β Scribed by Skillingstead, Jack
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Unconventional and deep, this dynamic collection of 26 stories offers a wealth of fantastical and horrifying settings. Several perspectives on life after death are exploredβreincarnated swarms of nanobots with digital personalities and a spirit wandering a bleak and violent city in search of lost loveβas well as dynamic themes of alien invasion and Lovecraftian horror. In "Life on the Preservation," the Earth has been devastated, but Seattle has been preserved in a time loop taking place one day before world destruction, and a young girl who has never known such opulence is sent to destroy the city. A man injured by a terrorist's bomb discovers that he can relive the event, but if he chooses to save the woman at the table next to him, there will be dire consequences to himself in "Rewind." In the title story, a parapolice detective in hot pursuit of a serial killer receives help from a responsive memory module of the killerβs mother, but soon discovers that he might be falling in love with the module. Edgy and surreal, each tale reflects on familiar, emotional issues and complex relationships from new and imaginative angles.
**
This edgy and dark collection revels in sorrow and loss. Alien invasions (of Earth in Life on the Preservation and one human at a time in Double Occupancy) and future tech (body hopping in Overlay, holographic projections of downloaded personalities in Scatter) sit side by side with a magical little boy in The Apprentice and an evil spirit that corrupted the original Tree of Knowledge in The Tree. The strongest stories are the ones where struggles with pain take center stage and the speculative setting fades away, such as Thank You, Mr. Whiskers, in which an aging woman tries to escape paranoia and joint pain. There are no pat endings, especially when death is only a pause en route to a haunting or digital immortality, but readers braced for powerful emotions will find this collection more than worthwhile. (Oct.)
Copyright Β© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
"Skillingstead ably maps the landscape of humankind's presentβgrowingβconfusion." β Locus Magazine
These 26 stories could have been dictated by demons from The Twilight Zone, they're so odd and so distinctively uncommon. They're also that good, that funny, and that outrageous. β Edge
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
Slade won't stop until Maximum is either dead or rotting in jail. With Sean's help they put together a plan that will make Maximum pay for everything he's done. But will Slade manage to keep his hands to himself? Or will he snap and go after Maximum himself?Arsen and Silke are enjoying their newlywe
Octavian Munroe is haunted by the life and death of his older brother in one of the most racially segregated cities in the country. Mina Rose has never quite fit in and wishes she was anything but white. Once lovers, now estranged, they both left St. Louis for fresh starts in the wake of grief and h
"Growing up in the '80s and '90s in St. Louis, Octavian Munroe and Mina Rose found a future in music. Between the stacks at Rahsaan's Records, the two fell in love to the sounds of Prince and A Tribe Called Quest. But in the wake of grief and heartbreak, they drifted apart, ultimately leaving the ci