This was not what i wanted and hope it would be at all. The stories are very disjointed and vague to the point where the only thing they have in common is "night." I was hoping for exposure to new authors that I could begin to follow and look for work, but the first five stories were so bland that I have to put this down at the moment.

The Outcast Hours is the latest anthology by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin, following The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories from last year. I love stories set at night; a lack of action forces the characters to face their inner troubles, in turn making the story more introspective. That combined with me thoroughly enjoying Djinn a few months ago made this an instant request.

Anthologies, by design, have some similar theme or genre and The Outcast Hours is no different. As can be deduced from the title, it focuses on the night, on those who live and work and thrive in the midnight hours. It’s quite an open-ended theme (especially compared with Djinn’s relative rigidity of requiring a specific supernatural creature) and as a result features a vast array of genres – fantasy, horror, contemporary, slice of life, light science fiction – ranging from the darker aspects of humanity (portrayed both realistically and fantastically) to the hopeful. There are 26 stories, so I will just quickly highlight some that I particularly enjoyed.

This Book Will Find You – Sam Beckbessinger, Lauren Beukes & Dale Halvorsen
This story makes for an excellent start to the collection. It’s an intense, depressing reflection of woman’s recently ended relationship with a spooky framework pushing the story along. The reader follows a heavily self-loathing character trying to atone for the mistakes she made in said relationship and goes about it in a way that only gets more disturbing. Very creepy and entirely engrossing.

Blind Eye – Frances Hardinge
This one has a pretty original concept – it’s about a babysitter who watches children of some unsavoury types. She must take care of a little girl overnight and spooky things ensue. It’s hard to discuss it any further without delving into spoilers so just know that it’s a fast paced, exciting supernatural tale that covers more than expected with an emotional depth that’s often not seen in shorter stories.

Patron Saint of Night Puppers – Indrapramit Das
Despite the title, this was a great little tale – an anecdote almost. It sits firmly in the slice of life category following a night shift caretaker at a dog pound. In sharp contrast to almost every other story in the anthology it’s just another night taking care of dogs. Das sets up easy horror slam dunk tropes then happily subverts them repeatedly.

Tilt – Karen Onojaife
Follows a woman spending her nights at a casino trying to deal with an awful loss and given the option to fix it at a terrible price. I’m a sucker for impossible choices and Tilt delivers in spades with a simple but wonderfully executed premise. Short stories sometimes have a problem with endings, they can feel rushed or just stop arbitrarily. Mostly they end just fine but rarely are they particularly great. Onojaife leaves it on a great hook, revealing nothing but just enough all at once.

Welcome to the Haunted House – Yukimi Ogawa
What a weird story. In a good way of course, but just so odd. I’m not sure if it’s based on some folklore that I’m unaware of but wow it’s just so uniquely interesting. There’s this group of animated household objects à la Beauty and the Beast but they work in a haunted house scaring humans and can’t quite remember why or how they got there. That doesn’t really do it justice, look, read it and you’ll get me.

Lock In – William Boyle
Okay so I love The Catcher in the Rye so Lock In was an easy pick as a favourite. It’s another slice of life style book and is mildly reminiscent of Catcher in its latter half. Betsy is a young teenager who sneaks out of catholic school at night to wander the streets and find a cinema after being disillusioned with her authority figures. The story finishes fittingly but I would like an extension just to see what she gets up to for the rest of the night.

A Partial Beginner’s Guide to the Lucy Temerlin Home for Broken Shapeshifters – Kuzhail Manickavel
First of all, what a fantastic title; I love long, detailed titles like this. Secondly, if only one of these stories should be expanded, it must be this one. It’s a sort of epistolary novel that acts as a welcome guide for an orphanage that brings up a hundred questions despite being one of the shortest stories in the anthology. There’s so much potential here, I need more!

After reading The Djinn Falls in Love, I had an interesting chat with Shurin on /r/fantasy about how he and Murad grapple with their anthologies’ structures for ‘probably too long’ (his words not mine!) so I would be remiss to not quickly give some thoughts on it in this instance. Generally speaking, the stories were well organised. Each tale was very different to its predecessor with shifts in either genre, setting or tone almost every time. In fact, it was so well done that there were two adjacent stories that happened to stick out just by nature of being mildly similar. There were also interludes scattered in every few stories that were an interesting addition. They provided a nice breather every so often, but I don’t think they were really necessary. They were very short pieces of flash fiction that were unrelated and seemed more experimental than anything else.

