Roland Allnach
multi-award winning author of the strange and surreal
www.rolandallnach.com
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Roland Allnach multi-award winning author of the strange and surreal www.rolandallnach.com |
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Oddities & Entities - Reviews & Interviews For reader reference: -
View and/or print a PDF book fact sheet
here. Reviews:
--Review by
Readers Favorite. Read the
review here, below. Awards: ** Bronze
Medalist, Horror,
2012 Readers Favorite Book Awards
Interviews for Oddities &
Entities: · The opening splash for O&E also constituted my first television appearance. I appeared on Lifetime's morning show, The Balancing Act, on June 14, 2012. You can watch the full interview right here:
-- Interviewed on World Talk Radio's 'Starstyle' with
Cynthia Brian. Listen to the archived episode right
here.
Oddities & Entities, by Roland Allnach "Oddities &
Entities" by Roland Allnach, categorized as horror fiction, is
unlike any other horror fiction I have ever encountered. The book is
comprised of six stories, each of which is written a cut above the
norm. There are no recognizable monsters in these stories, no
sophomoric zombies, no evil ancient vampires, and none of the
standard fare I have become accustomed to in the horror genre. I do
like the usual run of the horror genre, but this book is written
with thoughtful intelligence, for an intelligent adult reader. I do
not mean to imply sexual situations or coarse language. What I mean
is, any intelligent reader, capable of deep thought, will find this
book irresistible. The six individual stories are as unlike as any
six stories can be, yet each one is so sufficiently well-written
that, if sold as individual short stories, I wouldn't hesitate to
award 5 stars to each of them.
"Oddities & Entities" by Roland Allnach
If
you’re fans of quality horror literature, you owe it to yourselves
to check out the up-and-coming author, Roland Allnach, and his
collections of brilliant novellas,
Remnant (which I’ve
reviewed at (Bestsellersworld) elsewhere), and
Oddities & Entities.
The stories he writes are stealth bombs of suspense and they have a
high creepiness factor that suck his readers in like quicksand
teeming with all sorts of vile, squiggly creatures. That may sound
unappetizing, if you, like his characters, are mired in the
quicksand of predicaments he writes about; but, if you’re a fan of
the horror genre reading them, they’re like electrical shocks to the
pleasure centers of the brain. Oddities &
Entities
consists of six
marvelous miniature masterpieces of horror. I won’t go into each
in-depth, but I will touch on some of the many highlights that make
this a stand-out collection that you should add to your personal
libraries. The six novellas are: “Boneview (one of my personal
favorites),”Shift/Change,” “My Other Me,” “Gray,” “Elmer Phelps
(also nicely atmospheric and twisted),” and the collection concludes
with the polished gem, “Appendage.” “Boneview,” is a
tale about a young woman who has a most remarkable gift, though it’s
often more like a curse to her: Allison can use her psychic ability
called boneview to see how people will die. It’s like she gets an
X-ray gaze into their futures, into whatever degenerative bone
diseases the people might develop. Allison can peer into their
bodies and learn if they will get into a car wreck, or fall off of a
ladder and break their necks. Allison
discovers that her powers are more of a burden than a blessing. Two
different entities want to get at her and use her for their own
purposes. There’s a bizarre but very cool creature called the
Curmudgeon who wants to become more human, and desires to steal her
first-born to accomplish this goal. And, there’s someone who is
ostensibly a human, but who travels all around the country killing
people with the sight and cutting out their eyeballs to save their
immortal souls.
In
“Shift/Change,” a hospital worker struggles to regain his memory
while being confronted by a series of desperate people. The
character, Eldin, takes life and death very nonchalantly, telling
the new employee with the memory issues, John, that: “Time don’t
mean nothin’ down here.” Some people like the junkie, Rose, pay
Eldin money to shoot up there. Others pay for the twisted desire of
necrophilia with the “stiffies.” i.e., to have sex with the corpses.
How is this new employee similar to one that the hospital used to
employ? When one has unfinished business to take care of, can even
death prevent him from giving himself up to the cops? “My
Other Me,” reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories,
especially the ones in which he mentions doppelgangers. That’s
because, in Allnach’s novella, a college student finds himself
displaced in his own body by his alter ego. If your alter ego is
someone like Superman, everything’s fine–but, what if your alter ego
was that of a serial killer? “My Other Me,” is a great take on this
theme. I’ll just
discuss in brief one more of the six novellas, “Appendage.” It is
the final story of the collection, and it’s about what happens when
a cynical mercenary is hired by his son to protect a research lab on
the verge of a stunning discovery. Without hopefully giving too much
away, the story reminded me somewhat of the movie Predator. That’s
because much of it takes place in a jungle. The mercenary, Randal,
discovers that he has an inoperable brain tumor. This novella, among
many other things, illustrates that “Going Green,” is not always a
good thing to do. Oddities &
Entities
is a collection of
six tales of the macabre which will chill your spine. The novellas
made me think, as I was reading them, of some of the best Twilight
Zone episodes I’ve ever viewed. Roland Allnach already impressed me
with his suspenseful collection of short stories,
Remnant, and he has
proven with this latest collection that he is rapidly becoming a
master of the horror/suspense genres. Horror afficionados, check out
Oddities & Entities
today, and be on the look-out soon for my interview with the
author, Roland Allnach, at this site (Bestsellersworld)!
