reasie's review
5.0
Bestest of things, ever. My two favorites were the two previously unpublished, "Agent of Utopia" and "Joe Diablo's Farewell."
"Agent" is powerful and clever and really makes you feel you're stuck in the filth of early modern London. A true delight to see Andy turn his penchant for dialect on the Shakesperean Insult!
"Joe Diablo's Farewell" was just... wow. Heartbreaking and beautiful. It hit all my buttons hard and will stick with me for a while.
So, if you love historical fiction, the delightful ways we shape language regionally, and that shiver of the supernatural or other-worldly... you would do yourself a favor by picking up this collection.
"Agent" is powerful and clever and really makes you feel you're stuck in the filth of early modern London. A true delight to see Andy turn his penchant for dialect on the Shakesperean Insult!
"Joe Diablo's Farewell" was just... wow. Heartbreaking and beautiful. It hit all my buttons hard and will stick with me for a while.
So, if you love historical fiction, the delightful ways we shape language regionally, and that shiver of the supernatural or other-worldly... you would do yourself a favor by picking up this collection.
jonmhansen's review against another edition
4.0
"What a thing to tell people. Am I ashamed? Yeah, probably. But am I sorry? No, I am not sorry. There's a difference."
neens_m's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
lighthearted
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism
archergal's review
5.0
I enjoyed this collection of stories very much. Andy Duncan knows how to put a story together. As I was writing up this review and adding links, my admiration grew and grew at how Mr. Duncan could take a grain of truth and wrap a pearl of a story around it.
CW: a number of these stories deal with racism and abuse. There's possibly more use of the n- word than we really need. But the author's voice is very Southern. If you can take a deep breath and read past the offensive word(s), the stories are worth it.
His stories here often read like tall tales, folk tales, or myths of some kind. I also particularly enjoyed the way he mixes characters from real life into his fiction. In "An Agent of Utopia" the main character is from - surprise! - an actual country called Utopia. He has an encounter with Sir Thomas More (real-life author of a book called Utopia) and More's daughter. The encounter is... strange.
"Joe Diabo's Farewell" builds a story from Native American skyscraper steel workers and early 20th century Indian shows into a story about identity, life, and death.
In "Beluthahatchie" a blues musician meets (and maybe beats) the devil.
"The Map to the Homes of the Stars". I don't know exactly how to characterize this. Maybe a coming of age story?
Jess Willard, aka "The Pottawatomie Giant" encounters Houdini and has a dispute with him. Or maybe not. I liked this one. (I liked them all, but we always have favorites, amirite?)
"Senator Bilbo" takes
an interesting name coincidence and muses on racism and nationalism via orcs.
"The Big Rock Candy Mountain" builds from the
folk song of the same name. It's a little about being satisfied with what's in front of you vs. looking for something new. This one felt like a tall tale to me. I like tall tales a lot.
"Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull": another tall tale/folk tale, this one involving jails and black prisoners, and escapes. Nice. I'd thought, while reading this, that it was just a story. But it turns out that there WAS a Daddy Mention, who may or may not have been a real person.
In "Zora and the Zombie", Zora Neal Hurston researches zombies in Haiti (which really happened: see [b:Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica|38465|Tell My Horse Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica|Zora Neale Hurston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1398815237l/38465._SY75_.jpg|2218912]. I just don't know if she actually met Erzulie or a zombie there. Maybe she did.
In "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse", a priest meets a girl named Mary who has a talented chicken. The story has a nice zinger at the end too. And holy cow, here's the newsreel referred to in the story!
"Slow as a Bullet" reads like another tall tale. Cliffert Corbett wagers he can outrun a bullet.
"Close Encounters" is about UFOs and alien contactees. As far as I can tell, all the contactees and UFO researchers mentioned in the story were real, including the narrator. It's a great story to end the collection.
CW: a number of these stories deal with racism and abuse. There's possibly more use of the n- word than we really need. But the author's voice is very Southern. If you can take a deep breath and read past the offensive word(s), the stories are worth it.
His stories here often read like tall tales, folk tales, or myths of some kind. I also particularly enjoyed the way he mixes characters from real life into his fiction. In "An Agent of Utopia" the main character is from - surprise! - an actual country called Utopia. He has an encounter with Sir Thomas More (real-life author of a book called Utopia) and More's daughter. The encounter is... strange.
"Joe Diabo's Farewell" builds a story from Native American skyscraper steel workers and early 20th century Indian shows into a story about identity, life, and death.
In "Beluthahatchie" a blues musician meets (and maybe beats) the devil.
"The Map to the Homes of the Stars". I don't know exactly how to characterize this. Maybe a coming of age story?
Jess Willard, aka "The Pottawatomie Giant" encounters Houdini and has a dispute with him. Or maybe not. I liked this one. (I liked them all, but we always have favorites, amirite?)
"Senator Bilbo" takes
an interesting name coincidence and muses on racism and nationalism via orcs.
"The Big Rock Candy Mountain" builds from the
folk song of the same name. It's a little about being satisfied with what's in front of you vs. looking for something new. This one felt like a tall tale to me. I like tall tales a lot.
"Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull": another tall tale/folk tale, this one involving jails and black prisoners, and escapes. Nice. I'd thought, while reading this, that it was just a story. But it turns out that there WAS a Daddy Mention, who may or may not have been a real person.
In "Zora and the Zombie", Zora Neal Hurston researches zombies in Haiti (which really happened: see [b:Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica|38465|Tell My Horse Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica|Zora Neale Hurston|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1398815237l/38465._SY75_.jpg|2218912]. I just don't know if she actually met Erzulie or a zombie there. Maybe she did.
In "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse", a priest meets a girl named Mary who has a talented chicken. The story has a nice zinger at the end too. And holy cow, here's the newsreel referred to in the story!
"Slow as a Bullet" reads like another tall tale. Cliffert Corbett wagers he can outrun a bullet.
"Close Encounters" is about UFOs and alien contactees. As far as I can tell, all the contactees and UFO researchers mentioned in the story were real, including the narrator. It's a great story to end the collection.
johnnyideaseed's review
5.0
An entertaining collection of short stories of science fiction and magical realism. The standouts for me were “Real Indians,” a story about Native American construction workers in the 1920s; “Slow As A Bullet,” a story written as a folk tale, about a man who bets that he can outrun a bullet; and “Close Encounters,” about a man coming to terms with an alien encounter decades before.
mmattmiller's review
1.0
I don't want to be unfair, because I know I don't like short stories, but typically in a collection I will at least enjoy one or two despite that. Not so with this one. I only pushed through this one because it was for Book Club.
smcleish's review
3.0
Mixed bag of fantasy stories. My favourite was the title story, which I had already read in a best of collection. Many of the others were set in a sort of generalised Americana background, often touching on issues of race and class, usually with some humour. It reminded me of the fantastic [b:Little, Big|90619|Little, Big|John Crowley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1435452849l/90619._SY75_.jpg|518635], but I found it alienating (as a non-American) rather than charming.
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