Rob Brunet

Exiles starts with an essay, a personal reflection on feelings of isolation abroad – a theme which is echoed throughout the anthology. It’s not the most attention-grabbing preamble, to be honest; the first fiction which follows, ‘Eating The Dream’ would have made a much more compelling opening salvo. This story deftly weaves an ancient mythological monster into the modern environment, with adroit observations on human society, like how people don’t care as much for their livers as they should (an important concern when you perceive people as ‘dinner’!)

One of the delights with this anthology is that it abruptly changes pace, style and setting with each new story. One moment you’re in the company of the supernatural: legends thought long dead which still stalk the modern world in isolated secrecy, and the next you’re grounded in cold, hard and bittersweet reality as a naive traveller comes an all too human cropper in a foreign land. Some of the writers seem to have drawn extensively on personal experience to relate the overwhelming confusion and cultural misperceptions of a tired mind in a strange situation.
Some of the most entertaining stories are the fantastical ‘what if?’ tales. These are delightful moments where sadness and loneliness are transformed into wonder (as in We Are All Special Cases), or where the unreal is barely defined and hard to grasp. That’s the case with the surreal neo-noir of ‘Agent Ramiel Gets The Call’ where something semi-seen lurks in the psychological shadows.
But some of the most chilling tales are the real-world insights when a strange location and stressful circumstances reveal the gulf between couples or friends, when we find strangers where there should be someone familiar. There are also poignant moments where exiles reach out from their isolation to try to make contact with the rest of the world, chillingly less than successful in some cases…
Inevitably, a couple of the stories didn’t ring my bells – but this is an extensive anthology, not a whistlestop tour. Exiles allows many different voices to express their interpretation of the theme, and I’d say that I enjoyed at least 20 of them. Exiles is a substantial collection, one offering an array of entertainment and thought-provoking concepts. It’s well edited, too, with very few of the typos and typesetting errors that abound in so many ebooks.

At the end of this anthology it’s worth going back to the beginning. The introduction speaks the ultimate truth: no matter how close you come in life to any other person, in truth we are all isolated. Alone. Exiles in our own existence.
9/10… (mehr)

Dark Tales for a Rainy Day

Great collection of stories from a vast group of genre writers. They each explore the meaning of what it means to be outside the box. There is a tale of a lonely woman afraid of her shadows until she grows wings and flies away. There is a tale about two lovers torn apart because their gender doesn't match the societal definition of love. Another tale takes us through a decade's journey through the eyes of an extremely observant man. He travels through the former communistic areas of Europe including Russia, Poland and Serbia. There are tales of deceit, tradegy, dark passion and loneliness. These stories are for those who live outside the expectations and conditions of their own societies or for those who want a good, dark stories to read on a cloudy day.

I hadn't realized until the acknowledgements that the book was dedicated to a recently deceased friend of the editor and many of the authors in this book. It makes it an even more touching read.… (mehr)