Dan
I’ve been waiting a long time for a UK edition of this one, and Dead Ink have finally obliged. It was worth the wait, an astonishing collection of stories. It doesn’t stint on the promise of monsters in the title, there are vampires, zombies werewolves and -yes!- a lake monster here, but it’s always the humans in the foreground. Not necessarily particularly likeable ones either, although you needn’t fear that this is some kind of trite ‘actually, MAN is the real monster’ exercise. Ballingrud manages to make us empathise with his cast of ex-cons, homeless people, harassed mothers, and lost children looking for fathers and belonging. It’s elegant, atmospheric and disturbing. What more do you want?
I’ve been waiting a long time for a UK edition of this one, and Dead Ink have finally obliged. It was worth the wait, an astonishing collection of stories. It doesn’t stint on the promise of monsters in the title, there are vampires, zombies werewolves and -yes!- a lake monster here, but it’s always the humans in the foreground. Not necessarily particularly likeable ones either, although you needn’t fear that this is some kind of trite ‘actually, MAN is the real monster’ exercise. Ballingrud manages to make us empathise with his cast of ex-cons, homeless people, harassed mothers, and lost children looking for fathers and belonging. It’s elegant, atmospheric and disturbing. What more do you want?
Perhaps deliberately for a book about AI, this all feels very uncanny valley. Something is off throughout, and the whole thing feels like a classic locked room detective story filtered through the scratchy eyeballs of someone who has been awake for far too long already. It’s a very well crafted trick, and good vibe for a futuristic story that is very much in conversation with it’s predecessors (there are several direct references to The Haunting Of Hill House, for instance) but it also highlights the chief flaw of this short novel - it feels consciously worked on, something that is too openly striving for an effect. Basically the bones are too visible and there isn’t enough flesh in the story to cover them. It’s still an intriguing set up, but it’s too cerebral and designed to ever become fully engaging.
Perhaps deliberately for a book about AI, this all feels very uncanny valley. Something is off throughout, and the whole thing feels like a classic locked room detective story filtered through the scratchy eyeballs of someone who has been awake for far too long already. It’s a very well crafted trick, and good vibe for a futuristic story that is very much in conversation with it’s predecessors (there are several direct references to The Haunting Of Hill House, for instance) but it also highlights the chief flaw of this short novel - it feels consciously worked on, something that is too openly striving for an effect. Basically the bones are too visible and there isn’t enough flesh in the story to cover them. It’s still an intriguing set up, but it’s too cerebral and designed to ever become fully engaging.
Horror on every level, from squirming gore to colossal historical injustice, with a good side helping of ambiguity - it would be easy to write this book with Good Stab as an avenging hero, but here he is a brutal monster. It’s just that pretty much everyone else is worse. Not always an easy read, but a very good one.
Horror on every level, from squirming gore to colossal historical injustice, with a good side helping of ambiguity - it would be easy to write this book with Good Stab as an avenging hero, but here he is a brutal monster. It’s just that pretty much everyone else is worse. Not always an easy read, but a very good one.