Brian Evenson’s A Collapse of Horses was my introduction to the author, and it accomplished one of the best things a book can do: it made me immediately go out and buy another book by the same writer.

That alone says a lot.

The collection is made up of short stories that live somewhere between psychological horror and something stranger and harder to pin down. Most of the stories land slightly above the typical horror anthology standard. Evenson has a real gift for creating interesting characters and dropping them into unsettling or unusual circumstances. Often the premise itself is enough to keep you engaged, even when the story begins drifting into more ambiguous territory.

And ambiguity is really the defining feature of the collection.

Evenson has a noticeable fondness for vague endings—sometimes deliberately unresolved, sometimes so abrupt that they almost feel like the story stops mid-thought. That doesn’t make the stories bad, but a few of them left me feeling less satisfied than I hoped, still wanting to know what happened next. For readers who enjoy tidy conclusions, that tendency might be frustrating. For others, the lingering uncertainty may be exactly the point.

Where the collection truly shines is in the story “Click.”

“Click” isn’t just the standout of the anthology—it’s one of the best short horror stories I’ve read in a long time. The story leans heavily into a kind of liminal-space horror, where the rules of the world feel slightly off, like a dream that refuses to behave logically. The physics of the space itself feels unstable, almost feverish, and the tension comes not from overt scares but from the creeping realization that something about the world no longer makes sense.

The protagonist is compelling enough to anchor the surreal events around him, and the story keeps you engaged the entire time, constantly wondering what is actually happening and where it’s all going. It’s the kind of story that feels unsettling long after you’ve finished it.

Even with the occasional frustratingly vague ending, A Collapse of Horses succeeds at what the best horror collections try to do: it leaves an impression. Some stories linger more than others, but the atmosphere and ideas are strong enough that I’m already interested in exploring more of Evenson’s work.

And in the end, that might be the best review a book can get.