Tales of the Coming War, by Eric Stener Carlson

 " ... we all search for meaning -- to give our life purpose." 

9781912586615

Tartarus Press, 2025

253 pp

hardcover

(read earlier in March)

If you find that recently you've been a bundle of nerves given world events, do yourself a favor and do not read this book before trying to go to sleep. I started out doing that, as is my regular practice, and discovered that far from settling me down enough to conk out, this book had the opposite effect -- I found my thoughts swirling and I was beyond unsettled.  I gave up after two nights, pushing this book into my daytime reading where somehow it felt mentally more safe.  

Tales From the Coming War is a collection of stories that is difficult to pigeonhole.  Set against the backdrop of war, there are shades of science fiction, the supernatural, the eerie, and it is especially dark.   The first thing I noticed is that there are scenes from but no explanation behind the conflict anywhere throughout this book, but in the long run it's really not needed.   These stories zoom in on the very human experiences of people caught up in the collapse of the world as they know it; although scattered here and there throughout different parts of the globe, Carlson's characters tend to question or confront particular moments in their lives, searching for meaning and seeing things most clearly at the time when all is about to be lost, their stories often offering them a measure of freedom.   

Very briefly, one of the best stories in this volume, "Roses," clearly illustrates this idea, and begins with an older man in Greece receiving a letter from someone he knew in the past.  The letter writer has had a highly successful career and life, but now he writes to beg and offer a substantial amount of money for the older man's secret as to the "immunity" from the "wraiths" that have been decimating the population, the fate of which somehow the older man has escaped.   In his response, the older man sets forth his theories, first his insights into the nature of these things according to modern scientific thinking, and then something more "metaphorical."  As he explains his beliefs, he refers to the story of the "two roses" he learned when younger that takes him back into his childhood when the two were supposedly friends, but the reality was something altogether different.   "Death is Like a Slotted Spoon" is another excellent tale, in which two soliders find themselves stopping for a short break in the darknesss with the enemy all around them.  As they share a drink from a flask, one is reminded of the "first night he got pissed" as a teenager, living "in the middle of nowhere" with his parents and his twin sister, for whom he was responsible. He had to "shadow" her all the time because of her strange behavior, which gave him no time to be alone or to do anything he wanted.  All of that changes one night when his parents had gone out and left the two siblings on their own ...  "The Zig-Zag Line" is another fine story that offers the reflections of a young man from Australia who, as a child, "used to feel that just around the next corner of my life I'd find something magical, mysterious ... that would explain everything. (Why we're here, What life's all about.)"  Then came the war, changing the focus to survival.  The narrator had done everything asked of him by his father, who had always tried to pave the way for him in life, but when summoned home during the war, refused.  Instead, he decides that it might be time to "see Machu Picchu," an obsession he'd had since childhood.   As he notes, "If the whole world was going mad, if they were going to commit collective suicide, then, before the end came, I was finally going to see Machu Picchu."  As he had once read, "we all search for meaning -- to give our life purpose," and in this case, it's all about the journey.   The remainder of the stories here are all powerful, each in its own way.  

Another fine volume from Tartarus, the front dustjacket blurb of Tales From the Coming War reveals that "the characters in this collection face the last war the world will ever know," and I eventually came to realize that it's not the horrors that these people face that had me on edge but rather the way in which the author plunges the reader front and center into each story, making you feel like you're the one who's living through these times.   That, my friends, is powerful and emotional storytelling.   Enough said. 

Definitely recommended.  

Graveside Gallery: Tales of Ghosts and Dark Matters, by Eric J. Guignard

 

9781949491609

Cemetery Dance, 2025

253 pp

paperback 

I'm hopefully done with sporadic posting now. The end of January through the end of February is one giant blur -- my poor husband had three surgeries (one completely unexpected immediately on the back of the second) during that time, and I was in no kind of mental shape to do much except sit in the hospital and drink way too much coffee.    Hopefully we won't be back there again.  

Moving on now, and playing serious catch up, I've finished reading A Graveside Gallery by Eric J. Guignard, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award in 2020 for Edited Anthology with his Professor Charlatan Bardot's Travel Anthology to the Most (Fictional) Haunted Buildings in the Weird, Wild World  (Dark Moon Books, 2021) and the Bram Stoker Award in 2014 and 2019, as well as garnering many nominations and a few other wins for his work during his career.   This latest collection of his short stories has an official publication date of April of this year, with its subtitle, Tales of Ghosts and Dark Matters,  offering a ginormous and not-so-subtle clue as to what readers have to look forward to in this book.   

