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clairereviews's review against another edition
3.0
Review: No Way Home, novella collection by Lucas Bale, J. S. Collyer et al Publication Date: 26th February 2015
ASIN: B00U2YDP24
Source: Author provided review copy
Rating: 3*
Synopsis:
Stories From Which There is No Escape. Nothing terrifies us more than being stranded. Helpless, forsaken, cut-off. Locked in a place from which there is no escape, no way to get home. A soldier trapped in an endless war dies over and over, only to be awakened each time to fight again - one of the last remaining few seeking to save mankind from extinction. In rural 70s England, an RAF radio engineer returns to an abandoned military installation, but begins to suffer hallucinations, shifts in time and memories that are not his own. A widower, one of ten thousand civilian space explorers, is sent alone to determine his assigned planet's suitability for human colonisation, but stumbles across a woman who is part of the same programme and shouldn't be there at all. A suicidal woman in a poverty-stricken near-future America, where political apathy has allowed special interests to gain control of the country, takes part in a particularly unpleasant crowd-funding platform, established by the nation's moneyed elite to engage the masses. An assassin from the future, sent back in time to murder an insurgent, is left stranded when he fails in his mission and knows he will soon cease to exist. These sometimes dark, sometimes heart-warming, but always insightful stories and more are to be found in No Way Home, where eight of the most exciting new voices in speculative fiction explore the mental, physical and even meta-physical boundaries that imprison us when we are lost.
My Review:
This is a nice collection of novellas, particularly if you've not read any of the authors before. It's a relatively quick and easy way to see whether you like these short stories before trying a full- length novel.
On the whole, I enjoyed this collection. Some stories I preferred, but all are full of suspense and thrills.,
*I received an ARC of No Way Home in return for my honest review*
ASIN: B00U2YDP24
Source: Author provided review copy
Rating: 3*
Synopsis:
Stories From Which There is No Escape. Nothing terrifies us more than being stranded. Helpless, forsaken, cut-off. Locked in a place from which there is no escape, no way to get home. A soldier trapped in an endless war dies over and over, only to be awakened each time to fight again - one of the last remaining few seeking to save mankind from extinction. In rural 70s England, an RAF radio engineer returns to an abandoned military installation, but begins to suffer hallucinations, shifts in time and memories that are not his own. A widower, one of ten thousand civilian space explorers, is sent alone to determine his assigned planet's suitability for human colonisation, but stumbles across a woman who is part of the same programme and shouldn't be there at all. A suicidal woman in a poverty-stricken near-future America, where political apathy has allowed special interests to gain control of the country, takes part in a particularly unpleasant crowd-funding platform, established by the nation's moneyed elite to engage the masses. An assassin from the future, sent back in time to murder an insurgent, is left stranded when he fails in his mission and knows he will soon cease to exist. These sometimes dark, sometimes heart-warming, but always insightful stories and more are to be found in No Way Home, where eight of the most exciting new voices in speculative fiction explore the mental, physical and even meta-physical boundaries that imprison us when we are lost.
My Review:
This is a nice collection of novellas, particularly if you've not read any of the authors before. It's a relatively quick and easy way to see whether you like these short stories before trying a full- length novel.
On the whole, I enjoyed this collection. Some stories I preferred, but all are full of suspense and thrills.,
*I received an ARC of No Way Home in return for my honest review*
leodhasach's review against another edition
5.0
Usually I don't take to short story anthologies, I'm not a huge fan of shorter fiction because I feel like they either finish at the point where I'm beginning to really enjoy the story, or they end abruptly leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions as to what happens at the end. I'm lazy, I like to be spoon-fed by the author and I like neat endings tied up in pretty little bow!
However this defied my expectations. And to be fair and open I should say that I know A.S Sinclair's work as Alex Roddie and his mountain fiction works so I knew this would be of a high standard if he was involved. (Cheque to the usual address please Mr Roddie!)
Based on the premise that you're stranded with no way to get home this was never going to be a light read, and the stories are for the most part quite intense and yes, a bit gloomy too.
Lucas Bale's opener,'To Sing of Chaos and Eternal Night', about a nameless soldier stuck in a never ending loop of battles, is written superbly. He's hinted a larger novel to flesh out the story which I would be keen to see the light of day.
Revolver by Michael Patrick Harris in particular stands out as being ever so slightly unsettling, it's unashamedly unsubtle which he freely admits to in the blurb at the end. Taking social media to a dystopian extreme he manages to convey the feeling of utter desperation by the main protagonist whilst giving a distinct feeling that we're not really all that far away from the scenario depicted in the story.
