A review by anna__b
Out of the Ruins by Chris Kelso, D.R.G Sugawara, Rumi Kaneko, Ron Drummond, China Miéville, Preston Grassmann, Lavie Tidhar, Paul Di Filippo, Kaaron Warren, Emily St. John Mandel, Ramsey Campbell, Nick Mamatas, Carmen Maria Machado, John Skipp, Autumn Christian, Charlie Jane Anders, Samuel R. Delany, Nina Allan, Anna Tambour, Nikhil Singh, Clive Barker, Jeffrey Thomas

Did not finish book. Stopped at 60%.

The duds are starting to outweigh the good stories, so now that I’ve read the ones by the authors I already cared about I don’t feel particularly motivated to finish this collection. There were some interesting ideas in here, and I like the overall concept of pulling together different perspectives on a post-apocalyptic world, but it felt like most of these stories were in a competition to make up the most incomprehensible futuristic-sounding words and make their plots as opaque as possible, and it’s getting old. I liked Emily St. John Mandel’s story “Mr. Thursday” because I could see how it birthed the idea for her novel Sea of Tranquility, and “Reminded” and “As Good As New” were also standouts.