---

Read immediately following Helen Marshall’s Gifts for the One Who Comes After, a similar dark, weird literary fantasy collection from ChiZine, I found Shearman’s more difficult to approach and get into. Reading a large chunk of this type of intense, subtle material like these all at once probably had a large impact in this and I will need to return to this collection again sometime to give it the full attention of my brain it deserves.

–

What I can relate about this is that it is wonderfully written, the language exquisite, and the stories unsettling. For those who really enjoy Marshall’s work, this is something you’ll want to read, and vice versa. It makes sense that ChiZine had both collections out at the same time. Though they have much in common in style, and particularly tone of their stories, the two writers are of course not exactly the same and readers may have their preference. In general I found Shearman’s stories to be even more surreal and nuanced, with less of the classic horror elements that Marshall’s stories contain. Both are great, but every potential reader may still have one that they slightly prefer and Shearman’s style of ‘weirdness’ is something new for me, different (as the title suggests) from the usual subgenre of literary surreal horror.

–

Shearman’s tales here are filled with non-traditional, fantastic situations or settings and the plots are usually not clear at first, or follow the path you might expect them to based on their set-up. Unlike in Marshall’s collection there is not any consistent thread of theme to Shearman’s stories that I could discern, but another reading when I’m less burnt out may reveal more. Regardless how  you first read these I think that the collection is something that a fan of this genre would want to return to and find new facets that weren’t picked up on originally. If oddity is your thing or something you’d like to try, don’t let this collection pass you by.

–