The Library of the Dead
2.7/5 Keene and Bailey edited this collection of short stories which are united under the theme of a setting -- Oakland's Chapel of the Chimes -- a columbarium where the ashes of the deceased are interred in golden books shelved in "bookcases" behind glass:
Weird. But a rather cool idea, no? The Chapel of the Chimes literally embodies the idea that our lives are a story and should be remembered as such. And <i>The Library of the Dead</i> takes that idea and runs with it telling the life (and death) stories of (fictional) individuals connected by interludes where a Guardian/Librarian leads a narrator through the rooms of this "library". Taking down the books in series of three, the anthology unfolds little by little to the narrator and the reader. The stories here are quite diverse, which can actually be anticipated in that the only linking theme is that our characters are interred in this columbarium. They run the gamut from two tales of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, to serial killers, to a Lovecraft-inspired tale, to the ordinary lives of average folks in the recent past -- and a lot in between. Almost all the tales have a supernatural element of one sort or another (exempting some of the tales of murder). This makes the anthology, for me at least, quite a mixed bag. Unlike some other reviewers I was not impressed with all the stories and I found the quality of writing quite mixed. There was nothing truly awfully written here, but I didn't find much that was super high quality either. The word that is coming to me as I type this is competent -- as in the writers are all competent, but no one seemed particularly brilliant or likely to be winning the Nobel Prize anytime soon (I know, I know, easy for me to say as a non-writer). What I found most tedious about the anthology was actually the story of the Guardian and the narrator that was supposed to tie this anthology together. It was rather unsurprising and pretty cliche and read like a freshman's entry in her first creative writing course. Nonetheless, there were some stories of note in between the Guardian blather: The Last Things to Go by Mary SanGiovanni and Brian Keene was an affecting tale of loss and grief and how one eventually moves on. With some supernatural elements moving the whole thing along. A Chimera's Tale by Chris Marrs gets a nod for a creative source idea: A supernatural figure -- half demon and half angel -- who is looking for it's other half. I'm Getting Closer by J. F. Gonzalez was sort of trite: a supernatural killer with the ability to mess with technology stalks a young girl. It had a definite <i>When a Stranger Calls</i> vibe which was fun even if the story was pretty predictable. Reliving Through Better Chemistry by Weston Ochse was a creative tale of boys who live the lives and deaths of others by sniffing their ashes. The story builds to reveal the ultimate effects of such interesting drug use. Fault Lines by Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon gets a mention not for the storytelling -- if the narrator talked one more time about how she needed to get home to her dying daughter I was going to throw the Kindle across the room -- but for an interesting premise: archeologists who discover Pandora's box. Jaded Winds by Rena Mason moved right along -- a story about two Chinese business men -- one who is cooking up devious plots -- in San Francisco's Chinatown prior to the 1906 earthquake. What I liked most about this story was the incorporation of Chinese folklore and mythology. Tears of the Dragon by Michael McBride moves back and forth in time -- between the horrors of a Japenese-led prisoner-of-war camp in Manchukuo during WWII and the present day. The story tells about the life of Dr. Sam Himura as told by himself in a video to his funeral guests. Tales the Ashes Tell was probably the best story -- in terms of prose -- in this collection. An interesting meditation on the afterlife and how that intersects with the stories of our lives. Set in the Chapel of the Chimes and told by the building itself it is a somewhat horrifying, but ultimately rather charming, meditation on living. It goes into some weird places which sort of detracted from the story's theme, but overall it worked. This anthology gets 2.75 instead of the usual 3 I give most anthologies (that author mix really tends to average out) because the writing wouldn't quite average out here and the interludes were not to my taste as mentioned above. However, competent it is and the setting/theme is marvelous. Burn, Borrow, or Buy: Borrow (if your pile of books has dwindled and you just need to kill some time).
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