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A review by octavia_cade
Beneath a Pale Sky by Philip Fracassi
dark
tense
medium-paced
4.0
The writing here is so excellent, and I enjoyed nearly all of the stories. (Apart from the rat story. It was very well-written but I cannot bear rats.) I think my favourite was the last, mostly because it ended on a positive, somewhat uplifting note. It's the story of two men who have been friends since they were kids, except one of them is Death. I've read a few stories where Death is the main character, and this is one of the stand-outs. It also, like the first story "Harvest," works better for me because the speculative element is woven all the way through. It's not particularly strong or anything, but it's consistently there, and feels well-integrated. Unfortunately, that's not always the case.
The stories here are often solidly realistic, with an undercurrent of weird, but to me it's the realism that most appeals. The characterisation is so incredibly competent, in a lot of these stories, that when the speculative occurs, it can occasionally feel like intrusion. There's one story in particular, "The Wheel," where this really stands out. It, like a lot of the others collected here, is about disaster - an earthquake, a tornado, and, in the case of "The Wheel," a plane crashing into a Ferris wheel. It's tense and disturbing and horrifying, as the couple on the highest point of the wheel are increasingly endangered by inferno... and then it ends on a note that's so bizarre, and so disconnected with the rest, that I just can't sympathise with it. The rat story is the same - it's already so horrifying, that the intrusion of the speculative (and that's the second time I've used that word, but "intrusion" feels like absolutely the right one) almost lessens the horror of what's actually occurring.
They are excellent stories still.
The stories here are often solidly realistic, with an undercurrent of weird, but to me it's the realism that most appeals. The characterisation is so incredibly competent, in a lot of these stories, that when the speculative occurs, it can occasionally feel like intrusion. There's one story in particular, "The Wheel," where this really stands out. It, like a lot of the others collected here, is about disaster - an earthquake, a tornado, and, in the case of "The Wheel," a plane crashing into a Ferris wheel. It's tense and disturbing and horrifying, as the couple on the highest point of the wheel are increasingly endangered by inferno... and then it ends on a note that's so bizarre, and so disconnected with the rest, that I just can't sympathise with it. The rat story is the same - it's already so horrifying, that the intrusion of the speculative (and that's the second time I've used that word, but "intrusion" feels like absolutely the right one) almost lessens the horror of what's actually occurring.
They are excellent stories still.