My (Insanely Long) Grants Pass review. A tale of Terror, by Moi
Ahem.
Disclaimer: I am not a professional critic, and outside of college, this is my first serious attempt at reviewing something since then.
Second Disclaimer: I hate the apocalypse. I in fact, have a full blown apocalypse phobia, where watching 99.9% of disaster flicks will make me cry like a tiny child, and talk of the apocalypse will nearly make me faint. I am also deathly afraid of zombies.
Grants Pass is an anthology brought to this world to terrorize you by editors Jennifer Brozek and Amanda Pillar. It’s put out by the delightful and spooky Morrigan Books.
Jennifer Brozek is not an apocalypse-phobe. The Apocalypse Girl herself is one of the linchpins to the anthology seeing the light of day. This creepy, lumbering brain-baby is her doing, but every author who contributed, her co-editor, and we readers, are all along for the ride.
Grants Pass, Oregon, is where everyone should head when the world goes bottoms-up and everything we know of life crumbles and blows away in the wind.
A young woman, Kayley Allard, issues a What-If.
What if the world ends? What will you do?
Where will you go? How will you survive?
Her what-if ends in an invitation to all and sundry: if you’re alive when the world ends, go to Grants Pass.
Just Go.
Inside the gorgeous cover of Grants Pass is twenty different slices of the apocalypse. People, good, bad, indifferent, of various ages, backgrounds, all surviving the unthinkable. This is the super flu, the end times, the inevitable crumble all our parents warned us about. And in every story, people are trying to get to someplace safe. Emotionally or physically, everyone is looking for higher ground.
I admit, some stories dragged for me. I’m also not a professional critic, so I’m unsure of how exactly to elucidate ‘This didn’t really work for me,’ in a more light-shedding manner. I’d love, however, to touch on some of the stand-out bits that wowed me. Grants Pass is all about the most terrifying part of the apocalypse for me: the moments after, when you try and figure out how life goes on.
“Plague,” is something I should’ve thought better then reading home alone by myself. It really goes for the whole anthology, but home with a cold and overactive imagination isn’t something you should combine with that. ‘That’ being the news articles and desperate transcripts of the last stumble of civilization when the flu to end all flu shows up.
Boudha, by K.V. Taylor, is short and bizarrely sweet. Maybe just sweet to me? It’s a tiny encapsulation of the end of everything far off the North American continent. Like all my favorites from the anthology, it’s a sucker punch. You feel like you’re braced for the horror, but you’re not. At the end I was desperately hoping for fictional people to survive getting out of their country and somehow reach the safe haven of a woman they’ve never met.
Hells Bells, by Cherie Priest, is the apocalypse from an unlikely view point: an unnamed child. The apocalypse, without the context to life given by an adult, is just that much weirder to witness for an adult, when relayed by someone much younger then you. Bells crop up in more than one Grants pass story, and is used to excellent effect as a story element in Hells Bells.
Animal Husbandry, by Seanan McGuire, was read aloud in bits and pieces to my boyfriend the night I read it. When I reached the end, I put it down for a few days. McGuire’s story was a great mix of humor, and a twist at the end that you see of glimmer of, and almost hope it won’t have to happen that way. When it does, you might want to put the book down for a few days, like I did. It’s sad, and it’s sobering, and I almost felt bad for laughing in spots. Almost.
The Chateau De Mons, Jennifer Brozek.
This vies with Johnstone’s story for favorite. Probably McGuire’s, as well. You know it’s a good anthology when your favorites list far exceeds one. This is a quiet apocalypse-a scary one, a sad one, a lonely one. But determined, and compassionate. Kim is a protagonist, but her hope to create shelter in a newly mad world makes her a heroine as well.
Rights of Passage, by Pete Kempshall.
Maybe I just liked it because I have weird blood issues, but Will and Diane are two of my favorite people in the anthology. Young, possibly inching towards love in the face of world’s end, and quietly clinging to each other. This story, the setting, makes it a ghostly sort of world ender. Two survivors, alone save each other. It’s a quiet story, and despite the sacrifices made, Will’s actions to spare Diane an ugly situation when something intrudes upon their quiet, is one I silently thank him for.
The Discomfort of Words, Carole Johnstone. This may be my favorite. Spanish being prevalent in my childhood may be part of it, but Lanzarote reminds me of my Grandmother’s neighborhood. I can imagine what it would be like, to wander through the hot emptiness, alone, only comforted by a voice that may or may not be your own. It’s touching and intense, and the other hand, just as terrifying as my other much-loved stories.
Newfound Gap, Lee Clark Zumpe. It’s…sad, sort of. Hard to explain unless you read it. Like Discomfort of Words, there’s a lot of loneliness, but as a story a very present theme is a cautious, pragmatic optimism. Hopes for a possible future. Hopes to build something, and just as important, a delicate, fragile sort of compassion running through everyone in the story.
Black Heart, White Mourning. Jay Lake. Everyone who knows me well is aware of my experiences caring for people in my life with mental illness. Between being the inheritor of all the slang and snippiness of my Texan Grandfather, and the laugh-till-you-cry inner dialogue the protagonist has..oh, hell. You just need to read it. I can’t even begin to explain love and dynamite after the apocalypse.
Remembrance, James Sullivan.
I cried. Shit. That’s all I can say. I cried, and in the end, I smiled.
In the end? We’ll survive. We’ve come back from the brink before, and in the end, tiny little tendrils in stories throughout Grants Pass…say we’ll do it again.
Hopefully, anyway.
It’s a gorgeous collection. I think in the end the stories I high-lighted were simply the ones that spoke to me deepest, that echoed things I’ve seen or done or experienced. Survival’s a story close to my heart.