Ask any book blogger and they’ll say the same thing: anthologies are hard to review. There will always be some great stories, some bad and a lot that fit somewhere in between. Ultimately, I read anthologies to force myself to explore new genres, discover new authors, and see how wildly people’s perspectives interpret a common theme. If the job of the editors is to accomplish these goals, The Outcast Hours is nothing short of a resounding success.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me this book to review via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

This is a short story collection and like most short story collections there's a few stories that I enjoyed more than others. The Outcast Hours is focussed around the night and most of the stories are haunting which I quite enjoyed. The stories are also reflective of real life which I thought was amazing and there were a few stories that almost seemed too real. I loved that the stories take place in a range of locations and bring in different religions and cultures. I will definitely read some of these stories again.

There were of course some stories that I found a bit dull or a little too long but I still thought they were okay and then there were other stories that I absolutely loved.

My favourite Stories include; This book will find you, Gatsby, MiDNIghT MaRAuDERS, Everyone knows that they're dead. Do you?, One gram, Dark matters and A partial beginner's guide to the Lucy Temerlin Home for Broken Shapeshifters.

I also enjoyed Sleep Walker, Big Man, The Collector, The Dental gig and Welcome to the Haunted House. I found the majority of the stories to be interesting and I would recommend giving it a try.

As you can see from this summary, the overarching theme of this collection could possibly be summarised as ‘nocturnal people doing nocturnal things’. I love night time so I thought I would definitely love this collection. I was also drawn in by the promise of a short story from one of my favourite authors, the impeccable Frances Hardinge.

The difficulty with reviewing short stories is that so often it’s quite a mixed bag and in this instance that was definitely the case. There were a few stories that I found wonderful and inspiring (Frances Hardinge’s was, unsurprisingly, one of these) but there were also quite a few that just didn’t work.

This is, for the most part, a case of ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ as a large number of these stories tend towards more horror or gore elements which aren’t really my thing. But there were some choices made that I would question. The first story in the collection is This Book Will Find You, a story written in first person from the perspective of someone trying to resurrect their dead girlfriend - an ordinary tale of everyday folk - but things get quite disturbing quite quickly. I don’t want to spoil it for people, because it’s quite an integral part of the story, but things get disturbing and uncomfortable very fast, and if it made me feel uncomfortable I can’t imagine what it would be like for readers who find such things triggering.

It isn’t that I wanted this book to be sunshine and rainbows (moonshine and rainbows?) but I did think that jumping in with that story set a tone for the book that wasn’t entirely true. Yes, there are a number of quite disturbing (and in some cases difficult) stories to read, but there are also a number that fell more into the ‘enchanting’ category - unsurprisingly those were the ones I enjoyed most. Were it me organising this collection, I might have eased the reader in with a more gentle story. As I say, that’s just my preference showing through.

I will praise the range of stories in this collection, no two feel the same, they have a range of different characters, voices and ideas involved. This isn’t the kind of collection where you get bored halfway through. I will also praise the diverse authors included in this collection - something Rebellion publishing are very good at.

If you enjoy the gorier, horror-fuelled short story then I think this would certainly be a collection you would enjoy. From an unbiased perspective I think this was very good, but from a personal perspective, this wasn’t for me!

My rating: 3/5 stars

I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

A collection of short stories perfect for those cold dark nights in winter, especially Halloween, The Outcast Hours brings together some incredible authors from many genres for something sci-fi.

There are some excellent stories in here, drawing from writers such as Frances Hardinge and Will Hill’s talents to share stories that are perfectly written. In particular stories such as ‘Blind Eye’ from Hardinge really were intriguing and I love the idea of a nanny for shady characters. In fact, I want that book to be honest.

I feel sometimes this book could have been shorter to be honest, with some stories not really impressing me, but of course anthologies are books where you find a gem not the whole item and it certainly has given me a list of new writers to look up and read more from. ‘Haunted’ and ‘This Place Of Thorns’ for me were a little off, however there’s so many stunning stories to make up for them.

A great anthology with atmospheric and thought provoking stories, this book is perfect for the scary season.

