The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell

Brian Evenson

Aug 2021 · Coffee House Press

About this ebook

“Here is how monstrous humans are.”

A sentient, murderous prosthetic leg; shadowy creatures lurking behind a shimmering wall; brutal barrow men: of all the terrors that populate The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, perhaps the most alarming are the beings who decimated the habitable Earth: humans. In this new short story collection, Brian Evenson envisions a chilling future beyond the Anthropocene that forces excruciating decisions about survival and self-sacrifice in the face of toxic air and a natural world torn between revenge and regeneration. Combining psychological and ecological horror, each tale thrums with Evenson’s award-winning literary craftsmanship, dark humor, and thrilling suspense.

Ratings and reviews

Horror is not my “schtick” . However, a line in the opening of the book (yes, I read advanced praises, endnotes and the like) from Publishers’ Weekly that said…”carefully calibrated exercises in ambiguity…” that made me try to read it. The first story: “Leg” was fascinatingly macabre , and from then, it really felt like a hardship to read random stories throughout the book. And the last story “The Glassy Burning Floor of Hell” harkened back to the first, However, it left me very “unsatisfied” It certainly isn’t aimed at a 65 year old. It gets 2 out of five because the good parts are great [ I received thisd book from an outside source and voluntarily read and reviewed it]

Great stories

About the author

Brian Evenson is the author of over a dozen works of fiction. He has received three O. Henry Prizes for his fiction. His most recent book, Song for the Unraveling of the World, won a World Fantasy Award and a Shirley Jackson Award and was a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction and the Balcones Fiction Prize. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.