Book Review: A Glimpse of Fear - BS Miller

1/12/2025 12:22 AM CST

Dear Reader,

I know I missed you again last week. I know. I am sorry. I think my new commitment is 3 blogs a month instead of a blog every Sunday.

So here is the story. I started writing a blog about my love of Street Fighter last week, but I got over a thousand words in and realized I wasn’t even half way done in the journey and not even close to the point I want to make so I just I got overwhelmed and said, “Forget this, I will finish it tomorrow.” Well, I didn’t touch the Street Fighter blog again until yesterday where I wrote another thousand words. I still wasn’t done with it, so I woke up and wrote another thousand words today… and my blog about Street Fighter is still not done. So, instead of releasing the blog in installments, I think it would best be served to be read all at once. I don’t know how long it is going to take me to finish, but it has become a labor of love.

In the meantime, I should inform you I have always planned on adding reviews to this blog. So, for today’s serving of fun. I present you my review of “A Glimpse of Fear” by BS Miller.

 

 

A Beautiful Collection of Personal and Haunting Tales

A Glimpse of Fear – B.S. Miller

Review by Matthew Jon Smith

My Verdict: Great value, lots of creativity.

Welcome to my first review of a book I discovered in Books of Horror. Scrolling along one day, I see somebody had posted in the group hoping to find some reviews. They offered a free PDF copy, so I volunteered to read it, hoping to make myself take a break from my obsessive writing habit. By the time I had finished the first story, I decided to check if I could get it on Kindle, and sure enough, it was only two bucks. I’m always broke as a joke, so I didn’t snatch it up right away. (I like to stalk my prey first.) After reading the second story, I went ahead and bought it because I thought those two stories alone were worth the price of admission.

That might suffice as a review, but I like to get detailed. I will try not to wander into spoiler territory.

The first story, “Tracked,” is probably still my favorite of the collection. The story featured two protagonists and would switch perspectives between sections. At first the tale seems like a simple family-oriented story about a brother saving his older sister from a sticky situation, but with a twist. I must admit, at first, the twist sort of pissed me off. But I kept thinking about the story, and the more I thought about it, the more I realized Miller implied the twist several times and just used a decent red herring so it slips right by you until it’s made obvious. The story features a very likable main character who has limited mobility, and I thought that factor played nicely in some of the more suspenseful moments.

“The Smallest Exorcism” has such an audacious premise. My jaw literally dropped when I realized the direction the story intended to go. I won’t spoil that here, but I will say the story’s hero, Evie, represents the story’s core strength and biggest weakness. Evie, a total badass who performs exorcisms off the books in weird and fucked-up situations, uses her extensive knowledge of all things demon-fighting to support the other characters in an effective way. All those characteristics made Evie extremely likeable. I kind of saw her as this rebel priestess lady version of Simon Belmont from Castlevania, and I very much could see Evie having a recurring series of stories where she travels from town to town doing crazy exorcisms or other related shenanigans, kind of like Supernatural. But that was also the story’s problem: Evie was TOO good. She was TOO competent, so I never really felt worried for any of the characters because Evie did such a great job of supporting and preparing them that even when things got a little shaky, I was like, “Nah, Evie’s got it. We’re all good.” Basically, I liked the main character a lot, but I wasn’t scared. Also, while the premise was extremely promising, the execution was a tad tropey.

“Lobos” had great character dynamics and kept me guessing until the gruesome end. A couple, drinking around a fire at night, tease each other about what things lurk in the woods. Clever title, lots of fun misdirection.

I hated “The Bell Housing,” not because it was bad, but because it shares a nearly identical premise with a story I wrote, and Miller’s is just better than mine. The execution is better, the build-up is better, and the damn twist at the end is better too. I felt disrespected. I almost gave the whole collection a 0/5 for the injustice.

Ok, for real, I didn’t love “My Discontent.” The story has a cool premise, as it is a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Richard III, but I’m not a huge Bill Shakes guy. I respect his work and have enjoyed a good handful of his stories, but I’ve never read nor seen Richard III, so I feel a lot of the story’s charm was lost on me.

“Musty Little Minx” was short, sweet, and bloody fun. Just read it. It features a hairless Sphynx cat, so ugly that it's cute.

That leaves us with the last short story in the collection, “The Other’s Invited.” Boy, when I tell you reading this one made me emotional, I mean the waterworks started up a page or two in, and they kept going for a few minutes after the story was over. Not scary so much as heartwarming and touching. The story haunts but in a beautiful, aching way.

“Entombment” bordered between poetry and flash fiction, more of a short mood piece, really.

The collection finishes with three “found” poems assembled from bits of text in the Count of Monte Cristo, and I thought all three of them were rad. I could feel how the words were part of a larger narrative, but dissected and arranged in this new way, they conveyed a new message of darkness and violence. I don’t usually think of poetry often, and the poems here made me think I should be more open-minded.

If any of this sounds like your cup of tea, then pick up A Glimpse of Fear by B.S. Miller.

Find it here.