I received an eARC of this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I'll include a quick little review of each story below. There were a lot of stories in this anthology and I'm not sure it really needed to have so many. There were also little interludes every so often that weren't named as stories but simply numbered in my table of contents. They didn't really work format wise in the eARC version for me because the only way to recognize the story before had ended and you were reading this new interlude was that the words were now italicized. I enjoyed some of the interludes though they were all very weird.

This Book Will Find You 2/5 super dark, pretty weird, and there's a pikachu onesie.

It Was a Different Time 3/5 nice inclusive of #metoo movement, I liked Alex as a character. He's just an average dude. I found the descriptions of LA nice.

Ambulance Service 4/5 This went somewhere completely unexpected! So intriguing.

Blind eye 3/5 interesting enough, I really like the idea of a babysitter for shifty individuals. I found Mia's character and her ability very interesting.

Sleep Walker 3/5 it's hard to rate this one because I feel like we never reach any big climax in the story. It builds and builds to this mysterious show and “the night was yawning” creepiness but then just abruptly stops and returns to the sleepy diner, a changed tourist, and the narrator.

Bag Man 3/5 interesting enough. I didn’t really care about the characters. It’s pretty much like any mob type movie but it follows a delivery man. He never knows what he’s delivering but were told it's important and requires him to have many guns on his person. I found the setting of Israel interesting.

Gatsby 4/5 I really loved this. Once we got into the details of the story some of it was easy to guess but the entirety is so crazy. I love the setting of Pakistan mixed with this Gatsby inspired party. Ran and Saquib were so interesting.

Swipe Left 5/5 I loved this! The stream of consciousness was such a nice touch and that ending!!! Also, I feel like I know a guy just like this narrator.

MiDNIghT MaRAuDERS 4/5 I liked this the feud between chemists and the kind of small-town setting where everyone knows everyone was the perfect setting.

Everyone Knows That They’re Dead. Do You? 4/5 Very interesting. At first, it seemed very close to The Yellow Wallpaper with of the focus on the potentially strange wallpaper by the woman in the story. I liked it dissolve into a ghost story across 3 women. The questions and answers format in between was a little strange.

The Collector 4/5 I didn’t like Bennie. He had some really gross opinions but the collecting bit was really interesting and definitely took a turn from the beginning of the story.

The Patron Saint of Night Puppers 3/5 really not sure what to think of this one. I do love a dog lover though. The comparison between Dee and Oswald was nice.

Tilt 5/5 I really loved this one! The whole theme of everyone making choices and those choices equated to gambling. This was just the right amount of strange and atmospheric and it ended so perfectly.

In the Blink of a Light 3/5 this made me sad. Omar was just a touch too pathetic and the opening with Hassan was hostile. I wanted more from Ranwa’s little POV.

The Dental Gig 5/5 I loved this. The bureaucratic side of the tooth fairy business was an ingenious idea. I can’t believe what the teeth were used to make!

One Gram 4/5 this was such a good read. It’s amazing how much emotion and struggle can be conveyed in a story this short. Bette put up with so much in this and most of it was hard to read. I loved the camaraderie between women in this.

This Place of Thorns 1/5 I did not like this. The style of writing and the voice just didn’t do anything for me. There was a lot of weird info dumps and while there was a nice little twist at the end it could not save this story for me.

Not Just Ivy 3/5 this was really weird. I did not expect it to go where it did. Normally written out accents bother me but this one didn’t that much.

Dark Matters 4/5 interesting to see this through the eyes of a child and find out in the end what was really happening. The child’s understanding of the situation really clouds the reality. Death as a character was interesting but I wished he had been more fleshed out.

Above the Light 3/5 I really enjoyed parts of this but there were a lot of moments where the story wasn’t doing anything for me and I found myself starting to skim it. The language used to describe the night and how the men felt was lovely and the ending was very good.

Welcome to the Haunted 2/5 it wasn’t super interesting and the twist was expected.

Rain, Streaming 2/5 the beginning of this was so interesting and the format really drew me in but the style got really old really fast and it just stopped working for me.

Lock-In 3/5 it was an ok story but not super compelling in any way.

The Night Mountain 5/5 This was just so delightfully strange!

A Partial Beginner’s Guide to the Lucy Temerlin Home for Broken Shapeshifters 4/5 This was fun, I liked how it was all laid out in the list format. The voice of the narrator was so great!

This book was really interesting. A love how it was a compilation of short stories, and the theme was unlike anything I had ever read before. I would have enjoyed more flow between stories, but overall it was a good read!