The author hits the ground running here with "Penny's Diner," setting the scene immediately with the "hypnotic line" of North Dakota highways at night.  The titular diner is where a truck driver stops after driving for a few hours.  He isn't exactly in his rig though; earlier that day he'd had an accident that sent him off the road and banged up his truck, so he's driving a loaner.  But he might have been okay with that, had not there been more to the story.   If you find yourself thinking that you may have read this one before so you know what's going to happen,  you haven't.   The real question is "WTF?" as you close out the story.   It's pretty twisty, and a good choice on this one as the opener, setting the tone of dark strangeness for all that follows.   The standout for me in this volume is "A Stroke of Death,"  which completely floored me with its mix of beautiful, tight writing and the sheer grotesque, "mortal carnage" the author envisions here.    Odile Thibodeau was once an artist of great renown, his paintings hanging in some of the finest galleries of Montmartre and elsewhere, but now he paints for only one person, a certain Monsieur Bourguignon.   Odile's paintings are unique; indeed, he has a talent that had  caught his patron's eye,  resulting in Odile painting exclusively for him.  Now Odile is an extremely wealthy man but caught in a dire situation, with nowhere to turn and no way out of his predicament, until Monsieur Bourguignon commissions a certain subject for the artist's next painting  that Odile absolutely does not want to paint.   To say any more would be a crime, but really, this story is next-level work on the author's part.  It is horrific and painful, but at the same time there is a strange beauty to it that I couldn't resist.  I would really love to see more stories like this one -- seriously incredible.   I have to also give high marks to the author for his "The Ascending Lights of Yu Lan," in which an Irish sailor roaming the streets of San Francisco in 1917 finally discovers why his mother was always warning him not to go out on "nights of August's full moon."   

from MacGame store

In Graveside Gallery, we discover that horror knows no bounds and has never been restricted by time or space. Geographically these pieces take the reader to several different locales including downtown L.A., the swampy backroads of  Florida, on to Route 66 and a god-awful desert tourist trap in New Mexico and other spots where the strange meets up with the mundane.    The author moves back in time and into present and future,  stopping once to add an unsettling and disturbing coda to events at Andersonville, as well as a new epilogue to Mary Shelley's epic Frankenstein and a rather bizarre addition to a familiar work by Beatrix Potter.  There is enough variation here to recommend this collection to any reader of horror and the strange, with solid writing that satisifies tougher audiences like myself.  

My thanks to the author for my copy of his book -- nicely done. 

This Haunted Heaven, by Reggie Oliver

 

9781912586608

Tartarus Press, 2024

240 pp

hardcover

It is not only a true pleasure to have a book published by Tartarus in my hands once again, but added to that is the joy of it being a book of collected stories by Reggie Oliver.  Long may they continue to be published -- I love his work. In This Haunted Heaven, as the blurb notes, the author "insinuates strangeness into the lives of his unwary protagonists and the results vary from a profound chill to outright horror."   Let me add that it's not just true about this book, but rather it is the case  in every single collection of his that I've read.   

