Rating: 5 stars (Spotlight Review)
A rollercoaster of seemingly meaningless tales shoved together into a fluid mass of confusion that bleeds together as if meant to be one in a past life. Like bouncing a bead of mercury back and forth, the shine and twisting about with its deadly precision and pure poison that you can swear leaves a metallic taste in your mouth just by watching its movements. That is truly the best way that I can attempt to describe the works of John Shirley.
This compilation of stories has completely thrown me for a loop and I found myself having to pause after each to try desperately to catch my breath. Some were intense, some made me weep because it hit so very close to home and some just made me over think things.
I have enjoyed this set of stories more than I can possibly explain because I am one of those that seem to read more into the tale then the author meant. With John Shirley, this was no easy task because you can tell that there is always more to the story, a lesson or another monkey wrench tossed into the daily ‘normal’ lives of humanity. He writes like I write, short and sweet, to the point, and does not make a whole lot of sense to the normal readers. For people like me who enjoy picking apart the story line by line just to see what morsels of lunacy are tucked behind this is the absolute perfect group of stories to do this with.
I grieved with the drugs and within the humming of mosquitoes. I laughed loudly when greed met vengeance and grinned in amusement when irony came back to bite the character on the ass. The everyday stories of mother and child made me weep because we all know that we do that and of course I know now that I am not the only one that can dream up such twisted stories like Isolation Point and Buried in the Sky.
John Shirley, you have made my reading world complete. I thank you and eagerly await your next bits of textual twisted goodness. I only have to reread this book a few more hundred times now.
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Publisher: Prime Books (May 1, 2007)
ISBN-10: 080955786X
ISBN-13: 978-0809557868
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