Eduardo Jiménez Mayo

In the tradition of the Fantastic and magical realism, this short story collection presents a collection of primarily new voices that deliver fresh, haunting stories. They're not what a Western reader would recognize immediately as Horror or SFF--rather, they're closer to 'weird fiction' or 'magical realism' and bring to mind such writers as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. Often quiet and unassuming (until they are not), the stories offer up a Mexico and a literature that is as gorgeous and deep as it is unfamiliar. In most of the stories, the prose is luscious and careful, whether in the flash fiction or the longer stories, and the collection has introduced me to a number of names that I can't wait to look up.

Absolutely recommended.… (más)

This is such an interesting collection, full of stories that I know will stay with me for a long time. Like the introduction says, Mexican science fiction is a bit different from a lot of American/British science fiction. In general I'd say there's a lot more ambiguity than I'm used to reading in this genre; you're often left to make your own interpretations. But the stories here span such a wide range of styles that it's hard to make any broad statement about the collection as a whole. I will say that it's a book with a lot of stories (most of them are pretty short), and none of them are duds, which is rare. If you want to read a bunch of stories about death, monsters, bats, and secrets, I can't recommend this highly enough.… (más)