Turn Down the Light is an anthology put together by Richard Chizmar from Cemetery Dance and it features names like Stephen King, Jack Ketchum, Brian James Freeman, Clive Barker and Peter Straub just to mention a few. Each of them (in total there are 21 stories) also has a an illustration to go with the story. I will focus my review on King’s story but you should definitely check them all out.

King tells the story (it’s a short one that only covers like 20 plus pages) about two men and a dog. When we catch up with them it’s after the warheads have fallen. Most of the population is dead; or rather all of mankind as far as we know is dead. The same goes for the animals. Why these two are still alive we don’t know but we do know they won’t be for long.

Once again King shows us how good he is at making us care about the characters he is creating. Here we don’t get to spend more than about 20 pages with them but still we care. We want to know more, we want to know more about why the warheads were sent, we want to know more about what happens next. We want more. But this is also one of King’s strengths. Now we only know what he tells us in these 20 plus pages and then we’re left to ourselves to decide what went down and what’s happening after we leave.

Summer Thunder has no monsters, no ghosts or anything supernatural. Summer Thunder has two old men and a dog and I love every word of it!

Even if you for any reason are only interested in King’s story, Turn Down the Light is worth buying just for Summer Thunder. It is that good. But please give the other stories a chance. I think you will like them.