PositiveStrange HorizonsDensely metafictional ... These stories dwell in the knotty, ambiguous spaces surrounding their portals ... The narrator’s fear is vividly rendered ... Here we see the other side of such fantasies, realised with shocking brutality. The detail of the orange elephant backpack hits particularly hard ... This eye for heartbreaking details is a common feature of Urbanski’s stories ... These details give a sense of texture to Urbanksi’s stories, which reliably feel if not lifelike then certainly lived in. Even as the stories repeat similar themes and character archetypes, each entry offers a distinct approach and set of images ... Not every story is a triumph, however ... Long May My Land Be Bright is an unsubtle satire ... While the collection’s political thinking is disappointingly basic, Urbanski is very thoughtful about the tropes of the fantasy genre, and about Portalmania’s construction as a book
Ling Ma
RaveStrange HorizonsBrief and vivid joys set against a darker, more unsettling backdrop can be keenly felt throughout the book’s eight stories ... While several of the stories use the fantastic in this way to illuminate their themes, others make use of painfully authentic details, illustrating the absurd cruelties of their narratives ... A rich and capacious collection, a montage which begs to be viewed over and over again.