My big test in any story collection is always whether or not the first one  makes me want to go on to the rest, and with "This Haunted Heaven," Oliver passes with flying colors.  Set on the Greek island of Skliros, within just a few lines of opening this tale, the author mentions the Mediterranean Sea as being "Wine-dark," as "the romantics will tell you, imagining they are quoting Homer," but it wasn't all that long into the story that my brain drifted to Robert Aickman.  If you consider the themes in that story, my brain wasn't too far off the mark, but this is clearly a Reggie Oliver creation.   In "This Haunted Heaven," a university don returns to the island to finish his book Middle Eastern Cults and Greco-Roman Culture," which he believes will be the "standard work on the subject," or else his "life has been wasted." In setting down "how it all began," he remembers the first time, as a young Classics student, he had gone to the island as part of an ongoing dig at a site which had been dedicated to the goddess Cybele.  I won't say any more, but I had to remind myself that this was just the beginning and I needed to buckle up if the remainder of the stories were going to be this disturbing.  Speaking of disturbing, I was thrown completely off guard by "Fell Creatures," which wins my award for most unsettling story in this book, and yet I read it not just the once but twice.  As this story opens, a retired, widowed history teacher wonders if having extreme wealth might "warp" the characters of the "very rich," and notes that there was one couple in particular who made him "ponder the question."  For some time, he had lived in a cottage in Norfolk next to Strellbrigg Hall, a "large, rambling, and ... rather run down" eighteenth-century farmhouse.  Its owner, Roger Mason-Fell, had sold the Hall to the Argents, a wealthy couple with "shedloads of cash" and three small children. Months later, the Hall has been redone and the woman in charge of the renovation has invited the narrator over to see the changes.  She has set aside some strange items left behind by the former owner: a dollhouse complete with "doll children," a book dating back to 1798 and a set of old portraits.  What happens once the family moves in I will not divulge, but when all is said and done, "Fell Creatures" left me utterly stunned.  This story alone is well worth what I paid for this book.  Holy crap.  I don't believe I will ever read something like this tale ever again, and if I do, it will more than likely come from the pen of Reggie Oliver.   Anyone who's read anything by this author knows that stage plays a role in a number of his stories, given the author's background as an actor, a director and a playwright, this is hardly surprising.  "South Riding" is one of these, which begins with the attempted suicide of Don, an actor who "had been out of work for months," with no money and no prospects for any other jobs.  In his mind, "he was an actor of nothing," and anything else was "meaningless" to him.   After a counseling session, he rings his agent and to his surprise, he learns about the need for a leading man  in "an old-fashioned summer rep company" in a town called Disston,  on the coast "in the South Riding of Yorkshire."     He's pretty positive there is no such place as South Riding, and he probably should have trusted his gut on that.  

title page, from my copy

The remainder of the stories in This Haunted Heaven are all excellent, although I have to say that I wasn't completely in love with The Cardinal's Ring  -- for me, it just didn't have the same oomph as the others, but that's just a personal taste thing.   Your mileage may vary.  What I love the most about his work is that he is not only a master of atmosphere, but also the way in which he brings together past and present,  creating a lingering sense of menace and danger.  As I usually find while reading his work, his writing is so good that while in the middle of one of these stories, the house could have caught fire and I would have waited to do anything about it until I finished reading.  There just aren't that many authors about whom I can honestly say that, especially modern writers, but it's true. The dustjacket blurb quotes Publishers Weekly about another of Oliver's collections, saying that his stories are for "Readers who like their horrors subtle but unsettling," and that description is right on the money.   He is and likely will remain one of my favorite writers ever.  

Very, VERY highly recommended!!! 

The Incubations, by Ramsey Campbell

 

"Your bombs were meant to cast down Hitler, but they raised his spirits." 

9781787589292

Flame Tree Press, 2024

245 pp

hardcover  

First, my many and grateful thanks to Flame Tree Press for my copy of this book.  A new novel by Ramsey Campbell -- definitely not an everyday occurrence, so when I was asked if I might want to read this book and post about it, I jumped at the chance.  I wasn't disappointed -- not at all.  

When Leo Palmer was a boy, his school had decided to celebrate the twinning of their town with the German town of Alphafen as a way to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II.  His teacher had assigned the class the task of writing letters to the children of that town, which like Leo's home town of Settlesham, had been bombed close to the end of the war.  While not all students were thrilled about the assignment,  Leo chose a girl named Hanna Weber and sent off his letter; they'd been penpals ever since.  Now Leo is grown, working for his parents in their family driving-instruction business, and as the novel opens, is not having such a great time of things.  He is in the car with a student who is ready to take her driving test. After a couple of minor incidents, they continue on their way,  but soon the student has had enough -- Leo's directions and conversation have become so convoluted that he's "talking rubbish" to her, and she wants to go home.  He isn't doing it on purpose to mock her dyslexia, as she accuses him of doing once she is back at her house; he has no idea what is happening.  But that's not all -- he soon suffers a bout of hysteria when he gets back behind the steering wheel and decides he can no longer drive, a serious problem when you make your living as a driving instructor.  After a visit to a psychologist, Leo is off on a scheduled trip to Alphafen to finally meet Hanna and her family in person.  And it's at this juncture that the book seriously takes off.

