One of the oddest anthologies I've ever read. Twenty stories of Glitter & Mayhem. A strange mish-mash of Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Erotica and more, usually involving disco, roller-skating, roller derby, drugs or just plain mayhem.
There were good stories from writers I was already familiar with; Cat Rambo, Tim Pratt, Maurice Broaddus and Rachel Swirsky all have strong entries. And there are a few notable tales from writers I get to discover between the pages...
Authors like, Christopher Barzak and his short. "Sister Twelve: Confessions of a Party Monster," a fairy-tale of sorts, with twelve princesses who sneak off nightly to an underground realm leading to the world's legendary dance clubs. "What happens underground, stays underground."
I also liked "Apex Jump" from David J Schwartz. A remarkably inventive Sci-Fi piece involving Roller Deby in a galaxy far, far away, and which just happens to mention one of my all-time favorite TV shows, "Farscape."
One of my favorites was "Subterraneans" written by William Shunn & Laura Chavoen. A totally original story that left me wanting another dose.
And an honorable mention to Cory Skerry whose story, "Sooner Than Gold", has the following great opening line, "I tug on clean underwear in case I get arrested, paint my makeup perfectly because there's nothing sadder than a grown man in badly applied eyeliner, and climb out my apartment window, onto the fire escape."
At this point you might be thinking - Wow, you must have really like this this book. Let's just say, I liked "some" of this book. For every winning story there was another that just didn't work for me. Perhaps it could have been a stronger anthology with fewer stories. It seemed the tales just got weirder and weirder toward the end, with the exception of the Maurice Broaddus & Kyle S. Johnson story, "The Electric Spanking of the War Babies" and Rachel Swirsky's adult fairy-tale, "All That Fairy Tale Crap."
Even though I enjoyed a number of the contributions to Glitter & Mayhem, I can't really recommend this one. However, if YOU were a part of that generation that loved the glitter, the disco, the roller-disco, the roller derby, the sex, the drugs..then this might just be your book.
Available now from Apex Publications at DriveThruFiction,com and Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle editions.
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