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Chad Hofmann is a fiction author from Virginia. He has written two books to date, Helena, a young adult fiction story and the second book in the series Jack-o and the amulet, and The Bird Room, a collection of 17 tales of horror, the paranormal, and the unknown. He currently lives in a house with his brother and dog, and funds his writing working full time in the restaurant industry.
Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite
The Bird Room is a collection of short horror and dark fantasy stories written by Chad Hofmann. The title story is a macabre piece in which a pet parrot carries, along with his ability to speak, an unearthly and evil manifestation of the past. Some stories in this collection are dystopian, and the reader gets to glimpse an unsettling possible post-apocalyptic future. Others, like the concluding piece, The Park, are concerned with ancient evil that is still very much alive and present. The stories in The Bird Room are connected only in that they are all macabre, with a sly, dark humor that seems to chuckle dryly as the reader turns the page.
In his collection of horror stories, The Bird Room, Chad Hoffman deftly creates alternative worlds. Their tortured inhabitants parade themselves before the reader's eyes for a few brief moments before their turn is up, and the next story's opening words appear on the following page. It is an oddly unsettling thing peeking into those worlds and metaphorically backing out slowly, carefully, lest something attach itself to the reader and hitchhike a ride into this reality - but that is, after all, what horror is all about, isn't it? Hoffman's writing is seductive and sinuous, and while you know these stories have no happy endings, they are just about impossible to resist.
The Bird Room harkens from a place beyond The Twilight Zone and, like that series of yesterday, there are heroes and villains and something else that we'd better not even think about. I got plenty of spooky shudders and uncomfortable glances into the author's creative dark cellar, and I think I've managed to escape unscathed, or have I? The Bird Room is filled with stories of eldritch terror and the macabre that will delight and surprise the most jaded horror fan. It's a fun read and a recommended one.