Leo is happy to finally be there and to meet Hanna, and the citizens of the town of Alphafen seem to welcome Leo on his arrival, honoring him with toasts, the singing of his national anthem at a restaurant and greetings from the mayor, etc.  He also experiences strange, inexplicable episodes that he tries to rationalize before moving on, as is his nature.  Things start to get even weirder when he meets a fellow countryman, Jerome Pugh, who has more than a slight interest in the connection between Hitler and Alphafen in a conversation that Leo finds distasteful and to which he takes offense.   And while I won't divulge much more about his time in Alphafen, I will reveal that Leo takes home more than simply memories of his visit when he returns to life in Settlesham. 

from MeteorologiaenRed

The Incubations sort of twins the reader's mind with Leo's in the sense that Campbell has structured his book so that as Leo's story unfolds, we too are also trying to figure out exactly what is causing all of this to happen, only to be horrified when connections are finally made and all is revealed.  What made this book such a page turner is that all along I sensed something not quite right running beneath the surface of Leo's conversations with the people in Alphafen, which seemed to take on a darker, more mysterious meaning than Leo comprehends.  Readers will latch on to the wrongness of things pretty quickly by reading slowly and carefully rather than buzzing through this book at top speed.  

I could not put this book down once I picked it up; Campbell has been writing horror for sixty years now (my favorite is still his Nazareth Hill)  and The Incubations shows that he is still going strong and hasn't missed a beat.  Not only are the dark moments in this book intensely creepy, but where it excels is in the more mundane moments that slowly morph into something much more sinister.  The themes he presents here are powerful and especially pertinent in our current world where technology aids in the rise of the dark forces that exist out there;   the issue for me is that it is difficult to say much about this book without ruining it for potential readers, and far be it from me to ruin anyone's reading experience.   What I can say is that fans of Ramsey Campbell will certainly not want to miss this one.  

 Highly recommended. 

Beware Us Flowers of the Annihilator, by Alexander Zelenyj

 

"There are more men in the world who wreaked senseless havoc than men who preached for peace."

9781913766306

Eibonvale Press, 2024

406 pp

I would have done a happy dance when this new book by Alexander Zelenyj arrived at my door, but there were people here so I just did it inside my head.  I have had the very great fortune to have read several of this author's short story collections, and this  newest one is definitely cause for celebration.   

In Beware Us Flowers of the Annihilator, Zelenyj cuts across and through genre in his stories to produce something entirely his own.  There are elements of horror, science fiction and fantasy at work throughout this book, but there are also any number of disorienting moments between these two covers that speak to a more surreal reading experience.  At the heart of these stories, and what gives them a resonating quality, is the keen attention he pays to his characters no matter the situation in which they find themselves, starting from the beginning.   In "Peacekeeper and the War-Mouth" a young boy from a Czech immigrant family is bullied by another boy at his school, and while he doesn't quite have the courage to kick his tormentor "square in the junk," he discovers another way to achieve the satisfaction brought by vengeance. In the next, "The Deathwish of Valerie Vulture," a popular comic-strip character, Valerie Vulture, who has been "everyone's sad little scavenger bird for over a century" comes to life, only to beg the cartoonist who has taken over the strip to finish her off.  She can no longer stand the "sick glee" of the many humans who've watched her suffer over that time, and can't bear being the "measuring stick" for people who have enjoyed her misery.  Unfortunately the cartoonist's boss won't allow that to happen because of the profits Valerie's brought in.  "Silver the Starfallen" in which the main character's deep sense of longing is brought to the fore, is set in the time after the defeat of the Danes by the Saxons.  A group of Northmen have been trying to keep out of the way of their enemy, their number including an "inexplicable" warrior by the name of Silver whose earliest memory is "falling like a star from the sky."  Evidently he is "not of this world," and misses the peace of the time "before man existed."  

Throughout this collection of tales, characters face the weight of the past, their own inner demons, and often crushing alone-ness, their experiences making for a beautifully rich collage of human emotions and especially their vulnerabilities.   This is most true in my favorite story, "Little Boys," which to me is one of the best stories this author has ever written, and I've certainly read enough of them to be able to say that.    On their mission to drop the atomic bomb at Hiroshima, the crew of the Enola Gay start their long flight without a hitch, but some three hours in, the pilot, Lt. Paul Tibbets, discovers a strange black flower stuck to the bulkhead.  No one knows where it came from, but eventually more crop up. However, that's not the strangest thing that happens during this flight,  but about the rest I will absolutely say nothing more.  I read this story twice, put the book down for a bit, and then when I picked it up to start again I read "Little Boys" a third time. The imagery is absolutely stunning, as is the intent in this tale, and the raw emotion just leaps out at the reader.  Oh my god -- someday (and soon!) someone should nominate the author for some kind of award, if for nothing else, this story alone.   Then there's another personal favorite, "Bright Sons of the Morning," that finds a military investigator who is tasked with tracking down an ancient evil in the desert of Iraq.  Mackey finds this mission more personal than most he's carried out over his very long career, beginning with a strange and powerful cult as well as a rogue officer.  I had the sense of Apocalypse Now mixed with sheer evil as I read through this one, most likely the most frightening story in this collection.    The remainder of the stories are also excellent, with not a bad one in the bunch, illuminating the weariness wrought by the fact that, as the titular character in "Silver the Starfallen" notes, there are "more men in the world who wreaked senseless havoc than men who preached for peace,"  a truth that is definitely at home in our present.  

