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_b_a_l_'s review
3.0
Its very hard to give a single rating to an anthology of stories to which I had such a range of responses.
It didn't start on a good note, I'm not a fan of the high-brow, overly contrived style of stories like 'Nice Day for a Trip'. Even 'Fourth Person Singular', which I quite enjoyed, has these overtones that I find artificial and frankly unnecessary.
And it kinda gets worse from there on out, a type of stilted horror that grates rather than frightens. During 'Exposure' I was really wondering what on earth the point of the cinematic timeline even was, other than to convolute and obscure a potentially interesting narrative.
It all changed for me around Razorwings. Not that Razorwings is in itself is anything amazingly different, its solid, engaging urban fantasy, but it read very differently to anything up until that point, and after that the stories just change.
'White on White' and 'Bad Copies' are novel ideas and well written. 'Touching the Screams' (my favourite) and 'Masks of Flesh' are really excellent stories; genuinely creepy, subtly esoteric, but written naturally and without any pretense.
I found myself wishing that *that* author had written the entire collection.
It didn't start on a good note, I'm not a fan of the high-brow, overly contrived style of stories like 'Nice Day for a Trip'. Even 'Fourth Person Singular', which I quite enjoyed, has these overtones that I find artificial and frankly unnecessary.
And it kinda gets worse from there on out, a type of stilted horror that grates rather than frightens. During 'Exposure' I was really wondering what on earth the point of the cinematic timeline even was, other than to convolute and obscure a potentially interesting narrative.
It all changed for me around Razorwings. Not that Razorwings is in itself is anything amazingly different, its solid, engaging urban fantasy, but it read very differently to anything up until that point, and after that the stories just change.
'White on White' and 'Bad Copies' are novel ideas and well written. 'Touching the Screams' (my favourite) and 'Masks of Flesh' are really excellent stories; genuinely creepy, subtly esoteric, but written naturally and without any pretense.
I found myself wishing that *that* author had written the entire collection.
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