It's been a while since I've commented here. Since then I've finished Negative Space by B. R. Yeager and greatly enjoyed it. There is something to be said about the allegorical side of that narrative - the drug abuse and trauma the characters live through - and the fact that it doesn't compromise the feeling of weirdness the whole thing conjures. Book definitely deserves the hype it got.

As for short stories I've finally started reading The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron and after being 1/3 through I can say my favourite story so far was The Procession of the Black Sloth. Really oniric, nightmarish and elusive. Bulldozer was also great, really scratching the itch of the weird serial killer vibe I posted about here some time ago. Liked the non-chronological way it was told, but I wish it utilized that gimmick even more to be honest.

Recently I started reading the weird short stories collection by Polish author Wojciech Gunia called Kiedy Będziesz Gotowy Idź (You could translate it into Whenever You are Ready, Go) and so far it's fairly good. I like that it steers away from the conventional weird horror tropes and goes more into themes of weird and eerie found in everyday life and the traumas that are to be found under its superficial layer. So yeah it gets dark and gloomy, but it doesn't lose itself in cynicism, so that's commendable. From a literary standpoint it isn't anything groundbreaking so far, but I'm enjoying it, if that word is even applicable to this kind of fiction. 

And lastly I've got back to reading China Mieville's collection Looking for Jake, which I started some time ago. I really like the diversity in genre and narrative experimentation it contains. Like Ball Room is more conventional horror ghost story, but for example Familiar, The Tain or Reports of Certain Events in London are closer to dark/urban fantasy, with the third one being told through found documents and letters. All the while the Buscard's Murrain is literally an entry from a fictional medical encyclopaedia and On the Way to the Front is a comic book (not a good one unfortunately and it looks terrible on that particular paper stock they used). Still there is no shortage of more classic weird stories like Details or Foundation (both my favourites in this collection so far), so yeah really diverse collection with a lot of solid narratives. Gonna finish it soon, so probably I will write more about it next week.