White And Other Tales Of Ruin (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
Jack Ketchum introduces this collection and serves us up some fine opening lines by Lebbon. I could not wait to read this collection! While most of these stories could be considered horror, they all surpass genre expectations."White" begins with the line, "We found the first body two days before Christmas." This first long story, an ode to the apocalypse, to claustrophobia, to sorrow, to humanity's past, opens as 5 people fight strange and deadly creatures who don't just inhabit the snow but seem to be made of it. In "From Bad Flesh" Lebbon navigates us through a tale of disease and violence in a Ruined world, and one man's journey to an impossible cure as he watches everything fall apart. Very well done--I loved this story! I loved the hope and the nonhope. I loved the ruin and the regeneration.In "Hell", a man searches for horror in others' lives in order to feel better about his own. The plot features a really interesting idea I haven't seen done before. Very satisfying read.From "The First Law": But there was nothing other than the island, and the strange, inbred mutated things living here. Survival of the fittest, Max had said. Perhaps God had been here and found himself severely wanting. Here, something else reigned supreme."The Origin of Truth" and "Mannequin Man and The Plastic Bitch" are more scifi but with all the same tones of a Ruined world.All in all, Lebbon's writing is engrossing and he has the ability to create a total vision of whatever it is he's writing about. They all worked as short stories but I feel like they were all fleshed out and dynamic enough to have been full-length novel works as well.This is some damn fine writing.
3.5 stars:I'm a big fan of Tim Lebbon, so I was really excited about this collection of novellas and short stories. What I didn't know going in was that they all have a common thread centering around The Ruin -- a series of vague events that warp the Earth into a realm of nightmares. The stories are otherwise disconnected, but together they paint a grim and interesting picture of the planet gone bad.Like most collections, this was a bit hit and miss. The earlier novellas were the best, with "White" and "The First Law" at the top of the list. Sadly, the two stories new to this collection were my least favorite, especially since "Hell" is the longest in the collection. The ideas for all the stories are interesting, but "Hell" and "Mannequin Man" just didn't grab me like the others.I'd say 2 of the stories were 4 stars, 2 were 3.5, and 2 were 3, so it's definitely worth a read, but it doesn't hold a candle to Dusk.
What do You think about White And Other Tales Of Ruin (2005)?