Review of 'Oddities & Entities'
Normally books I
choose to review are non-fiction, upbeat, positive, and
life-enhancing. Horror is not a genre that I read, but when Roland
Allnach’s Oddities & Entities crossed my desk, I was
intrigued by the sentence “Set in the mysterious space between
the everyday world and an existence just beyond reach, ‘Oddities &
Entities’ traces a path through the supernatural, the paranormal,
and the speculative.”
The
read didn’t disappoint. Oddities & Entities is an anthology
of six tales that explore the meaning of life beyond flesh and bone.
The stories are gritty, gruesome, bewitching, and beautiful.
Allnach began writing as a hobby when he was a teenager without
dreams of becoming an author. After more than two decades working
the night shift in a hospital, he had experienced an abundance of
strange and abnormal activities, many of which found their way into
his writings. Allnach is a master storyteller with a powerful pen.
His words flow as gently as a stream meandering through a bucolic
meadow even as he describes nightmarish scenes.
Roland was
a guest on my internationally broadcast radio program, Starstyle®
-Be the Star You Are!® and he enthralled our listeners around the
world as he described real life happenings hidden beyond the veil,
his writing process, and his runaway imagination. An avid reader,
Allnach has a do-it-yourself personality, thus when he writes, he
studies what he reads then designs his own musicality for his
sentences. The fluid transparency of his words catapult the reader
into the world of his macabre characters forcing one to make a moral
judgment on his philosophical musings. We experience the
paranormal, the speculative, and the crazed with Allnach’s poetic
prose. He is a master writer of the surreal and deserving of the
numerous awards he is winning.
Oddities &
Entities will entice, frighten, and shock as the little voices
that live in the author’s mind jump into yours. Enjoy the creatures,
the complexities, and the curveballs. The horror and the haunting
have never been more therapeutic!
Cynthia
Brian is Producer/Host of StarStyle®-Be the Star You Are!® Radio and
a New York Times best selling author
"Oddities & Entities" by Roland Allnach
Article first published as
Book Review: Oddities and Entities by Roland Allnach
on Blogcritics. “Oddities &
Entities” by Roland Allnach is composed of six engrossing, and
sometimes grossing short stories. Each one is unique in its
own way, and completely different from anything I have ever read
before. Reading these twisted stories gave me an awesome escape that
made me feel like I was on a ride through a fun house with no idea
when it would be over or where I would end up. As a result of
the uniqueness of the author’s ideas, he is in control of the
journey because you will have no idea what is going to happen next
in his creative imagination. If you are
looking for a romantic comedy, this is not the book for you.
Although there are several relationships that are involved in most
of these stories, they tend to be out of the norm. Way out of the
norm as a matter of fact. For example, in “Elmer Phelps,” the main
character has two relationships to deal with. One would be perfect,
if it wasn’t complicated by Elmer’s secret dire need for consuming
raw flesh. There is also a bit of an issue with how well he gets
along with his sister who shares his dietary needs. I will stop
there because I don’t want to spoil it.
As I read each
story, I appreciated how well Roland Allnach was able to write such
complete, detailed scenes in the space of a short story or a
novella. He does a wonderful job of describing the scenes and
helping you dive right into the characters’ minds. He will take you
to some dark and twisted places, and you will enjoy having goose
bumps on your arms. And when you are done with reading “Oddities &
Entities,” you will be extremely relieved to find yourself back in
your mundane world, as I was. Then, if you are like me, you
will find yourself looking on the Internet to find out what else
Roland Allnach has written so that you can dive right back into that
twisted darkness.
Pacific Book Review "Oddities &
Entities", by Roland Allnach
Psychoses, psychics, neuroses, and revelations not explainable by
common sense biology, the characters in this fantastic collection of
stories reveal and discover, to quote the author, a human "is a
bridge, and not an end."
The borders between psyches, humans and the world, the natural and
the supernatural are not shattered; they are subtly made fluid as
bridges themselves. Each story in “Oddities and Entities” is
beautifully written and the flawed characters, from fallen angels to
reluctant vampires, do not just romantically accept their nature as
some cookie cutter cult figures might. These characters, in Hamlet-esque
style, question the hell out of who they are and therefore take
philosophical and psychological tangents about what they are in
relation to the world.
"Boneview" is the first story in the collection. Allison, an
atypical Goth girl, plagued and protected by a ghoul of a guardian
angel from birth, has psychic abilities. This is, of course, a
blessing and a curse. In the end, she must make a choice between two
kinds of sight. It is a Bildungsroman, beautifully dark.
"Shift/Change" is composed of two stories which surprisingly
intertwine. John, a literal or figurative fallen angel, finds
potential redemption while working with a hedonist in the mortuary
of a hospital. Think Night Shift but written by Stephen King or the
Coen brothers.