Fortunately this standard continues throughout and it's easy to forget that none of these authors (and I mean this with the greatest respect) are big name sci-fi writers. But the quality easily matches anything I've read that's touted by the big publishing houses.
However this defied my expectations. And to be fair and open I should say that I know A.S Sinclair's work as Alex Roddie and his mountain fiction works so I knew this would be of a high standard if he was involved. (Cheque to the usual address please Mr Roddie!)
Based on the premise that you're stranded with no way to get home this was never going to be a light read, and the stories are for the most part quite intense and yes, a bit gloomy too.
Lucas Bale's opener,'To Sing of Chaos and Eternal Night', about a nameless soldier stuck in a never ending loop of battles, is written superbly. He's hinted a larger novel to flesh out the story which I would be keen to see the light of day.
Revolver by Michael Patrick Harris in particular stands out as being ever so slightly unsettling, it's unashamedly unsubtle which he freely admits to in the blurb at the end. Taking social media to a dystopian extreme he manages to convey the feeling of utter desperation by the main protagonist whilst giving a distinct feeling that we're not really all that far away from the scenario depicted in the story.
Fortunately this standard continues throughout and it's easy to forget that none of these authors (and I mean this with the greatest respect) are big name sci-fi writers. But the quality easily matches anything I've read that's touted by the big publishing houses.
serena_dawn's review
4.0
Received Free ARC (Advanced Readers Copy) for Read-for-Review : Goodreads Group : Pro-Active Destruction: Harry Manners
To Sing of Chaos and Eternal Night (Lucas Bale): with the Widows, a soldier can fight forever, dying on the battlefield only live again to fight another day. In such a war the only very real question becomes, what are you fighting for? And what would you do if you knew the truth...
XE, or People Are Crazy (S. Elliot Brandis): sometimes it doesn't matter how far you get from people, they always seem to find you, and there is always something now very sane about the way they behave. Sometimes the sane and safe thing to be is paranoid.
Grist (J. S. Collyer): history is full of darkness, but when your a miner that dreams of the sky and the mines use something called bloodgrease, the only way out might lead to death.
Merely A Madness (S. W. Fairbrother): rebels come in all shapes and sizes, on a Earth abused for its resources, people on Earth are born now with missing limbs -or too many parts- are thought of no better than beasts or animals, until they rise up from the mud, because with love comes hope - but hope isn't always on your heart's side.
Revolver (Michael Patrick Hicks): what if you were so poor people paid you a starting bid of $5,000 to end your life on live TV? Is that a world still worth something? Still worth living in or fighting for? The thing about revolutions is it's not surprising how many begin with a Revolver.
The Happy Place (Harry Manners): I am sure you've heard the phrase "go to your happy place", but what if you can't? What if you're on the Moon and remembering a lover lost, with a dead end handyman/sanitation job, children you can never take home to Earth with you, and standing between you and your happy place is all that ...and there is no escape. You can only hope it's enough.
Renata (Nadine Matheson): visions, assassins, professors and ambassadors, and a family that ties together all three -and more- with such a family's blood flowing through you, a time machine may mean very little, or be key to rebirth and growth.
Cold Witness (A. S. Sinclair): a theme that ran through my mind reading this can be reminded with "Zhuang Zhou Dreams of Being a Butterfly", who you really has in the end less to do with name and realities "facts", but perhaps lays with what you do and don't fear...and why.
I quite liked them all, strange and unique, and stranded, one way or another, far from home.
To Sing of Chaos and Eternal Night (Lucas Bale): with the Widows, a soldier can fight forever, dying on the battlefield only live again to fight another day. In such a war the only very real question becomes, what are you fighting for? And what would you do if you knew the truth...
XE, or People Are Crazy (S. Elliot Brandis): sometimes it doesn't matter how far you get from people, they always seem to find you, and there is always something now very sane about the way they behave. Sometimes the sane and safe thing to be is paranoid.
Grist (J. S. Collyer): history is full of darkness, but when your a miner that dreams of the sky and the mines use something called bloodgrease, the only way out might lead to death.
Merely A Madness (S. W. Fairbrother): rebels come in all shapes and sizes, on a Earth abused for its resources, people on Earth are born now with missing limbs -or too many parts- are thought of no better than beasts or animals, until they rise up from the mud, because with love comes hope - but hope isn't always on your heart's side.
