The Headsman Review

by Cristina Mîrzoi

Rating: 3/5

Take a glimpse into the world of a headsman, a gloomy village in which each dweller has a secret: an evil witch, a shrewd florist, a naive young man, a foreign merchant, a dreadful husband, a mischievous maid, and a lustful duke. These stories are intertwined, weaving a dark narrative of love, trickery, brutality, and loss.

Under the bleak aesthetic, raw human emotions unravel themselves in a gripping story about moral decay. In a world that belongs to the wicked, how far can one walk this path while keeping a clean conscience?

The Headsman is a collection of short stories that focus on interconnected characters, sometimes looking at the same event from a different perspective. As a genre, it falls somewhere under dark fiction territory.

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This was a unique short story collection. I always love when a collection has a theme throughout. But this one goes even farther being a fictional town and each story takes place around a different member of the town.

I really liked the idea of this. Though I don’t think it was executed in the best way. The idea of the individual short stories were only vaguely connected, some more than others. But the connections didn’t always feel seamless. I honestly would have preferred to have the stories not connected at all.

We see a mixture of dark tales of loss, betrayal, murder and things that creep in the night. If you look past the premise of each of these stories being connected, we get some unique and interesting horror shorts.

If you like dark and creepy short stories, check out this collection!