No Way Home Review Part Deux!

Alright, I left you on a cliff-hanger yesterday and I know, I just know, you’ve been dying to hear the rest of my thoughts on the anthology of short stories, No Way Home. Well, wait no longer, for it has come…the rest of my review. Cue the drum circle.

What do you mean we have no drum circle? What sort of slap-dash production is this?

Wait, wait, don’t go away. I’ll fix this. You want drums? I’ll give you drums…and Mr. Bean!! Am I not a generous God?!

There we go. The mood is set and now we’re ready for some hardcore reviewing! Let’s get down to business.

Where’d we leave off? Oh yeah, right here!

The Happy Place – Harry Manners 4/5 stars

Earth’s brightest minds have been sent to colonize Mars. But in this world of geniuses, somebody has to do the menial tasks of maintenance. So, enter the janitor, who is a genius, but not quite super genius. He’s out on Mars doing the best he can raising two super-genius children in the aftermath of his wife’s death.

I had mixed feelings about this story. The story of Michael Tanner, our daddy-janitor, is amazing when it deals with the emotions he feels surrounding the death of his wife. Less amazing when dealing with his children which feels stunted somehow. I can’t explain why that is, but there ya go.

Somehow, through the course of the story the Commander of the operation loses his mind and wanders off into the martian desert to do something obscure. Some time later Michael Tanner becomes the defacto leader of the mission, which didn’t really make any sense to me, but *shrug* what can ya do?

Okay, so the big plot of the story didn’t really do much for me, but the retrospective moments dealing with Michael Tanner’s time on Earth before moving to Mars with his wife were excellent. I loved those bits, which is where the term Happy Place comes from. It’s a therapeutic device that allows him to live in his memory for a time. By doing this he can be pseudo-reunited with his wife. Which is a double edged blade because how can you move on and heal when constantly retreating to the comfort of a spectre?

Ultimately this is the question raised by The Happy Place and one who’s answer makes reading this story worthwhile.

Renata – Nadine Matheson 3.5/5 stars

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, time travel stories are tricky mistresses. It’s so easy to get caught up in a paradoxical cluster-fuck, which, as far as cluster-fucks go, is one of the worst sort.

Renata starts off with a lot of promise. A secret British organization manned by Individuals who can see the future combined with bad-ass assassin counterparts make for a great launching off point. In fact, as far as plots go, this one was my favorite, but then something terrible happened.

I got confused. And then lost. And then lost and confused.

Which is a horrible place to be mid-story. Things started coming hard and fast and I just couldn’t keep any of it straight. I couldn’t figure out what was happening, or where I was, who was who. None of it.

I felt like the only kid in class who didn’t do his homework the night before and now had zero clue what the ever loving fuck was happening on the chalk-board.

I admit, part of this confusion could be my fault, but I’m blaming the dog (ya know, for eating my homework (gah, there’s your bad analogy for the day. Now you can go about your day knowing you couldn’t possibly make a worst analogy, so… there ya go. you’re welcome.))

Renata could be a fantastic novel. The majority of the problem, I think, stems from the short story format. There just isn’t enough time to develop all the ideas and characters necessary to make the story really stand out. Instead, everything gets crammed together like a twenty clown-car pile-up on the freeway.

Oh well. The writing was overall good, the story idea great, but the execution was lacking. Though if this were expanded into a full length piece I would read it in an instant, so there ya go.

Cold Witness – A. S. Sinclair 3/5 stars

This story wins all the stars for creepiness. It has this haunting atmosphere that sticks with you long after reading. However, it suffers from many of the same problems as Renata, mainly, it crams too much into too small an area so that when things start going down, you’re left scratching your head wondering what you missed.

Part of that is intentional, because this is a psychological sort of horror story about lost selves and the meaning of reality. It’s supposed to be loopy and confusing and trippy. All of which it does with gusto, so I can’t really fault Sinclair for that.

But, like I said before, the story tried to do too much too soon and when the action started happening there was too little character background, and too little emotional investment.

Though I will say I love the concepts of the story. The lucidity of reality versus dreams and what it means to *exist* are explored throughout Cold Witness in a way that I found simultaneously chilling and refreshing.

That Morpheus… such a philosopher.

No Way Home 4/5 stars

So the entire anthology, No Way Home, when taken as a collective whole, is great. The range of stories runs the gamut between psychological horror to science fiction action adventure. Each author took the theme of ‘no way home’ and did something unique and enjoyable. I was impressed by the authorial chops that came together for this compilation along with the sheer volume of ideas expounded upon.

As far as anthologies go, a five star rating is near impossible (on my scale atleast). It would require every story to be five stars and absolutely brilliant and truthfully I don’t think such a thing is possible so 4 stars is really as good as it gets for me. Therefore No Way Home is really sitting at the top of my scale, so you would be doing yourself a favor by going out and getting yourself a copy. I guarantee you’ll find a story in there that moves you in some way.

If not, then you might be a cyborg. Which is cool, if that’s your sort of thing.

No Way Home will be out on Kindle in a few days, but you can get yourself a paperback copy now by clicking on the link below.