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andynorth's review
3.0
I want to read more of William Browning Spencer's stuff now! This is an odd collection of short fiction. The stories jump between genres, and I tended to like the "Weird Fiction" and the cyberpunk stuff fell super flat for me.
The title story is a fine short Lovecraftian thingy, but not surprising at all. You're going to know what happens beat-for-beat after reading the first two pages. Seeing that everyone else referred to it as a standout of the collection made me a little worried, honestly.
I'm glad I finished it, because there are some standout stories in here, and ones that show a lot more the author's personality. The Essayist in the Wilderness is funny and eerie. Other standouts are Your Faithful Servant, The Death of the Novel, and The Lights of Armageddon.
I thought The Foster Child was a dud, and the two cyberpunk stories The Halfway House at the Heart of Darkness and The Death of the Novel I skipped after a couple pages. I don't tend to like cyberpunk, so take my opinion with a big grain of salt there. But those stories are a big enough mismatch for the others that I wondered why they were in there.
The title story is a fine short Lovecraftian thingy, but not surprising at all. You're going to know what happens beat-for-beat after reading the first two pages. Seeing that everyone else referred to it as a standout of the collection made me a little worried, honestly.
I'm glad I finished it, because there are some standout stories in here, and ones that show a lot more the author's personality. The Essayist in the Wilderness is funny and eerie. Other standouts are Your Faithful Servant, The Death of the Novel, and The Lights of Armageddon.
I thought The Foster Child was a dud, and the two cyberpunk stories The Halfway House at the Heart of Darkness and The Death of the Novel I skipped after a couple pages. I don't tend to like cyberpunk, so take my opinion with a big grain of salt there. But those stories are a big enough mismatch for the others that I wondered why they were in there.
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