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zraitor's review
5.0
With a Voice that is Often Still Confused But is Becoming Ever Louder and Clearer is another fantastic collection by the author. Well written, and so fun to read. We see again the amazingly done characters, with their endless insights, and depression mixed with dark humor.
Opening with Vernichtungsschmerz a being invades the dreams of a group of high schoolers, offering to end their existence. Death offers never-ending pain it tells them, and it says it reaches out to the few who can hear it to save them from this. The author is rather verbose in his writing, and here to prove the Being is real one character asks it to tell her words she doesn't know. It gave me a pretty good laugh cause J.R. did that quite a bit in the first collection. He tones it down in this one though so thankfully it's not as excessive. "Sagacious."
A Related Corollary sets up the major theme of depression in this. The character knows it's not a phase to go through or something that will pass. It's just always there, and they carry on as they are expected to outwardly because that's just how it is... It's quite a sad short story reflecting on depression and will come up more and more in most of the collection's stories.
A Gulf of Responsibility sees a social worker find one of his clients has an abortion she can't pay for and money she couldn't have earned. As he investigates he finds some sort of otherworldly beings at play behind the scenes. It's a great story full of the slow, careful character work the author does so well.
Soon Enough This Will Essentially Be a True Story actually has no topics of depression, it's just a great slasher and satire of Goodreads and reviewing things online, as I'm doing now .. Err... After entering a giveaway, Karen wins a book by the author KatMandu. It's a terrible book full of awful stories, even one about a man and melting crap babies... Anyways, since it's so bad she refuses to review it and KatMandu gets increasingly angry with her... It's a fun story full of dark humor.
I'll leave it at that, as I feel these four show the major themes running throughout, great character insights, dark humor, the Lovecraftian beings in the background, the depression, and just a general sense that it would be better to have never existed at all. Although every story is great, there is not a weak one in the bunch, and one can go on and on about the themes and what it means to them. It all leads up to the last one "It's Not Feelings of Anxiety; It's One, Constant Feeling: Anxiety". It's just an absolute gut-punch of a story, the author clearly wanted to end this one on a sour note, and he pulled it off well.
Just so well done, stories that I will remember for quite a long time. I kind of wanted to get into all the stories in this, but this review is already so long, and trust me, it's just worth reading. I cannot say enough how much I enjoyed this. Once again, strongly recommended.
Opening with Vernichtungsschmerz a being invades the dreams of a group of high schoolers, offering to end their existence. Death offers never-ending pain it tells them, and it says it reaches out to the few who can hear it to save them from this. The author is rather verbose in his writing, and here to prove the Being is real one character asks it to tell her words she doesn't know. It gave me a pretty good laugh cause J.R. did that quite a bit in the first collection. He tones it down in this one though so thankfully it's not as excessive. "Sagacious."
A Related Corollary sets up the major theme of depression in this. The character knows it's not a phase to go through or something that will pass. It's just always there, and they carry on as they are expected to outwardly because that's just how it is... It's quite a sad short story reflecting on depression and will come up more and more in most of the collection's stories.
A Gulf of Responsibility sees a social worker find one of his clients has an abortion she can't pay for and money she couldn't have earned. As he investigates he finds some sort of otherworldly beings at play behind the scenes. It's a great story full of the slow, careful character work the author does so well.
Soon Enough This Will Essentially Be a True Story actually has no topics of depression, it's just a great slasher and satire of Goodreads and reviewing things online, as I'm doing now .. Err... After entering a giveaway, Karen wins a book by the author KatMandu. It's a terrible book full of awful stories, even one about a man and melting crap babies... Anyways, since it's so bad she refuses to review it and KatMandu gets increasingly angry with her... It's a fun story full of dark humor.
I'll leave it at that, as I feel these four show the major themes running throughout, great character insights, dark humor, the Lovecraftian beings in the background, the depression, and just a general sense that it would be better to have never existed at all. Although every story is great, there is not a weak one in the bunch, and one can go on and on about the themes and what it means to them. It all leads up to the last one "It's Not Feelings of Anxiety; It's One, Constant Feeling: Anxiety". It's just an absolute gut-punch of a story, the author clearly wanted to end this one on a sour note, and he pulled it off well.
