A review by jonbar94
There Is No Other Way to Worship Them by Samuel Snoek-Brown

5.0

Samuel Snoek-Brown presents a powerful collection of odd characters with offbeat obsessions in There is No Other Way to Worship Them. The inclusion of things such as esoteric knives and weed-induced tortoises keeps this anthology from dwelling in the realm of ordinary fiction, as a hint of the fantastic dances about on the edges. There were times I wanted a different shape of protagonist in these stories. A number of his main characters are eccentric men with fixations on puzzling women. This is not a bad formula, but I would love to see more variety from Sam in his future works. One story that doesn’t follow this recipe is the standout “It Was the Only Way,” a tale of a woman who returns to Mexico after a divorce, which Sam beautifully illustrates by utilizing soft, gentle prose that glides throughout the story. It’s this mastery of prose that knits every story together in this wild assemblage. At times humorous, terrifying, heartbreaking, and occasionally fucking crazy, Sam manages to uncover the dark, ravenous world within the everyday musings of his characters.