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davemusson85's review
3.0
If you’re despairing about the present day, just be glad for one thing…it could be worse, as this anthology from Bag of Bones shows. These stories are all set in 2022 and, well, they will make you glad for what we’ve had so far - as crazy as that sounds. There are 38 tales of an alternative 2022 here and there is plenty to unnerve most types of reader.
The quality across these stories is pretty high throughout, and the *amount* of authors featured here - getting their chance to have something published - really is credit to Bag of Bones and their generosity. They’re giving a voice to more than double the amount of writers than many presses producing something this do, which is incredibly admirable.
My only problem with this collection is that there is only so many visions of a post-apocalyptic future I can take. A lot of these stories felt like remixes of each other, whereas the ones that really caught my eye were those that steered away from the end of the world, and instead locked into the horror of the here and now.
For example, April Yates’ The Salt Cellar was a terrific modern day creature feature, Julia LaFond’s Gilded Cage was wonderfully original, Ria Rees’ creepy and cool Not Her had me asking all types of questions, while Kathryn Tennison’s Cookies was a very clever twist combining the increased feeling of Big Brother with all the joys of pandemics.
But, by far the three stand outs for me all offered a true glimpse of the real horrors of 2022. The absolutely disgusting Lick by Hazel Ragaire was a fresh take on the chilling nature of how to climb the career ladder, Annika Neukirch’s The Shadow Guardian is driven by a powerful queer narrative exposing just how far society still has to go, and Scott McGregor’s Not a Drill deals with incredibly tough - but prescient - subject matter quite brilliantly.
There were a couple of post-apocalyptic ones I did enjoy - Vivian Kasley’s Sunrise Subset and P A Frank’s The Eleventh Hour Toast - but, for my taste, I think a collection with less of the world ending and more stories shining a light on the horrors of today would have been incredibly interesting. Again, that’s not to say there’s anything bad here, I just became apocalypsed-out very quickly,
Oh, one final shout-out to the final story in the collection; Eric Netterlund’s A Star is Born was surprisingly cute and really worked well as a finale.
The quality across these stories is pretty high throughout, and the *amount* of authors featured here - getting their chance to have something published - really is credit to Bag of Bones and their generosity. They’re giving a voice to more than double the amount of writers than many presses producing something this do, which is incredibly admirable.
My only problem with this collection is that there is only so many visions of a post-apocalyptic future I can take. A lot of these stories felt like remixes of each other, whereas the ones that really caught my eye were those that steered away from the end of the world, and instead locked into the horror of the here and now.
For example, April Yates’ The Salt Cellar was a terrific modern day creature feature, Julia LaFond’s Gilded Cage was wonderfully original, Ria Rees’ creepy and cool Not Her had me asking all types of questions, while Kathryn Tennison’s Cookies was a very clever twist combining the increased feeling of Big Brother with all the joys of pandemics.
But, by far the three stand outs for me all offered a true glimpse of the real horrors of 2022. The absolutely disgusting Lick by Hazel Ragaire was a fresh take on the chilling nature of how to climb the career ladder, Annika Neukirch’s The Shadow Guardian is driven by a powerful queer narrative exposing just how far society still has to go, and Scott McGregor’s Not a Drill deals with incredibly tough - but prescient - subject matter quite brilliantly.
There were a couple of post-apocalyptic ones I did enjoy - Vivian Kasley’s Sunrise Subset and P A Frank’s The Eleventh Hour Toast - but, for my taste, I think a collection with less of the world ending and more stories shining a light on the horrors of today would have been incredibly interesting. Again, that’s not to say there’s anything bad here, I just became apocalypsed-out very quickly,
Oh, one final shout-out to the final story in the collection; Eric Netterlund’s A Star is Born was surprisingly cute and really worked well as a finale.
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