Just so well done, stories that I will remember for quite a long time. I kind of wanted to get into all the stories in this, but this review is already so long, and trust me, it's just worth reading. I cannot say enough how much I enjoyed this. Once again, strongly recommended.
alyz's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
4.5
megapolisomancy's review
4.0
That doozy of a title is borrowed from a Communist League manifesto of 1847: "... the angry masses of the proletariat are in motion and are demanding their liberation from the fetters of money rule, from the fetters of the bourgeoisie, with a voice that is often still confused but is becoming ever louder and cleared." I was going to say that this isn't a particularly Marxist work, but I suppose if you think about it, cosmic horror is kind of the reductio ad absurdum of Marx's dictum that people make their own history, but not in circumstances of their own choosing. If it's true of the materialist social forces that surround us, it's just as true of the vast, uncaring universe, whether or not it's populated by unknowable horrors.
Hamantaschen excels at painting the day-to-day lives of his dissatisfied protagonists, slogging through work and play and relationships before outer (or inner!) corruption sets in. The prose is a very folksy/ultra-contemporary style (not at all what you would expect from the title) that matches the world of the everyday quite well, although sometimes (in the dialogue especially) it's a little TOO true-to-life. Throughout, the voice is simultaneously smirky and put-upon, indignant at the state of the world and the characters' travails.
Overall, a solid self-published collection of dark stories by an author with a distinctive voice.
Vernichtungsschmerz
German for "to be annihilated with pain," so we're in very cheery territory right off the bat. In New York, four high school friends live typical lives of suburban resentment and discontent, complete with painful teenage banter and pop culture references. Their paths diverge after dream visits from some omniscient being who offers to spare them the unknowable horror of death by immediately wiping them from existance. If life is a net negative, why suffer through it at all? One reason
might be to learn new words, which is how the being proves its real-ness/separation from the psyche of the dreamers (as it knows the meanings of words they don't), and agency - making choices as a real/separate entity - is an important consideration here. Aleister Crowley's "The Testament of Magdalene Blair" (1913) covered similar ground, using a vague intervention (a telepathic link between a married couple) to explore the abject misery and unending pain of death (shades of Poe, as well). I don't think he took it in quite such an anti-natalist direction though, although it's been several years since I've read it.
A Related Corollary
The most straightforwardly-realist of the bunch, a case study of depression and the balance between social networks and selfishness as two friends converse in a diner.
The Gulf of Responsibility
A New York social worker, passively going through the motions of life and career, gets embroiled in some shady goings-on when he investigates a client who seems to be pregnant more often than she should. That set-up triggered some alarm bells for me, but the character was treated sympathetically, and I enjoyed where the story went - sometimes it's best to accept that a boring life is a good life, and to leave well enough alone.
Big with the Past, Pregnant with the Future
An email leak at Yale law prompts a (passing) black student to reflect on a spooky moment from his past. He dreads confronting the school pariah, a class-reductionist anti-identity politics asshole. What does it mean to profit from past injustices wreaked on your family? Rather open-ended, stretching out the tension rather than resolving it.
Soon Enough This Will Essentially Be a True Story
The extremely online story of a Goodreads reviewer targeted by a serial killer whose book she disparaged. None of that is my thing but, you know, this was a well-constructed story in terms of ratcheting up tension and people who like this sort of thing, etc.
I'm A Good Person, I Mean Well and I Deserve Better
The indignities of being on a date with someone you met online give way to an astoundingly lengthy interlude about the indignities of gastrointestinal distress. Then, monsters attack, summoned by a recently-fired cook undergoing some sort of mutation/break with reality. The cook not being particularly imaginative, said monsters are vague pastiche drawn from video games and movies - Ghouls and Ghosts, Super Mario Brothers, Futurama, Critters, etc. An absolutely fantastic denouement follows all that violence. The only thing keeping me from unreservedly recommending this one is the astounding length of time focused on shitting. I get it, thematically, but...
Cthulhu, Zombies, Ninjas and Robots!; or, a Special Snowflake in an Endless Scorching Universe
There's a pretty big disconnect between the actual content of Lovecraft's writing and cutesy fan culture and commodification, huh?
Oh Abel, Oh Absalom
The low point of the collection, a sequel to one of the other stories that adds nothing to the prior tale except worse dialogue and a bizarre fixation on colorism.
