RaveThe Chicago Review of BooksHorror takes root in extension, in following an idea to its unraveling conclusion. Such is the pattern set throughout these twenty-two stories that range from two to fourteen pages in length, unrelated in plot even as...specific themes and details recur to haunt the usually doomed characters ... Evenson’s refrains in this volume take the form of skin constantly shed, obsessions with tiny indistinct forms, and surfaces polished clean, \'as if licked.\' These bizarre motifs take on tone and substance as you read, circling back to earlier stories while shaping what’s to come. They become uncomfortably ours, familiar and burrowing ... dread flows to fill the void that balloons from even the simplest nagging thought ... That many of these stories were previously published makes the actual form of this collection remarkable for its unified sense of unnerving anxiety. While roughly half of the stories begin in a recognizably mundane world, the most daring open on concisely realized science fiction settings ...the brutal economy and imagination of this latest batch of nightmares nevertheless join Evenson with predecessors like Crane who thrive in minimalist discomfort. What looks simple will waver and slip, trailed by so much strangeness seeping in through the cracks.