Beware Us Flowers of the Annihilator is this author's boldest story collection so far, and although I have truly loved his books that I've read in the past, this book goes well above and beyond those on so many levels.   Most highly, HIGHLY recommended.  

The Ghosthunter, by D.F. Lewis

 

"And so, life itself that one needs to live so as to write the stories that creates the life that created them in the first place, will be sure to prevail perhaps forever, whoever the one is whom one chooses to write them." 

9781069101624

ghosttruth/Montag, 2024

127 pp 

paperback

 Regular, long-time readers of strange/weird/ghostly/horror fictions (mainly small press but not always)  will have at least once crossed online paths with this author's sixteen-year run of  Real-Time Gestalt Reviews, where D.F. Lewis offers "episodic, brainstorming reviews" which are to him "very personal -- rough-shod and spontaneous." They are also extremely insightful, offering readers an ongoing commentary based on his own distinctive perceptions vis-a-vis connections, coincidences, and synchronicities, which I have never before experienced from anyone else who has ever written a book review.  His work is truly one of a kind; he is the ultimate scrier and although retired from reviewing now, his work will continue to live on.  

Lewis is also a published author, and his latest book is The Ghosthunter.  There are no EVP sessions, EMF meters or laser grids to be found here, nor are there garden-variety entities covered in shrouds or dragging clanking chains along with them.   It is an eerie and atmospheric collection of what the author calls "miniatures," which are very short, dark and uniquely-styled fictions.  In the telling, they are more than a bit fragmented, which leaves the reader to become a sort of scrier in his/her own right over the course of the book to seek out the meaning behind what the ghost hunter wants to reveal.   The Ghosthunter, because of the way it incorporates places, literary works, people and events over the central character's lifetime, has a rather semi-autobiographical feel, and the ghosts that inhabit this book are tied to the ghost hunter's life experiences via perception and memory.   The thing is that Lewis does not make it so easy for the reader to discern the exact moment when the realities begin to blur into something less tangible or when the ordinary slides into something less familiar, making the overall effect one of distortion and disorientation, as well as mystery and above all, uncertainty.  For me, this is the essence of the ghosts/memories   that this ghost hunter seeks -- they are elusive, often  shapeshifting, and even capable of haunting the ghost hunter himself from time to time. 

Lewis tackles, among others, themes of meaning and mortality in this rather enigmatic yet introspective book; in his distinctive (and admittedly at times daunting) prose, the author takes the reader along with this ghost hunter on his journey as he offers these rather haunting tales of "self and non-self," making it seem as if you are right there with him.  I especially loved the use of intertexuality in these stories, but even more,  that of mansions that runs throughout, since not only are they the perfect setting for literary ghost stories but also for spaces where memories reside, especially if you follow the idea of houses representing people (which, as a closet Jungian and huge fan of Elizabeth Bowen, I do).  In some of these mansions there are no rooms, and more importantly is his notion of "mansions without roofs," which early in the ghost writer's career (I don't know about the author's but I suspect so), was set as a sort of writing prompt from a member of the author's local writers' group that had been drawn from a tin.  There is also mention of a "mansion of life," which so stood out to me that I must repeat it here because it captures one of a number of poignant reflections that are found scattered throughout the book:

"These stories, it increasingly becomes clear, are separate floors in the mansion of life, till you reach the topmost attic of all, from which vantage point of near roofless exposure, you can gather, simply by looking down, that the whole crumbling exterior of the mansion badly needs repair." 

While reading this book,  I often had the feeling that I was trespassing into the ghost hunter's metaphysical space, which, I suppose I was meant to, but it felt so personal that I often felt like an intruder.   On the only negative I can think of, it does take a lot of time and patience to get through and even then, I'm not absolutely positive that I've truly understood all that Lewis has to say here.   If you’re looking for a fast-paced thriller or a typical ghost story, this one won't work for you.  However,   The Ghosthunter is something that runs much deeper, it is highly introspective, and it is a book that resonates emotionally. It is dark and can range into somber,  yet in its own way it is a most beautiful collection that will stay with me for a long time.   

