REVIEW:
All These Sunken Souls: A Black Horror Anthology

Runestone, volume 10

REVIEW:
All These Sunken Souls: A Black Horror Anthology

Runestone, volume 10

Reviewed by Darbi Renaud

— 

All These Sunken Souls compiles fantasy and sci-fi into an anthology of YA horror stories that are intense, gripping, yet tolerable even for someone who scares easily. Editor Circe Moskowitz, who also authored the final work in this collection, is joined by contributors Kalynn Bayron, Ashia Monet, Liselle Sambury, Sami Ellis, Joel Rochester, Joelle Wellington, Brent Lambert, Donyae Coles, and Ryan Douglass in challenging how we—as audiences and fellow storytellers—perceive Black bodies in horror spaces. Moskowitz is an avid fan of horror, recently contributed to another critically acclaimed horror anthology named Reclaim the Stars, and is a co-creator of the upcoming graphic novel Good Mourning.

I was drawn to All These Sunken Souls (despite being scared of my own shadow) because I love how uniquely suited horror is in reflecting and commenting on political and cultural reality. With this anthology, Moskowitz and her collaborators succeed emphatically in showing characters facing corruption, incomprehensible creatures, and a grandiose, eldritch apocalypse, but subverting the expectations for how they will engage with fear, trauma, and violence.

The anthology consists of ten short stories, each exploring body horror, autonomy, liberation, vengeance, justice, and recompense. Some chapters are definitely slower burns than the rest, yet all establish the high stakes, build tension and exponential suspense, and end in well-executed twists; none of that out-of-nowhere shock-value nonsense.

The strengths of these pieces grow in quantity and quality as the anthology progresses, with a few exceptions. The pace and detail of worldbuilding appealed to me more in certain pieces and less in others, as did the overall tone of certain chapters. “I Love Your Eyes,” for example, was probably my least favorite. The evolving style of dialogue and reveal of the ‘secret plot’ added drama but the eventual theatrics of it all just didn’t work for me.

On the flip side, one writer whose storytelling style does just as much work as their storytelling itself is Sami Ellis, author of “The Teeth Come Out at Night.” From the opening line, “Don’t everybody know how to hustle to make money,” to the end of the page where the main character, Akeela, internally calls the mother of the child she’s babysitting a cheapskate, the first page alone told me everything I needed to know about Akeela’s personality and priorities, which made sense of the fascinating curveballs that followed. The variety of protagonists, each with distinct voices, is easily one of the anthology’s overall strengths. There are “good” characters, “likable” characters, and characters who are neither, but there is always someone to root for. 

Despite this anthology being marketed toward young adults, I don’t think that’s the only audience who could enjoy it. The grotesque images are sickening but generally vague throughout. I am a certified coward when it comes to scary stories, and I made it through without having nightmares or feeling uneasy getting up to go to the bathroom after dark. My biggest warning would be that these stories leave the reader with a lot of questions, themes, and emotions to wrestle with. If you savor having leftovers to chew on, you’re likely to enjoy finishing each piece more than someone who prefers explicitly conclusive endings.

All These Sunken Souls isn’t a 5/5 for me—in large part because I’m not a big horror fan—but it is exciting. It was refreshing to read horror that didn’t rely on ‘torture porn’ or other violent power fantasies to raise my heartrate. Though I was often unsettled, I never had to worry about subtextual bigotry undercutting the amount of emotional investment and satisfaction I could put into and get out of each chapter. While not every character conquers their demons, the manifestations of white supremacy, zealotry, and evil incarnate do not conquer them. That relief, and the vast realm of imagination that opens up when a story escapes from under the thumb of tokenization and exploitation, was my favorite part of this anthology, and why I’d recommend it even to those who don’t think horror is for them.