Review of Dead Letter Depot by Kit Power.
In this grab bag of tales, shorts, intros, extracts and miscellaneous paths-less-travelled, that's the core message that keeps coming back, again and again. Scott can write.
It is, as the full title suggests, horror. Specifically (though not exclusively) apocalyptic horror. Scott has done some thinking about how the work might end, and how those they may remain will react to that ending, and across the pages of this anthology, he walks us through it - the desperation, the lethargy, the isolation, and yes, of course the fear - though it's telling that we're often as scared of Scott's protagonists as we are the world they have inherited.
It starts with 'Whimper' - a really fine stand alone tale, but also one that sets up so well the themes Scott will wrestle with throughout the book.
'Where werewolves come from' is my favourite in the collection, and worth the price of admission on it's own - a series of vignettes, connected by a common thread that you feel, even if you can't fully articulate it. This is a stunning meditation on people and the walls of flesh and mind that separate us all from each other.
The chapter extracts stand up well, but inevitably suffer from being dislocated from their wider narratives, especially, for me, the chapter from 'The End of the World Is Nigh.
'Braindead' manages to be a genuinely disturbing alternate take on the events of 'Whimper' - A Bachman vision, as opposed to King, if you can dig it - and the R/T/M intro made a useful pairing, in that it gave fair warning at to where that book is likely to go, should you be brave enough to attempt it.
And finally 'Till Death us Do Part' takes the premise of the movie 'Warm Bodies' and turns it into the gut-wrencher it always should have been.
This is not a perfect collection. The grab-bag nature of it precludes that. But the best stuff is very very good indeed, and across the piece you catch sight of real talent sweating blood to realise a vision. Scott has a clear and distinct narrative voice (albeit with capacity for variation, as the last couple of entries in this collection show), an unflinching vision, and is fully prepared to shed harsh light on the darkest recesses of the human condition.
I can't wait to see what he does next.
In this grab bag of tales, shorts, intros, extracts and miscellaneous paths-less-travelled, that's the core message that keeps coming back, again and again. Scott can write.
It is, as the full title suggests, horror. Specifically (though not exclusively) apocalyptic horror. Scott has done some thinking about how the work might end, and how those they may remain will react to that ending, and across the pages of this anthology, he walks us through it - the desperation, the lethargy, the isolation, and yes, of course the fear - though it's telling that we're often as scared of Scott's protagonists as we are the world they have inherited.
It starts with 'Whimper' - a really fine stand alone tale, but also one that sets up so well the themes Scott will wrestle with throughout the book.
'Where werewolves come from' is my favourite in the collection, and worth the price of admission on it's own - a series of vignettes, connected by a common thread that you feel, even if you can't fully articulate it. This is a stunning meditation on people and the walls of flesh and mind that separate us all from each other.
The chapter extracts stand up well, but inevitably suffer from being dislocated from their wider narratives, especially, for me, the chapter from 'The End of the World Is Nigh.
'Braindead' manages to be a genuinely disturbing alternate take on the events of 'Whimper' - A Bachman vision, as opposed to King, if you can dig it - and the R/T/M intro made a useful pairing, in that it gave fair warning at to where that book is likely to go, should you be brave enough to attempt it.
And finally 'Till Death us Do Part' takes the premise of the movie 'Warm Bodies' and turns it into the gut-wrencher it always should have been.
This is not a perfect collection. The grab-bag nature of it precludes that. But the best stuff is very very good indeed, and across the piece you catch sight of real talent sweating blood to realise a vision. Scott has a clear and distinct narrative voice (albeit with capacity for variation, as the last couple of entries in this collection show), an unflinching vision, and is fully prepared to shed harsh light on the darkest recesses of the human condition.
I can't wait to see what he does next.
Dead Letter Depot: A Collection of Stories To Kill Yourself To
CreateSpace: https://www.createspace.com/4608401
Amazon Print-On-Demand Paperback Listing:
http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Letter-Depot-Collection-Yourself/dp/1494934973
Amazon Kindle/E-book Listing:
http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Letter-Depot-Scott-Lefebvre-ebook/dp/B00HRK3Q48/
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