Mo, short for "My Other Me," an alter-ego and more. What starts out
as a dark vignette about a shy young Noel stalking a young beauty
becomes a similarly dark, but slapstick dual personality war in
which Noel and Mo take turns kicking each other out of Mo and Noel's
body. A wonderful philosophical tangent comes from the shadowed
(out of body) Noel, who struggles with this new way of perceiving
the world. "If what he perceived as his intellect was a fantasy
generated by his own flesh, then the perception of existence about
his flesh was fantasy as well. Nothing was real, and so everything
was real." A fine deconstruction.
"Gray." Dave, our protagonist has a small man expelled from his
brain during a feverish bout of nose blowing. The homunculus,
"Gray," is not the ghost in the machine; he's a symbiote who
establishes order, living in virtual harmony with his human comrade
since birth. Perhaps a comment on the fallacy that the world can be
described or even lived in binary oppositions, the gray symbolizes
the fluctuation between black and white concepts such as order and
freedom.
A reluctant vampire, "Elmer Phelps," unwilling to join the
fraternity/sorority of the unspoken vampires, falls in love with
Samantha, a waitress at the local diner. A small town love story,
with charm and sensitivity, turns into an all out blood bath before
it's over. Elmer's older sister praises the immortal lifestyle and
shy Elmer's conscience resists. She is a psychic bridge to Elmer, a
depraved but protective older sister, encouraging Elmer to partake
in all things forbidden.
The final, and aptly named, appending story is "Appendage." Think of
a Buddhist or
Review of
"Oddities & Entities" by Vanessa Powell
4/5 Stars
Review of
"Oddities & Entities" by April Reynolds
4/5 Stars -
VERY Different The
author takes you into multiple different places with several short
stories. Just about the time the author almost loses my interest, he
peaks it again and again. The stories are quite different than any
I’ve read yet in some strange way I can not only realize them but I
understand them. Each story has its own little lesson and yet you
don’t realize it until the very end. The author does not leave gaps
here which I love. At the end of each story he does not leave you
wondering what happens to each character which I have found is a
rare occurrence in most books these days. The author could leave a
bit less information leading to the story but at the same time it
really catches you once you get past it and leaves no unanswered
questions. I would recommend this book to most of the people I know
it has a little bit of everything in it. It does come with dark
humor which I love and a subtle creepiness that keeps you looking
around once you’ve read a story or two. The author introduces you
into a place of his thoughts that only he could explain and brings
imaginable creatures to life.
Review of
"Oddities & Entities" by Carole Holland
5/5 Stars
This is possibly
one of the best shot story collections I have ever picked up, at the
same time as being one of the oddest. The six stories
take elements of human psychology and well-known supernatural and
paranormal creatures and turns them on their head with
spine-chilling results. All of the
stories were clever and very different from each other – at the end
of the book I could remember the main elements of each with very
little thinking because they had each left me with a little
something to think about and mull over. Allnach’s
characterisation is fantastic, no two characters were the same and
none of them felt flat or unrealistic as is often the case in short
stories. Within the confines of the short story structure it is very
easy to have one-dimensional characters because there simply isn’t
time to fit in a mass of backstory and the main story you want to
tell, any writer will tell you it’s difficult to strike a balance
successfully. Allnach never once fell into this trap, cleverly using
the characters thoughts and memories to fill in gaps in some stories
and simply by moving the time quickly and efficiently through
others. Every story got me engrossed enough to not want to put it
down because I wanted to know what the characters would do next –
their world was always so close to mine in every way it was a bit
like following the progress of a friend. Several of the
stories got gory and violent but never in a way that seemed out of
place – it was always something you had seen coming and fitted
perfectly with the story, inevitable but often gruesome – my stomach
turned on more than one occasion. Despite this, I never once wanted
to stop reading, the stories were so intriguing that I simply had to
keep reading – my face must have been a picture as I winced my way
through some scenes, equally disgusted and fascinated. It was a bit
like watching a scary movie from behind a cushion – I wanted to look
away but simply couldn’t in case I missed something important. Every now and
then I got a bit bogged down by long words and slightly heavy
language but it was never enough to make me stop reading and usually
was used well in context that I could carry on reading and glean the
meaning from what else was said and going on. The thing that
has stayed with me most from reading
Oddities and Entities
is the realisation that the human brain is very finely tuned
and it’s surprisingly easy for that balance to be disturbed and
thrown off course, often without you even noticing. That’s what made
it so scary, there were very few points during the stories where I
could have put my hand on my heart and sworn that I wouldn’t have
made the same choices as the characters in their situation – even
the choices that led to things I normally wouldn’t even imagine. It turns out much scarier things can happen than turning into a ‘vampire’ if you get bitten by the wrong sort of bat, the grey sense of order in the world maybe has much darker roots than the ‘human logic’ we assume and those weird, whispering, out-of-character thoughts you sometimes have? Yeah, they’re not the ‘you’ that you think they are…
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