REVIEW: “Fishing Village of the Damned” by George R. Galuschak

Review of George R. Galuschak, “Fishing Village of the Damned”, in Abandoned Places, edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell (Shohola Press, 2018): 251-266 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watching SFF TV from the 90s on, it’s that things never go well for the Chosen One — and it doesn’t go any better for Astraea in this story, on assignment with Fred the Burning Skeleton, Sadako the evil spirit, and Dave. It’s supposed to be a charity mission, rescue the provincial Spanish fishing village from Big-Dick Howie, but Astraea — none of them — expected to find a village that didn’t want to be rescued.

This was a light comedy of errors, quick to read and amusing.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: Abandoned Places edited by George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell

Review of George R. Galuschak and Chris Cornell, eds., Abandoned Places, (Shohola Press, 2018) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This anthology is the inaugural publication of newly launched “Purveyors of Fine Genre Fiction”, Shohola Press, and what a fine way to launch it is.

This is a collection of stories about places which are “forgotten but not gone,” of “the lonely, the rejected, and the uninhabited” (to quote the back of the book). Some of the stories are classics, written by greats such as Poe and Bradbury. But many more of them are new tales, by a variety of contemporary writers both familiar and new. In the editor’s introduction they say that “we especially wanted to introduce audiences to strong voices who haven’t yet received the widespread distribution they deserve”. Since one of the reasons I was motivated to start SFFReviews was so that I could broaden my reading horizons and learn about new authors (whether actually new or merely new to me), I was incredibly excited to receive a review copy of this beautiful book.

Below is the table of contents, and the review for each story will be linked from here as it is published:

In his introduction, Cornell says that “If you discover at least one new writer who speaks to you in these pages, we have accomplished our goal, dear reader.” I discovered not one, but many. The collection is well balanced and every individual piece is stellar. Even the ones not entirely to my taste left me glad to have read them.

Sara L. Uckelman23 Comments