The Repeater Book of the Occult is a nice collection of ten tales, some well known others lesser known, but all classic examples of the early periods of such dark tales.

A collection of any kind will be hit or miss with many readers depending more on what the reader brings rather than the book itself. The book has ten very well written stories from excellent, and known, writers, so to give this anything less than a good rating is hubris in the extreme. But people do love to pose by being as negative as possible, so forgive them their little insecurities.

The introductions also vary since each is written by a different person and some may be less interesting to you. I didn't find any to be pointless though I also would have liked a little more depth since one part of the book blurb says they are "critical introductions." These are, by and large, less critical and more contextual introductions, background on the writer and/or story. Nothing that really subtracts from the wonderful collection, just doesn't add very much either.

Like many readers, I was familiar with most of the stories. If you only want collections to include stories that are new to you, well, good luck. Most readers will have read at least a few of these. I like collections like this because they group stories together that I might not group together. While this is not held together by a tight theme, they caused me to reread some stories that I likely would not have even though I have them in other books. I don't pull down any Poe or Twain collection very often and when I do I unfortunately gravitate toward the ones I either know or love best. So having a different one pulled out gives me the opportunity to read beyond what I would normally do. Some people, apparently, only like to have one copy of a story and even then, only in the right, to them, collection. I like different contexts for not only the fiction but for the physical location of the story.

I would recommend this to readers who are looking for a nice collection of stories, some new to them, some not. Readers who only want collections of stories they have never heard of may not want this since there will likely be a couple they know. Also, while the introductions do add some context, they are not critical in the sense of analysis and interpretation, so those readers might want to search for critical essays on the works if they want such things. If you simply like to reread good stories, however, this is an excellent book.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )