Growing Dark

De: Kristopher Triana

Narrado por: Dani George, Michael Zapcic, John Wayne Comunale, Thomas Mumme, Kevin McGuire, Kristopher Triana, Jennifer Mumme

A small town is ruined by black rain, and two police officers find themselves face to face with the creatures lurking in the flooded streets. In the wild west, an aging gunslinger returns to his favorite brothel, only to encounter a fathomless black tar that's devouring everyone within. Paramedics find a remedy for a zombie virus outbreak - but can the survivors come to terms with their cannibalism?

Former high school sweethearts reconnect for the anniversary of a murder. A young boy finds his family farm corroded by an evil that threatens to destroy his parents. Two deceased cowboy movie legends come back as avenging angels, tracking demons through haunted canyons. These stories and more fill Growing Dark, a collection of Kristopher Triana’s darkest short stories. Ten macabre tales of lurking dread and bloodcurdling terror, ranging from otherworldly evils to very human nightmares, this powerful collection is sure to keep you sleeping with the lights on. Read by Dani George, Michael Zapcic, John Wayne Comunale, Kevin McGuire, and Kristopher Triana.

©2014 Blue Juice Comics (P)2014 Blue Juice Comics

Great collection

This is my first time listening to
This author and I am blown away. I like anthologies and collections and this is one of the better ones hands down. The narration was great! Will get another book by this author for sure.

Solid collection of stories

Overall a solid and great collection of short stories. I enjoyed every single one, a few more than the rest. There were only about two stinkers mixed in but that's better than most other short story collections

Diverse and Satisfying

Growing Dark truly showcases the eclectic range Triana is capable of in a way a reader would otherwise only discover if they took the time to read half a dozen books. Running the gamut from intense cosmic horror to something that could be considered kid-friendly, there's no doubt any lover of dark fiction will find something to love in this short collection.
From the Storms, A Daughter kicks everything off, sharing the story of a town that's been going through hard times, and they're only getting harder as the region gets flooded. First responders in boats are struggling to locate stragglers to take them to safety, but what they find instead is evidence that there's more to fear than the water.
Eaters is a post-apocalyptic excursion into the remnants of the old world, as a small party of hunters is clearing the area of zombies. As with most tales like that, things don't go smoothly. Triana manages to bring some originality to the topic, and an ending that readers/listeners are unlikely to see coming.
Growing Dark is a coming-of-age tale gone wrong, as a farm boy surrounded by sickness and decay desperately wants to prove to his father that he can be a man. Sometimes being a man involves making some hard choices, and sometimes they'll be bad choices as well.
Reunion is an insightful story of childhood regrets and how the mistakes we make can haunt us well into adulthood, altering the courses we travel and where we ultimately end up.
Before the Boogeymen Come was the most surprising inclusion in this collection. Triana entertains readers as he breathes life into the monsters who plague the imaginations of young children before media and experience provide new monsters to replace the old.
The Bone Orchard is a heartbreaking western tale that could be read, depending on the reader's perspective, as being either pro-life or pro-choice in its message. An old shootist returns to an old haunt and old love, only to discover there's a sinister secret behind keeping the brothel running smoothly.
Soon There'll Be Leaves is a character study framed by multiple horrors, the most potent of which being reflection on a life not well-lived and the looming loss of family. Returning to a place he'd sooner never see again, our protagonist is approached by an old flame who proves the adage that one can never go home again, as an attempted affair takes an unforeseen twist.
Video Express is a nostalgic exploration of the video rental stores of our youth and condemnation of how we quickly turned our back on the family-run establishments in favor of places where we could easily snag the newest titles.
Giving from the Bottom is another character study, this time focused on the horrors of everyday life and the gradual erosion of both one's ability to care and one's will to live when nothing seems to turn out as expected.
The collection ends with the strangely epic Legends, a vision of an afterlife that is not at all what one might expect. In Triana's captivating narrative, we discover that the dead--if they're famous or infamous enough--become eidolons of a sort. Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin come together as paragons of what generations of moviegoers and fans imagined them to be, and as such, they are bestowed with purpose and power to protect the world from infernal entities who may have similarly familiar faces. For me, Legends was the best of the whole collection, providing a glimpse into a world I could see the author fleshing out into a much longer piece.
The narrations provided by Dani George, John Wayne Comunale, and Kristopher Triana himself were the best of the bunch. Triana especially did an excellent job of providing his characters with distinctive voices, and in the case of Before the Boogeymen Come a level of caricature that was enjoyable. The additional narrators, Michael Zapcic, Thomas Mumme, Jennifer Mumme, and Kevin McGuire were satisfying as well, just not as memorable as those provided by the three previously mentioned.