Like a book by Stephen King, whom Simmons references, this is an uneven if always readable collection highlighted by his...
An easily absorbed, if none-too-challenging, batch of five long stories from the creator of the Hyperion series. As Simmons (“Fall of Hyperion”) explains it, the volume should be considered a Zen garden, with all the elements in balance and plenty of room for reflection. It doesn’t bode well if you’re on the lookout for absorbing fiction, but fortunately the pieces here are more dramatic than his somewhat (as even Simmons admits) pretentious pronouncement would suggest. Falling more into the vein of an adventure tale is “On K2 with Kanakaredes,” in which a team of hard-core mountaineers make a deal to stay out of jail by agreeing to bring the son of an alien visitor with them on their treacherous K2 ascent. The climb is intricately detailed and wrenchingly dramatic, even if the climax comes out of left field. The most engaging and confusing entry is “The Ninth of Av,” set in the year 3001 and populated by a seemingly small band of humans and a mysterious race of “post-humans” who can be teleported around the world by a process referred to as “faxing.” The humans are getting ready for the “final fax,” a Rapture-like event that will send their beings whirling into the ether for 10,000 years while the posts fix the damaged Earth for their return. There’s a grimly poetic On the Beach feel to the tale that carries through its baffling and chilling denouement. Of lesser interest are the bland “The End of Gravity,” about a millionaire American who buys his way on to a Russian rocket, and “Orphans of the Helix,” a spin-off set in Simmons’s Hyperion universe that is too slight a construction to be of interest to most non-Hyperion fans. “Looking for Kelly Dahl,” in which a schoolteacher hunts through a world created by a crazed ex-student of his, has an old-fashioned tinge to its simple story that keeps it interesting without being especially memorable.
Like a book by Stephen King, whom Simmons references, this is an uneven if always readable collection highlighted by his charmingly chatty introductions to each story.Pub Date: Dec. 4, 2002
ISBN: 0-06-050604-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Eos/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2002
A somewhat overstuffed first entry in a promising new series.
A librarian in charge of unwritten books gets pulled into a dispute between heaven and hell in Hackwith’s debut.
Claire is the librarian of hell’s Unwritten Wing, meaning she's in charge of books that either haven’t been written yet or, if their author has died, will never be written at all. Claire’s soul is human, unlike that of her assistant, Brevity, who's a failed muse. There’s nothing an unwritten book wants more than to be written, and sometimes a book is able to manifest itself in the form of one of its characters. When a young demon named Leto gives Claire the news that one such book has escaped, she knows it’ll be looking for its author on Earth, hoping to convince her to sit down and write that book she’s been thinking about. But when Claire, Brevity, and Leto go to retrieve the book, they are confronted by the angel Ramiel, who is convinced they have pages of the Devil’s Bible. Suddenly Claire and her friends are on the run from realm to realm, trying to get to those pages before Ramiel and prevent a war between heaven and hell. There’s a lot going on here, and the first in any new series has plenty of worldbuilding to cover, but it would have been nice if this sprawling first installment had been a bit more contained. The scenes with Ramiel and the other angels are particularly interesting, as are hints of political tensions between the demons of hell. Hackwith is a strong writer, and there’s plenty to build a series on here, so hopefully future novels will have a narrower focus.
A somewhat overstuffed first entry in a promising new series.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0637-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2019
An eerie odyssey that would be right at home in the pages of the pulpy Warren comics.
The second, equally creepy novel from Deadspin columnist Magary (Someone Could Get Hurt, 2013, etc.).
Magary channeled postmodern horror-comedy in his first novel, The Postmortal, and here taps into a similar vein that posits an Everyman in a video game–like setting, with a Kafka-esque transformation thrown in for good measure. We meet Ben as the suburban family man has left his family in Maryland and arrives at a hotel in rural Pennsylvania for a business meeting the next day. He decides to go for a hike. And then all hell breaks loose. For starting out with such a grounded setup, Magary isn’t shy about getting weird fast. Ben is soon pursued by a pair of killers who wear the disembodied faces of skinned Rottweilers. He’s left messages with his name on them that read, “Stay on the path, or you will die.” He’s kidnapped by a cannibal giantess named Fermona who forces him to fight a man to death in her arena, and that’s before she sics the dwarves on him. Along the way, Ben is told his only solution is to find a demigodlike character called only “The Producer.” “I don’t even know if I’m still on Earth, or if I ate some kind of bad mushroom or something,” Ben tells his only companion, a talking crab named Crab. “I don’t know anything. But this path opened up and any time I leave it, something tries to kill me.” It seems that Ben is in an alternate dimension, one with two moons, death clouds, and time travel. It all unfolds much like a video game does, so readers who don’t enter this weird world with a lot of preconceived notions should have a blast. It’s worth noting that Magary even nails the ending with a Twilight Zone twist that would have Rod Serling nodding with approval.
An eerie odyssey that would be right at home in the pages of the pulpy Warren comics.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-56385-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2016
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