It’s Halloween, and the carnival has come to town.
The gates open at sunset, and the attractions are all one of a kind. Faery illusions caper under the big top while a demon hunts monsters on the midway. A psychic delivers actual messages from the dead and a real ghost lurks and laughs inside the haunted house. A werewolf plays Halloween tricks, a succubus learns the delights of a human Halloween, and a vampire hypnotizes his future prey.
Those who go to the carnival and come back have tales to tell long after the tents are gone. Those who go and never come back… well. There are stories that linger about them, too.
Monsters, magic and mischief abound in these thirteen short stories about the Midnight Carnival

As the stories in this collection make clear, the Midnight Carnival is not what it appears to be. Its presence creates a liminal space where the human and the not at all human, intersect. On Halloween, which humans and non-humans understand differently but both believe in, the Carnival can be an especially dangerous place for humans and a playground for things that think tricks are treats. 

I liked the idea of the Carnival. I admired how the authors collaborated to create a consistent version of the Carnival and its denizens, while telling stories that varied widely in tone and style. 

I particularly enjoyed seeing everything from the point of view of the characters who would normally be the things that lurk in the dark and which smart humans run from, usually while screaming. 

I mostly preferred the darker stories, but the lighter ones added to the image of Halloween as a playful time, if your definition of playful embraces potentially lethal outcomes. 

I’ve commented on each story below.

PREDATOR, PREY by Liz Neering and L.C. Hu ★★★★

This story was told from the perspective of a demon who is running security for the Carnival. It has a vampire as its backup and is itself being hunted by creatures from another dimension who have crossed over on Halloween.

It was tightly told and original. I liked how it established the Carnival as both a place of danger and a refuge for the people who work there. 

TRICK’R TREAT by Ashley Garst and Erica Hopper ★★★

The light-hearted tone initially disguises the dangers lurking in this story of a succubus, out of Hell for the first time, treating Halloween as a new game to be played and wanting to try everything.

I liked the idea that the succubus, while playful, curious and mostly without malice, is always dangerous.

FORM AND VOID Form by Jessica Hoffman ★★★

I liked the idea of a lonely fairy, setting up fairy rings because they reminded her of home. This felt like a fragment or a scene-setter for the rest of the stories rather than a story in its own right.

THE INCENDIARY by Jessica Hoffman and Cecil Evans ★★

A werewolf and a fairy having fun. I liked that the werewolf rode the motorcylce on The Wall Of Death. but the story didn’t really land for. me.

ALL YOU’VE GOT TO LOSE IS TIME by Ali Wagner and L.C. Hu ★★★★

This was the first story told partly from the perspective of a human at the Carnival. It was also the first one to link to a typical Carnival act, in this case the Fortune Teller. I liked the atmophere of the story. It had low-level tension and enough mystery to tug at my curiosity. It also had some surprising twists in it that made me smile.

BOO by Ashley Garst ★★★

This was gentle fun. I thought it might be a slasher story when I saw three teenage girls going into the Haunted House, but it was more original than that. I liked how it thought through how people would react if they met a real ghost with a sense of humour amongst the expected animatronics of a Carnival Haunted House.

CLARITY by Ali Wagner ★★★

Back to our fortune teller from earlier, only this time he’s off duty. The story imagined how hard it would be to hold onto reality, to have clarity, when you are constantly having other people’s memories and emotions wash through you.

THE PIED PIPER by Liz Neering ★★★★

A vampire mesmerist with an agenda. What appealed to me most about this story was the delight the memerist took not just in the joys of immediate manipulation of others but in the planting of seeds of future discord and mischief.

REVELATION by Ali Wagner and Jessica Hoffman ★★★

Our fortune teller is back but this time the story isn’t told from his point of view but of that of another Carnival worker who can see the dead. I liked how the story built the relationship between the two while steadily increasing the sense that the task they’d taken on might be too much for them.

GOOD ENOUGH by L.C. Hu ★★★★

This was my favourite story. I loved the opening line:

“Ray Carver was being very, very good: He only planned to kill one person that night.”

Carver is the vampire from the first story and this time he’s centre stage. What could have been a stalk and slash story became something more interesting with the introduction of a more deserving prey. The funhouse setting made the story feel more intense and more unpredictable.

AND AT THE HOUR OF OUR DEATH by Liz Neering ★★★

A slight but haunting tale about revenge long-pursued but not looked-forward to.