Steve

Read straight through on a pair of flights home after a long week. Some of the most achingly readable language I’ve consumed in years, bringing to life beautifully tragic stories set not too far from where I grew up and yet worlds away. Wish he had ten more collections I could dive into immediately.

Not sure anyone else walks the literary/genre line with the same accessibility and ability to gut-punch quite like Saunders.

Absolutely lived up to the hype. A sensitive story of survival that sneaks up on you after 200 pages of tense horror. So glad I wasn’t spoiled—each successive reveal worked so beautifully. Need to read everything by Ward ASAP.

Not as strong, on balance, as Mr. Gaunt or Wide, Carnivorous Sky, but it’s still Langan, so uniformly pretty good. Highlights are “Bor Urus” and the title story; lowlight was the final story, which I think works better if you have Catholic guilt.

I loved Only Good Indians so much, so not sure why the Indian Lake trilogy just doesn’t click for me in the same way. I spend half the book trying to fully grasp what’s going on, and then I get it by the midpoint, but am just never as drawn in as I want to be. Looking forward to Teenage Slasher and seeing how he’s reading outside of Jade Daniels these days.