"It's Not Feelings of Anxiety; It's One, Constant Feeling: Anxiety"
A reunion with an old friend prompts an anti-natalist sellout to reflect on parenthood, family, and career, coinciding with strange happenings on the part of his toddler son. Ennui gives way to something worse, and this story beautifully synthesizes a lot of what's gone before in the collection. I would say it's the heart of the book, but heart is entirely too gentle and positive a word. "Existence had not been his fault."
Hamantaschen excels at painting the day-to-day lives of his dissatisfied protagonists, slogging through work and play and relationships before outer (or inner!) corruption sets in. The prose is a very folksy/ultra-contemporary style (not at all what you would expect from the title) that matches the world of the everyday quite well, although sometimes (in the dialogue especially) it's a little TOO true-to-life. Throughout, the voice is simultaneously smirky and put-upon, indignant at the state of the world and the characters' travails.
Overall, a solid self-published collection of dark stories by an author with a distinctive voice.
Vernichtungsschmerz
German for "to be annihilated with pain," so we're in very cheery territory right off the bat. In New York, four high school friends live typical lives of suburban resentment and discontent, complete with painful teenage banter and pop culture references. Their paths diverge after dream visits from some omniscient being who offers to spare them the unknowable horror of death by immediately wiping them from existance. If life is a net negative, why suffer through it at all? One reason
might be to learn new words, which is how the being proves its real-ness/separation from the psyche of the dreamers (as it knows the meanings of words they don't), and agency - making choices as a real/separate entity - is an important consideration here. Aleister Crowley's "The Testament of Magdalene Blair" (1913) covered similar ground, using a vague intervention (a telepathic link between a married couple) to explore the abject misery and unending pain of death (shades of Poe, as well). I don't think he took it in quite such an anti-natalist direction though, although it's been several years since I've read it.
A Related Corollary
The most straightforwardly-realist of the bunch, a case study of depression and the balance between social networks and selfishness as two friends converse in a diner.
The Gulf of Responsibility
A New York social worker, passively going through the motions of life and career, gets embroiled in some shady goings-on when he investigates a client who seems to be pregnant more often than she should. That set-up triggered some alarm bells for me, but the character was treated sympathetically, and I enjoyed where the story went - sometimes it's best to accept that a boring life is a good life, and to leave well enough alone.
Big with the Past, Pregnant with the Future
An email leak at Yale law prompts a (passing) black student to reflect on a spooky moment from his past. He dreads confronting the school pariah, a class-reductionist anti-identity politics asshole. What does it mean to profit from past injustices wreaked on your family? Rather open-ended, stretching out the tension rather than resolving it.
Soon Enough This Will Essentially Be a True Story
The extremely online story of a Goodreads reviewer targeted by a serial killer whose book she disparaged. None of that is my thing but, you know, this was a well-constructed story in terms of ratcheting up tension and people who like this sort of thing, etc.
I'm A Good Person, I Mean Well and I Deserve Better
The indignities of being on a date with someone you met online give way to an astoundingly lengthy interlude about the indignities of gastrointestinal distress. Then, monsters attack, summoned by a recently-fired cook undergoing some sort of mutation/break with reality. The cook not being particularly imaginative, said monsters are vague pastiche drawn from video games and movies - Ghouls and Ghosts, Super Mario Brothers, Futurama, Critters, etc. An absolutely fantastic denouement follows all that violence. The only thing keeping me from unreservedly recommending this one is the astounding length of time focused on shitting. I get it, thematically, but...
Cthulhu, Zombies, Ninjas and Robots!; or, a Special Snowflake in an Endless Scorching Universe
There's a pretty big disconnect between the actual content of Lovecraft's writing and cutesy fan culture and commodification, huh?
Oh Abel, Oh Absalom
The low point of the collection, a sequel to one of the other stories that adds nothing to the prior tale except worse dialogue and a bizarre fixation on colorism.
