NEVERWORLD

A COLLECTION OF STORIES

by R. Hoyte Raney ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

People attempt to escape their surreal and suffocating situations in Raney’s debut collection of short fiction.

Some people are just cursed—pursued throughout their lives by the ramifications of early mistakes. A pair of lovers spends years robbing houses to feed their heroin habit, until one day their luck runs out. An old Indigenous veteran, scarred by his experiences during the war, leaves his flophouse during a snowstorm in order to visit his “family.” A librarian working on Christmas Eve learns that a bitter former lover—the father of the secret child she bore out of wedlock and gave to her mother to raise—has been stalking her around town. Across a dozen stories, Raney follows his luckless and benighted characters as they attempt to wrest control of their lives back from the hands of fate. The family of a newborn baby awaits the arrival of a certain “Cutter” to perform a disturbing ritual. An empathetic prince seeks to stop the monsters who routinely attack his small kingdom, killing and eating his subjects. “A dinner party celebrating the fall harvest would commence and from over the horizon, smoke would rise from a village that had been assaulted by dragons,” Raney writes with grim understatement. “Leo’nard’s attention would be distracted by the clappity sound of a horrendous giant as it trod upon a hapless peasant.” The collection is dominated by two nearly novella-length stories, “The Hippo” and “El Monstruosidad.” The first follows a man whose life is average in every way other than the fact that a 1,200-pound hippopotamus floats above him wherever he goes, blocking out the sun. At the age of 39, the man decides that he needs to find his life’s purpose—and also the reason for the “symbiotic hippo,” which he has never really questioned until that point. In the latter story, a teenage girl with braces on her legs grapples with strange occurrences in and around her aunt and uncle’s house, including the appearance of a frightening beast.

Raney’s prose always sets the mood, whether it’s a claustrophobic gothic tale replete with dank alleys and festering secrets, or a fable told from a slightly ironic distance. “Another reason Charlie hesitated to sever his bond was that he was concerned the hippo might be hurtled into space if he did,” he writes of his hippopotamus-haunted character. “What if Charlie were the only reason the hippo was able to maintain its hold on the planet? Could Charlie’s destiny be to provide an anchor for the hippo?” With its brilliant premise and playful existentialism, “The Hippo” is by far the best of these tales, and a genuine treat to read. Some of the others, however, read more like vignettes, presenting intriguing scenarios without ever developing emotionally satisfying narrative arcs. Raney excels at mood, and he can conjure phantasmagoric situations, but more often than not, he fails to find a relatable, human heart beating in the chest of his shuffling creations.

An imaginative if not always affecting collection of gothic stories.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: March 7, 2025

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

THRILLER | SHORT STORIES | GENERAL FICTION