Go Not Gently [Paperback]

This volume contains 3 novellas, or longish short stories, all dealing in some way with the supernatural. Of the three, I'd say the best is the cover painting by Rowena (which is not directly connected to anything depicted within), and I'm not wild about that one either.

First comes "The Fire When It Comes" by Parke Godwin, which is supposed to have won some kind of award. It is the best-written of the three, but still seems ultimately pointless. It is about a ghost with amnesia who hangs around haunting a young couple until she finally remembers the rather banal circumstances of her death (she got drunk and fell off a balcony). The End. I never figured out the significance of the title.

Next comes "Dysenfranchised", by Patrick Thomas. It is sort of a noir-style hard-boiled detective story, except that it takes place in what must be the ultimate noir setting -- Hell itself. The protagonist is "Negral", a former Bablylonian God who serves as Satan's head Secret Policeman (this is evidently meant to refer to "Nergal", but is consistently mis-spelled). Negral is about as hard-boiled as they can get, and spends most of the story showing how tough he is by inflicting horrible brutalities on whoever he encounters. But this is Hell, so, naturally, they all deserve it. But, it turns out, he is not entirely without redeeming qualities - when a "complete innocent" shows up in Hell, he smuggles her out again. Then he goes back to torturing people -- The end. This is easily the most colorful of the three, but the wallowing in sadism gets old pretty fast.

Finally comes "Hurry and Leisure" by C.J. Henderson. The title refers to a quote from Chesterton("Evil comes at leisure like a disease; Good comes in a hurry like the doctor"). It is about a team of ghost-busters who are summoned to an ultra-exclusive community of billionaires, to investigate a mysterious disappearance. They may be in a hurry, but they don't seem much Good. Upon arrival, this unpleasant bunch to try to impress their hosts, and the reader, with a hellish bout of chest-beating and posturing, resulting in pages and pages of dialogue which is boring, confusing, and mean-spirited. Meanwhile, without much actual detective work taking place, the mystery seems to resolve itself by author's fiat -- mainly because the heroes can just mystically know things whenever convenient. Eventually, some creatures from Lovecraft's mythos show up, and the hero takes them out with a Molotov cocktail and a few bullets. The end.

› Go to Amazon U.S. to see the review  2.0 out of 5 stars