palette to work with. In this case, we've got thirteen tales of sexually-charged horror ranging from a murder couple to a zombie apocalypse and (my favourite) ghostly revenge.

My enjoyment with the tales varied from one to another as some simply failed to elicit any sense of shock but all are well written by the one Author and fabulously narrated by Sean Duregger who add a great sense of pace and expression to the characters.

For this type of collection you just need to ask yourself if you like short stories as, while a pretty good selection of stories, they're not for everyone.

A mostly great selection of darkly sexual horror.

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Listener received this title free

This is an audiobook of short horror stories ranging from the fantastic (demons, zombies etc) to more mandame ones of violence.

There is no particular theme aside from things breaking down. Hence engine of ruins I guess.

I will buy more books from the author. I really liked this one.

I really enjoyed these short horror stories

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Listener received this title free

Engines of Ruin is a collection of thirteen short stories from the writer of Gods of the Dark Web (one I particularly enjoyed from him) and Saint Sadist (one I didn't as much) and contains stories covering everything from serial killers to Lovecraftian sea-goddesses and a whole lot in-between.

This review is going to be one that is glowing with faint praise, mainly because - even though I like Lucas Mangum's work quite a lot and I've even found him to be a bit of an inspiration - he often wanders off in a direction that doesn't directly appeal to my own sensibilities.

I'll be honest with you here and tell you that this is because of my own hang-ups and should be taken very lightly by others looking to read his work.

Mainly my issues lie with his depiction of sex, and we're often not talking about coy references, but sometimes in a rather graphic sense, and his use of religion, specifically Christianity.

If like me you find depiction of sex more squirmy than you find extreme violence then these moments have the affect of making you want to mentally fast-forward, which spoils the over all affect of his work, and I personally found that the stories that shied away from the use of sex worked better and seemed far less contrived.

The other issue that bothered me was the "Christianity as villain" angle the stories often took, sometimes explicitly and sometimes more subtly. I've always found this cliché to be a little lazy and often added nothing to the resulting story other than a handy excuse (as in "The World Asunder") or served no purpose at all (as in "Worlds Colliding").

All that being said I quite liked Lucas Mangum's Engines of Ruin. For the most part the stories are well drawn with a solid atmosphere and oddly believable situations, in addition to my "pet peeves" (which you shouldn't let influence you one way or the other) my only genuine criticism is that the stories in Engines of Ruin have a slightly "truncated" feel to them. Sometimes they seem to be unfinished, perhaps ending too early or sometimes not quite "complete" in their message.

This could be deliberate stylistic intent of course, and some readers may completely disagree of my analysis, but I personally thought his more long-format work fares better but it was very interesting to get the chance to hear his first work.

Ah yes, hear... because this was an audiobook version from the always dependable Sean Duregger, a name that always makes a book a little better by his presence. His productions are clean and lacks any of the bells-and-whistles some producers add that - in my opinion - more often detracts than adds to the resulting audiobook.

In my opinion the team of Mangum and Duregger makes this one a must-have, and I'm very pleased I had the opportunity to experience it and I'm looking forward to their next release.

Where things began...

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there are some good stories in this book and some great stories too. im usually not a great fan of short stories but these were really good xxxxx

really enjoyable

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Listener received this title free

Engines of Ruin is a very enjoyable collection of short horror stories. There are lots of creepy moments and some interesting characters. Lucas Mangum is a very good writer but I have a feeling that his best work is still to come.
Sean Duregger is a great narrator. I've listened to a few of his audiobooks and I've enjoyed each one.
Recommended.

Quality Collection of Short Horror Stories

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