I love a good, themed single-author anthology. As you might expect from the title, the theme of this one is "NIGHTMARES," which manifest in all sorts of bad dreams and nocturnal deliriums experienced by many of the characters featured in its 10 dark tales.

What you might not expect, especially when perusing the varied descriptions of each story in the book's synopsis, are the recurring themes and interweaving plot elements that eventually tie them all together in a finale that relentlessly ramps things up in a manner reminiscent of the best in apocalyptic horror. I don't want to say more so as not to ruin the experience but if, like me, you start noticing a few stories in that things seem to be connected and taking place in the same world, let your mind take that ball and run with it, and enjoy spotting all the little details you'll catch as a result.

As an added bonus, I found most of the individual stories to be quite solid, with no trouble effectively standing on their own. There were a few that admittedly didn't wow me but they were all at least interesting enough to keep me plowing through pages and there were several straight-up bangers, like "Skulls," "Awake in a Bad Dream," "Small Bites," and "Cat & Mouse."

There were a few distractions, including some minor technical issues, some occasional stylistic choices I wasn't particularly fond of, and a few instances of what I'd call excessive foreshadowing that made it a bit too obvious where some of the tales were going sooner than I would have preferred but for me, all of that was easily outweighed by the fun and often-clever story concepts and their generally-strong implementations, coupled with the overall effectiveness of the collection as a whole.

In the end, "NIGHTMARES" was a 4.25 for me, rounded up so as not to underrate it, and an easy recommendation for fans of speculative horror. Nicely done!