I’ve only held onto one anthology for more than a year in my entire life. Grants Pass will make it two.
Disclaimer: I am not a professional critic, and outside of college, this is my first serious attempt at reviewing something since then.
Second Disclaimer: I hate the apocalypse. I in fact, have a full blown apocalypse phobia, where watching 99.9% of disaster flicks will make me cry like a tiny child, and talk of the apocalypse will nearly make me faint. I am also deathly afraid of zombies.
Grants Pass is an anthology brought to this world to terrorize you by editors Jennifer Brozek and Amanda Pillar. It’s put out by the delightful and spooky Morrigan Books.
Jennifer Brozek is not an apocalypse-phobe. The Apocalypse Girl herself is one of the linchpins to the anthology seeing the light of day. This creepy, lumbering brain-baby is her doing, but every author who contributed, her co-editor, and we readers, are all along for the ride.
Grants Pass, Oregon, is where everyone should head when the world goes bottoms-up and everything we know of life crumbles and blows away in the wind.
A young woman, Kayley Allard, issues a What-If.
What if the world ends? What will you do?
Where will you go? How will you survive?
Her what-if ends in an invitation to all and sundry: if you’re alive when the world ends, go to Grants Pass.
Just Go.
Inside the gorgeous cover of Grants Pass is twenty different slices of the apocalypse. People, good, bad, indifferent, of various ages, backgrounds, all surviving the unthinkable. This is the super flu, the end times, the inevitable crumble all our parents warned us about. And in every story, people are trying to get to someplace safe. Emotionally or physically, everyone is looking for higher ground.
I admit, some stories dragged for me. I’m also not a professional critic, so I’m unsure of how exactly to elucidate ‘This didn’t really work for me,’ in a more light-shedding manner. I’d love, however, to touch on some of the stand-out bits that wowed me. Grants Pass is all about the most terrifying part of the apocalypse for me: the moments after, when you try and figure out how life goes on.
“Plague,” is something I should’ve thought better then reading home alone by myself. It really goes for the whole anthology, but home with a cold and overactive imagination isn’t something you should combine with that. ‘That’ being the news articles and desperate transcripts of the last stumble of civilization when the flu to end all flu shows up.
Boudha, by K.V. Taylor, is short and bizarrely sweet. Maybe just sweet to me? It’s a tiny encapsulation of the end of everything far off the North American continent. Like all my favorites from the anthology, it’s a sucker punch. You feel like you’re braced for the horror, but you’re not. At the end I was desperately hoping for fictional people to survive getting out of their country and somehow reach the safe haven of a woman they’ve never met.
Hells Bells, by Cherie Priest, is the apocalypse from an unlikely view point: an unnamed child. The apocalypse, without the context to life given by an adult, is just that much weirder to witness for an adult, when relayed by someone much younger then you. Bells crop up in more than one Grants pass story, and is used to excellent effect as a story element in Hells Bells.
Animal Husbandry, by Seanan McGuire, was read aloud in bits and pieces to my boyfriend the night I read it. When I reached the end, I put it down for a few days. McGuire’s story was a great mix of humor, and a twist at the end that you see of glimmer of, and almost hope it won’t have to happen that way. When it does, you might want to put the book down for a few days, like I did. It’s sad, and it’s sobering, and I almost felt bad for laughing in spots. Almost.
The Chateau De Mons, Jennifer Brozek.
This vies with Johnstone’s story for favorite. Probably McGuire’s, as well. You know it’s a good anthology when your favorites list far exceeds one. This is a quiet apocalypse-a scary one, a sad one, a lonely one. But determined, and compassionate. Kim is a protagonist, but her hope to create shelter in a newly mad world makes her a heroine as well.
Rights of Passage, by Pete Kempshall.
Maybe I just liked it because I have weird blood issues, but Will and Diane are two of my favorite people in the anthology. Young, possibly inching towards love in the face of world’s end, and quietly clinging to each other. This story, the setting, makes it a ghostly sort of world ender. Two survivors, alone save each other. It’s a quiet story, and despite the sacrifices made, Will’s actions to spare Diane an ugly situation when something intrudes upon their quiet, is one I silently thank him for.
The Discomfort of Words, Carole Johnstone. This may be my favorite. Spanish being prevalent in my childhood may be part of it, but Lanzarote reminds me of my Grandmother’s neighborhood. I can imagine what it would be like, to wander through the hot emptiness, alone, only comforted by a voice that may or may not be your own. It’s touching and intense, and the other hand, just as terrifying as my other much-loved stories.
Newfound Gap, Lee Clark Zumpe. It’s…sad, sort of. Hard to explain unless you read it. Like Discomfort of Words, there’s a lot of loneliness, but as a story a very present theme is a cautious, pragmatic optimism. Hopes for a possible future. Hopes to build something, and just as important, a delicate, fragile sort of compassion running through everyone in the story.
Black Heart, White Mourning. Jay Lake. Everyone who knows me well is aware of my experiences caring for people in my life with mental illness. Between being the inheritor of all the slang and snippiness of my Texan Grandfather, and the laugh-till-you-cry inner dialogue the protagonist has..oh, hell. You just need to read it. I can’t even begin to explain love and dynamite after the apocalypse.
Remembrance, James Sullivan.
I cried. Shit. That’s all I can say. I cried, and in the end, I smiled.
In the end? We’ll survive. We’ve come back from the brink before, and in the end, tiny little tendrils in stories throughout Grants Pass…say we’ll do it again.
Hopefully, anyway.
It’s a gorgeous collection. I think in the end the stories I high-lighted were simply the ones that spoke to me deepest, that echoed things I’ve seen or done or experienced. Survival’s a story close to my heart.
I’ve only held onto one anthology for more than a year in my entire life. Grants Pass will make it two.