"It's Not Feelings of Anxiety; It's One, Constant Feeling: Anxiety"
A reunion with an old friend prompts an anti-natalist sellout to reflect on parenthood, family, and career, coinciding with strange happenings on the part of his toddler son. Ennui gives way to something worse, and this story beautifully synthesizes a lot of what's gone before in the collection. I would say it's the heart of the book, but heart is entirely too gentle and positive a word. "Existence had not been his fault."
typicalbooks's review
5.0
You can see by how fast I read this collection, how much I enjoyed it. Rarely does one read for pleasure with that speed unless it's your day job. It's even more rare that I write a review. So, that said, I highly recommend this to all ~ whether you are a fan of horror, the weird, literary fiction or that slipstream gen-x style nihilistic urban fantasy (or whatever it is called) this will have a song for you. Each entry as strong as the last, the characters are very rich even if they are represented in a couple pages or dozens. The stories vary in length and mood, and I like that as much as I like the varying degrees of 'weird' and 'earthbound'. Also, being on a Lovecraft kick lately helps. The 'weird' is unfurled here, for the most part, as opposed to cloaked, and there is one story that really tickles the Lovecraft 'fan' in me mostly because I'm not a 'fanatic' in the 21st century sense. Then there is the slasher angle, which I absolutely loved. Yeah, this was really great. Hoping for a wider release as I've my copy thanks to the author who sent one my way as we've been published alongside one another in the past and tend to read similarly - very pleased to have had a chance to read this fresh out of the gate.
allyah's review
5.0
Perfect combination of style and substance. May or may not have given me nightmares.
Recommended.
Recommended.
ebees's review
4.0
I originally received J. R.'s first book, [b:You Shall Never Know Security|12632143|You Shall Never Know Security|J.R. Hamantaschen|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327221073l/12632143._SY75_.jpg|17735156], in a Goodreads giveaway and after reviewing and rating it, I decided to read his second book as well!
Unfortunately, this book took me longer to get through than the first one (I think I just needed a break from the horror genre) but picked it up again as soon as I was ready to get back into my horror/weird fiction collection. I'm grateful though, as I thoroughly enjoyed the stories.
Like the first collection, I wouldn't entirely consider this horror, but considering Goodreads' limited genre selection, I understand why it's categorized as so. It's more like "Weird fiction," with stories that are uncomfortable, supernatural, and/or chillingly real, philosophical, and thought-provoking. Just like the first collection of stories, in true J. R. Hamantaschen fashion. While I'm comparing the two, the editing is much better in this one and it's clear that he was more in control of the collection.
There are nine stories in all, but here are the ones which made the most impact on me
Unfortunately, this book took me longer to get through than the first one (I think I just needed a break from the horror genre) but picked it up again as soon as I was ready to get back into my horror/weird fiction collection. I'm grateful though, as I thoroughly enjoyed the stories.
Like the first collection, I wouldn't entirely consider this horror, but considering Goodreads' limited genre selection, I understand why it's categorized as so. It's more like "Weird fiction," with stories that are uncomfortable, supernatural, and/or chillingly real, philosophical, and thought-provoking. Just like the first collection of stories, in true J. R. Hamantaschen fashion. While I'm comparing the two, the editing is much better in this one and it's clear that he was more in control of the collection.
There are nine stories in all, but here are the ones which made the most impact on me
Vernichtungsschmerz A sort of IT/Freddy Kreuger monster haunts a group of four girls. There is no happiness here.
The Gulf of Responsibility This one may have been my favorite. A social worker investigates the suspicious behavior of a client. This one had me feeling like I was reading about the author himself.
Soon Enough This Will Essentially Be a True Story Perhaps written for the fans specifically? Sort of made my heartbeat quicken when I received messages on Goodreads... and avoid the Giveaways section a bit.
I’m A Good Person, I Mean Well and I Deserve Better absolutely "weird fiction" worth reading. Reminded me of Jordan, When Are You Going To Settle Down, Get Married And Have Us Some Grandchildren? from "You Shall Never Know Security."
eyed's review
5.0
This was the first time I have read anything by J.R. Hamantaschen and I have to say I am very happy that I did. This was a fantastic collection of odd dark stories that I would highly recommend to to pretty much anyone.
These tales all involved normal people dealing with strange and insane situations and experiences. Some would probably say they moved a little slow but that worked great as far as drawing me into the mystery of each individual story.I can not wait to read more from this author.
I will be picking up a copy of You Shall Never Know Security in the very near future.
These tales all involved normal people dealing with strange and insane situations and experiences. Some would probably say they moved a little slow but that worked great as far as drawing me into the mystery of each individual story.I can not wait to read more from this author.
I will be picking up a copy of You Shall Never Know Security in the very near future.
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