What a clever anthology. With engaging prose, vivid descriptions, and heart-pounding action, this book is a treasure. There’s something here for every reader from inventive fantasy to swoon contemporary. I highly recommend!

A fun anthology! Some stories were better than others but overall a fun, interesting read.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author. All opinions are my own.

I adored the first anthology by the editor duo so much that I did not hesitate for a single second before requesting this one and immediately starting to read it. Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin do have a great way of building anthologies and even though I did not love this one as much, I will still be on the lookout for more work by these two.

These stories all take place at night, in the liminal spaces that entails, and span a wide array of genres. For me, the first half of the anthology was by far stronger with some absolutely stunning stories that make me excited to check these authors out. The second half and the micro-stories my China Miéville who are interspersed throughout did not work for me, however. Here I found myself skim-reading and often not caring at all.

The anthology starts very strong with a quiet horror story by Sam Beckbessinger, Lauren Beukes, and Dale Halvorsen: The Book Will Find You. I adored this story about grief and anger and supernatural beings, and the brilliant way it climaxes. I have been eyeing Lauren Beukes books for ages and really need to check her stuff out. I found Will Hill's It Was A Different Time incredibly angering and wonderfully constructed. My personal favourite of the bunch were Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Sleep Walker and Frances Hardinge's Blind Eye, both authors whose work I have wanted to read for ages. I should really get on with it.

I appreciate how varied this anthology was and how widely different in town and style the stories were allowed to be. For me that is always a positive in an anthology because it gives me the opportunity to read outside my comfort zone without having to spend hours reading things I am not enjoying that much.

I have a love/hate relationship with anthologies. I always read one. Sometimes it takes me two days to finish it, sometimes a few months. I enjoyed Murad & Shurin's Djinn Falls in Love Anthology, so once I learned about Outcast Hours I knew I had to read it. Thanks to NetGalley I could do it few months before official publication date (February 2019).

The anthology focuses on things that happen at night. Most assembled stories treat the topic seriously touching darker sides of human existence. Lovers, thieves, predators, nightmarish beings, ghosts, trolls make an appearance. Here's my short take on each story with ratings of sorts.

With short stories, I don't focus on positives and negatives. I rate the level of my enjoyment - for example, one of the stories that got one-star from me is very well written. But it bored me to no end in just a few pages. I simply know other readers will love it, though.

So, all the ratings below are 100% subjective and don't reflect the quality of the writing/choices made by the editors.

This Book Will Find You by Sam Beckbessinger, Lauren Beukes and Dale Halvorsen - 4/5

intimate, dense and depressive account of a relationship that finished horribly wrong. Told by a self-loathing narrator, it's poignant, infuriating and immersive.

It was a different Time by Will Hill - 2/5

A young man working night shift finds an older guy with a gun sitting by the swimming pool. During a forced conversation, they touch many subjects, especially bullying and abuse (verbal/sexual). Treat is as another #MeToo discussion voice, only it adds nothing new to the topic.

Ambulance Service by Sami Shah - 3/5

I like Shah's writing. Ambulance Service is a good story, but it lacks the punch of Reap from Djinn Falls in Love Anthology or creativity of Djinn-son duology. Solid story nonetheless.

Blind Eye by Frances Hardinge - 4/5

Erin, a professional and discrete babysitter, receives a call. A pair of siblings needs her to take care of a child for the night. Business as usual, except the couple is adamant that the child can't fall asleep. For when she does, strange things will happen.

Excellent, a bit sad and delightfully weird story. Well worth the read.

Sleep Walker by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - 2/5

Well...Basically, it's a story about nothing. Or everything, if you're ready to create the tale in your imagination. Some will love it. I didn't.

Bag Man by Lavie Tidhar - 4/5

Think an older version of Liam Neeson plays an agent (?) who takes things from point A to point B, no questions asked. A band of teenagers robs him. It won't do. Mayhem ensues. There's little moral to the story, but it's fun. In a loud and violent way.

Gatsby by Maha Khan Philips - 3/5

It takes a scene from Great Gatsby (sort of) and twists it nicely. A dark, well written and punchy story. I liked it.

Swipe Left by Daniel Polansky - 3/5

A bit crazy. Nicely written. The ending disappointed me. It prooves that speed-dating can go terribly wrong.

