Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsOne of the best anthologies
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 7, 2014
Some people may think what I have written have some *spoilers*. Gave a very brief overview and my thoughts on the stories.
This anthology is the best I have read. In any book with so many stories, some hit the mark, some don't. There is a little bit for everyone. I feel lucky that the first few stories I chose to read were really great. That is what kept me involved and reading "just one more" before putting it down for the night.
I wanted to comment on a few of the stories.
Goodnight Moon by Annie Bellet is my favorite. A tear jerker about astronauts on the moon and an impending asteroid and life and death decisions. Beautifully written.
Spores by Seanan McGuire was really great. Creepy good and it has to do with mold!
She's Got a Ticket To Ride by Jonathan Mayberry. At first I was thinking how similar it was to Hale-Bopp Heaven's Gate. But after that was mentioned in the story, it went beyond that idea and will have you re-thinking what a "cult" really is. I enjoyed it very much.
In The Air by Hugh Howey. Let me just say this: If only Shift was this compact and short...
Shooting The Apocalypse by Paolo Bacigalupi. I was really looking forward to this one and maybe I will re-visit it but I was not interested in this one.
Dancing With Death in the Land of the Nod by Will McIntosh and Wedding Day by Jake Kerr are very different types of stories but both have an ironic twist that make these two really special. Dancing With Death involves an incurable disease that puts its victims into a paralysis but they can still think clearly. One of the main characters in the story is a caretaker for his father who has Alzheimer's. The irony is when the main character thanks good "family genes". Read it, it is a great one. In Wedding Day, a to be married lesbian couple has a chance to escape certain death from an impending meteor strike if only the government didn't halt all marriages.
Removal Order by Tananarive Due. With no real explanation of what has caused the world to go into its demise, the story jumps right in with Nayama who is taking care of her Grandmother who has cancer. A story about sacrifice and love. Caring for a loved one outweighs the fact that the world is dying around you.
Heaven is a Place on Planet X by Desirina Boskovich. A strange but interesting story about an alien invasion. The aliens are going to zap the whole world into dust but promises a new heavenly life on a new planet that will occur on a certain date at an exact time. First though, random people around the world are chosen as enforcers to eliminate anyone who doesn't follow instructions given by the aliens. I am hoping this story has a continuation in the next book, the end is filled with foreboding of the ultimate fate of the enforcers. A story that warns about Propaganda and blindly following those that use power and violence to get people to submit.
Finally, I think it is interesting that a few reader's complained or felt the need to comment on some type of "gay agenda" with a few of the stores. I feel bad for ignorant people. Dystopian/Apocalyptic stories almost always have messages about politics, propaganda, societal values, religious beliefs, anarchy etc. To me, any complaint about a story being a "political gay rights agenda" story is so foolish. The story "Wedding Day" has so much depth and makes such a powerful statement about inequity (for any class or type of person). It is too bad that some people can not allow themselves to open their mind to the bigger meaning.
