![]() ![]() Russell obviously grew up with a lot of sci-fi and horror flicks and can capably render impossible worlds like those. Russell’s less successful mode is straight fantasy, in which the story lives and dies on the potential of its conceit: a company of Japanese slave girls in the Meiji era turned into silkworms in “Reeling for the Empire,” or “The Barn at the End of Our Term,” about a farm full of horses that are also the reincarnations of former presidents. They feel closer to dreams.” It’s the best story in the collection because it feels closest to life as it’s lived, bad dreams and all. … Her ‘flashbacks,’ such as they were, do not conform to the timeline of Derek’s first story anymore. In the story, a soldier’s graphically detailed back tattoo of an IED attack channels horrifying visions to his masseuse: “Beverly learns that one prejudice that has been ordering her existence is that there is an order: that time exists, that its movements are regular and ineluctable. ![]() ![]() She hits that sense of slippery terror again in “The New Veterans,” which plays like a higher-stakes “Twilight Zone” for our mind-scarred post-9/11 military. That’s a true and unnerving revelation, whether you’re undead or not. ![]()
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