PositiveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksThe stories in Compulsory Games are as eerie as folktales and as plausible as a crime scene report ... For all his frissons, Aickman is also a remarkably comic and subtle writer. The effect is both hilarious and unnerving ... Aickman was fascinated by incidents that rip apart the \'foggy tissue of things seemingly under control,\' when we glimpse \'the spirit behind the appearance, the void behind the face of order\' ... He can describe sex in surprisingly fresh ways, and his stories suggest that, if men are often snagged by sexualized monsters, that condemns the men more than anyone ... For the new reader, however, Nelson has made some odd choices. Rather more often than one might expect, the stories here include the familiar ghouls and vampires that Aickman generally tended to avoid ... Nelson’s taste seems to favor the more fantastic side of Aickman. There are several stories that are more eerie and unsettling than terrifying ... Aickman’s stories encourage the reader to open up Pandora’s box and see what happens next.