MiDNIghT MaRAuDERS by Matt Suddain - 5/5

Here's the secret - I want to be Matt Suddain when I grow up. I absolutely love his witty, unpredictable writing. It tells the story of the feud between BEReZOv and VAnzaNT, owners of two drug dispensaries in a small, decent city. In the end, there's no place for two of them.

Suddain's Monsters&Collectors is one of my all-time favourite books. He can pack more creativity (and absurd) to one sentence than many readers to a whole book.

Absolutely loved it.

Everyone Knows that They're Dead. Do you? by Genevieve Valentine - 3/5

The author starts a dialogue with the reader, trying to make him analyse his reactions to the unveiling story. It was interesting and clever, but had no long-lasting effect on me.

The Collector by Sally Partridge - 4/5

Bennie is a retro guy. He loves the eighties and collects all kinds of memorabilia. He finds a fantastic pony, but someone scams him. It won't do. Bennie sets on a mission to recover the pony. Hilarious, even in darker moments.

The Patron Saint of Night Puppers by Indrasit Das - 2/5

Well. It's an example of the story many readers will love, that didn't impress me at all. I guess that if you liked The Devourers, you'll like it as well.

Tilt by Karen Onojaife - 2/5

It's about a woman who always liked the things she liked too intensely. Not bad, but it didn't engage me the way other stories did.

In the Blink of a Light by Amira Salah-Ahmed - 3/5

It touches the subject of restricted lust and other things. An OK story, but not more for me.

The Dental Gig by SL Grey - 4/5

I liked it a lot. It demonstrates the hardship of tooth fairies' corporate life and proves their profession isn't based on a good business model.

One Gram by Leah Moore - 2/5

Not for me. Forgettable story and characters.

This Place of Thorns by Marina Warner - 1/5

Descriptive, tiring and boring.

Not Just Ivy by Celeste Baker - 3/5

Not bad at all. Interesting idea, good execution.

Dark Matters by Cecilia Ekback - 5/5

It has it all - great, punchy first line, distinct voice, interesting story about Death and Resurrection. Excellent one.

Above the Light by Jesse Bullington - 4.5/5

Strong opening, interesting story, intriguing ending. It's the story about joys and dangers of night hiking through Alpes. Very good. I loved an eerie atmosphere and skilfully built feeling of dread.

Welcome to the Haunted House by Yukimi Ogawa - 3/5

Interesting and unusual. Weird in a good way. Experience it yourself.

Rain, Streaming by omar Robert Hamilton - 3/5

A dialogue between a man and Val. Well structured but I didn't care for the narrator's voice.

Lock-In by William Boyle - 1/5

I didn't like the story and its' directionless, troubled heroes. I'm sure readers will relate to them, though.

The Night Mountain by Jeffrey Alan Love - 2/5

I guess it can be described as atmospheric, but it left me cold.

A Partial Beginner's Guide to The Lucy Temerlin Home for Broken Shapeshifters by Kuzhali Manickavel - 3/5

I liked it a lot. I have only one complaint - it was too short.

Contrary to what you may assume looking on ratings, it's one of the best anthologies I've ever read. All of the stories felt neat and well written. I couldn't relate to some POVs. I didn't like some descriptions or plots. But I'm sure others will love the stories that didn't impress me and find my favourites boring or forgettable.

My three favourite stories are:

MiDNIghT MaRAuDERS by Matt Suddain
Dark Matters by Cecilia Ekback
Above the Light by Jesse Bullington

I highly recommend experiencing The Outcast Hours. Just don't expect that every story will charm you.

I seriously wasn't expecting to love this as much as I did, because short story collections aren't usually my cup of tea, but this one certainly surprised me. There wasn't a story which I didn't at least like/was intrigued by, and that honestly speaks volumes.

Some of the stories we're longer than others, but I'd say that all of them were on the longer side of short stories, which really helps you to get into the story. I felt creeped out and honestly in awe sometimes, reading about people sometimes doing terrible things. My favorite stories were: It Was a Different Time, Bag Man and Dark Matters.

Again, the only reason I'm not giving this a 5 star rating is because I didn't love every single story, but I'd still recommend this book to anyone

A variety of authors assemble to create a fine anthology of bold, incentive stories that show the brand of stellar creativity this genre has to offer. Highly recommended reading for fans of sci-fi old and new.