Don't look at the contents. Wait until the end. That way you get the best reveal as you turn each page, paperly or digitally. Priming yourself like the characters in this world gives you the best experience, a fuller gut busting load. Blink if you have to.
Machine of Death hefts a mealy question. If you could know the particulars of your death scene, would you want to know? What would you do? Would you let it affect how you live the rest of your life? But it doesn't really matter if you do peek at the contents of Machine of Death as it's all set to vague anyway. Just like the cards that spit out from this oracle. How the turns twist and fall across your lap is one of the sly moves this volume of short stories does well.
If you do skip reading deliberately through the contents you'll reward yourself with a nice little laugh that is all setup and punch line in one swift kick. Brian Quinlan's story bares only a single line but smacks your left ear to cleanse that brain like a sorbet before heading you down to the next Machine of Death short. Don't go looking for it, it won't have the same slice up the sides, and is a neat surprise brushing the end of the first third of the volume.
"Starvation" is a brutal line by line account from M. Bernnardo that is so expertly noted you feel so sorry for the character and wish for him that it wasn't so detailed, so lucid. Empathically painful. And it's here again where you sit and look through the options. Whether or not it's a good thing to know how you're going to die. And if anything you do is going to make that last day painful, or just a pain to get to.
Sneaking through is "Nothing" by Pelotard. A slow, purposeful beat, and an example of the many ways the authors have taken the concept, free of any constrictions to show what's up when it's all looking down. Clever spinning in a whole book of clever spins.
Whether it's fatigue of reading by the lamp light or just the sink of engagement, a couple of stories at the back end just sag. By now the day has festered its sweat in your britches for some time and the delivery holds back its legs. Words start floating about and sentences pass without anything holding on. They come, they go, the story is left turning another page to see what else will follow. At this point the collection is front loaded and we're tipping over.
Often morose, as they are lively, the pluck and chapter picks sit well among one another. Each vignette progresses the world in parallel as well as a disparate and an adhesive fashion. They don't overlap, they don't clash, the may see the machine of death mechanically differently, but they all no doubt are part of the same fabric and universe. Well done when you're working from whole cloth.
All stories are unlike and exist in some semblance of a shared universe where each voice is clear, different and does a bang up job of angling this thing that inhibits and exhibits their lives.
It's an odd, sharp premise that delivers an entertaining array of world views and executions.
Reviewed on Friday, 3 May 2013