The Universe as Performance Art, by Colby Smith

 

9781913766153

Eibonvale Press, 2024

143 pp

paperback

Crikey! It's been a long while since I've been here but things have been a bit on the chaotic side for a while.  There really just hasn't been much spare time to post my thoughts about what I've been reading, although I will say I have a stack of small-press gems sitting here waiting for my comments. 

 First up is one of  Eibonvale's latest releases,   The Universe As Performance Art  by author Colby Smith, a collection of short stories that above all will jolt its readers out of their complacency while making them do some serious thinking about what they've just encountered.   As described on the back-cover blurb by author Paul Cunningham, this book is "a disquieting, panoramic gallery exhibition obsessed with art's arranged marriage with Nature and the consequences of art itself," but to say that Smith's work is "disquieting" is an enormous understatement.  

I am so late in posting about this book which I should have done last month (had it not been for a two-week vacation and then a week of sleep recovery)  that I'm only going to offer three examples of stories that made a deep impact on my already-buzzing psyche.   "The Game Show Expats" did my head in and wins my personal award for most disturbing.    This story consists of three different scenarios focused on people who've won each a trip to the Florida Keys as a prize in a game show that "combined both the novelty-game and trivia formats."  The first two are out there, but it's the third one that made me do a very loud "WTF,"  but then again, I live in this state and honestly, nothing here fazes  me any more.   If you're talking about the question of what different people find to be important in life, this story answers it in suprising ways.   "All about yourself" indeed.    I can't speak highly enough about "Somnii Draconis," which begins as a young man is walking along the beach and runs into an older guy with a dowsing rod. Turns out the dowser is looking for "the sex of stones." Obviously, the younger man says, "there are no organs at all in rocks," but the old man definitely knows what he's talking about -- as the younger will soon discover.    As this part of story is unfolding, another thread running through this tale links current "black-market hype" (which I won't explain here)   to the  "classical Chinese medicinal canon," beginning with the "dragon bones"  (龍骨), fossils discovered by farmers as they plowed their fields, which then went to priests who ground and used them for their "supposed healing properties" against "metaphysical ailments."  While there is more than a bit of humor in this one,  the younger man's  unspoken"counterargument" toward the conclusion of this story deserves our full attention.    In a completely different vein is "Amaterasu Overthrown," which is without doubt brilliant, transplanting the Japanese myth about the sun goddess deep into the future and most fully into the realm of science fiction.   On the space station Takamagahara the light suddenly dies, "sucked away" by the goddess Amaterasu who has fled the station for a black hole after a prank "gone too far"  by her brother. The result is devastating for life forms on the station; thus a price must be paid.   Worth more than an honorable mention are "Aphorisms in Concrete," "The Bombed Zoo,"  and in a much quieter mode, "Fluora," all of which point to Smith as a serious talent. 

The majority of these stories center on art, integrating physical, mental and spiritual selves,  science and the natural world as well as other areas of existence, all written in  bold, vital language.  Connected to that are the consequences of the choices that are made by the people who inhabit these tales, which are also explored here.   What really struck me though in most cases was the intensity of emotion that seeps out via the author's characters, even in those stories I didn't particularly care for, which in actuality weren't all that many.  I will say that if you depend on trigger warnings, well, this probably isn't the book for you.  

 In the blurb on the back of the book, Cunningham also says that this book is "an indispensable contribution to the Neo-Decadent international art movement canon," and  I have to admit that my familiarity with the movement is pretty much nil (although after reading this one my curiosity is getting the better of me).  I found this article from Document (2023) which helped a bit,  and a brief explanation by Fergus Nm in The Aither as part of a review of Neo-Decadence Evangelion (Zagava, 2023; ed. Justin Isis) where he describes this group as a "loose confederation of writers, poets, and artists with an axe to grind against the imagination-starved tedium of much of what passes for 'contemporary culture.' "   Amen to that -- and here's to continuing to shake up the system.  There's more than enough to keep any reader of darker fiction on their toes here, and my many and hugely grateful thanks (along with an apology for taking forever)  to the very good people at Eibonvale for my copy.  I may not know the movement itself very well, but The Universe as Performance Art blew me right out of my comfort zone and made me want to read more from Mr. Colby Smith in the future.  And that's what matters.