Revolver (Michael Patrick Hicks): what if you were so poor people paid you a starting bid of $5,000 to end your life on live TV? Is that a world still worth something? Still worth living in or fighting for? The thing about revolutions is it's not surprising how many begin with a Revolver.
The Happy Place (Harry Manners): I am sure you've heard the phrase "go to your happy place", but what if you can't? What if you're on the Moon and remembering a lover lost, with a dead end handyman/sanitation job, children you can never take home to Earth with you, and standing between you and your happy place is all that ...and there is no escape. You can only hope it's enough.
Renata (Nadine Matheson): visions, assassins, professors and ambassadors, and a family that ties together all three -and more- with such a family's blood flowing through you, a time machine may mean very little, or be key to rebirth and growth.
Cold Witness (A. S. Sinclair): a theme that ran through my mind reading this can be reminded with "Zhuang Zhou Dreams of Being a Butterfly", who you really has in the end less to do with name and realities "facts", but perhaps lays with what you do and don't fear...and why.
I quite liked them all, strange and unique, and stranded, one way or another, far from home.
peterseanesq's review against another edition
4.0
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3A788XQ89PEPW?ref=pf_ov_at_pdctrvw_srp
There is nothing upbeat about being exiled and never being able to return home. So, this is a generally downbeat collection of stories. The quality was generally good, although some ended a bit too abruptly.
To Sing of Chaos and Eternal Night - A Cyborg spends his life fighting and dying to protect humanity from an alien race, then he discovers he's been fighting on the wrong side. There was a lot of background stuff in this one that made it very convoluted.
"XE, or People Are Crazy." Bradley is sent to evaluate an alien planet for human settlement. But is he alone in his exile?
"Grist." Humanity has fallen on hard times; humans have been reduced to servitude. Is there any escape? Again, this one presupposed a lot of back-story and I'm not sure I cared about the characters.
"Merely a Madness." Honeymooners caught in a revolution on Earth. Decent story.
"Revolver." I guess every story collection has to be a masturbatory fantasy where a leftist writer spills his wet dream about conservates. This is that story.
"The Happy Place." Pioneer life is hard on families. Life on recently-colonized Mars is very close to the edge. Decent story.
"Renata." There's a lot of backstory and character conflict that's never explained in this one. It's an interesting story and interesting idea about precognition and time-travel, but there are things in the story that aren't explained and the story ends without resolution.
"Cold Witness." This one was well written, but the interlacing of past and present and alternative lives made for a confusing stew.
"If You Are Reading This Post." This is not really a story.
There is nothing upbeat about being exiled and never being able to return home. So, this is a generally downbeat collection of stories. The quality was generally good, although some ended a bit too abruptly.
To Sing of Chaos and Eternal Night - A Cyborg spends his life fighting and dying to protect humanity from an alien race, then he discovers he's been fighting on the wrong side. There was a lot of background stuff in this one that made it very convoluted.
"XE, or People Are Crazy." Bradley is sent to evaluate an alien planet for human settlement. But is he alone in his exile?
"Grist." Humanity has fallen on hard times; humans have been reduced to servitude. Is there any escape? Again, this one presupposed a lot of back-story and I'm not sure I cared about the characters.
"Merely a Madness." Honeymooners caught in a revolution on Earth. Decent story.
"Revolver." I guess every story collection has to be a masturbatory fantasy where a leftist writer spills his wet dream about conservates. This is that story.
"The Happy Place." Pioneer life is hard on families. Life on recently-colonized Mars is very close to the edge. Decent story.
"Renata." There's a lot of backstory and character conflict that's never explained in this one. It's an interesting story and interesting idea about precognition and time-travel, but there are things in the story that aren't explained and the story ends without resolution.
"Cold Witness." This one was well written, but the interlacing of past and present and alternative lives made for a confusing stew.
"If You Are Reading This Post." This is not really a story.
tiredtank's review
5.0
It's a rare thing to enjoy every short story in a collection, but somehow No Way Home managed just that. Of course there were some that I enjoyed more than others, but not a one had me thinking, "Ugh, screw it. I'm going to skim." They all had something to offer, and each had a different perspective on the main theme of the collection.
And speaking of the theme--what a great choice. There is such a chilling melancholy in the thought, 'I can't go home', and it really resonated with me.
I'll definitely be checking out the other collection from this group!
And speaking of the theme--what a great choice. There is such a chilling melancholy in the thought, 'I can't go home', and it really resonated with me.
I'll definitely be checking out the other collection from this group!
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