Book Review: Love, Murder & Mayhem – An Anthology edited by Russ Colchamiro

Book Review: Love, Murder & Mayhem – An Anthology edited by Russ Colchamiro

 

 

 

The tagline on the cover - ‘Cosmic Tales of the Heart gone Deadly Wrong’ - sets the mood of the stories wrapped inside this anthology bundle. Also, the stories live up to the book title and give you a generous helping of love, murder and mayhem / chaos.

This collection with stories from 15 authors has super-heroes and super-villains; in diverse sci-fi futuristic worlds with other world creatures, artificial intelligence and space as well as time travel thrown in to complicate things further. The stories are wild, wacky, dark, gritty, heartbreaking, fun – in short, an entire bouquet.

Authors who have contributed to this mélange of sci-fi jumble: Meriah Crawford, Paige Daniels, Peter David, Mary Fan, Michael Jan Friedman, Robert Greenberger, Glenn Hauman Paul Kupperberg, Karissa Laurel, Kelly Meding, Aaron Rosenberg, Hildy Silverman, Lois Spangler, Patrick Thomas,

Editor: Russ Colchamiro.

A lot of sci-fiction stories that I have read either created a different futuristic world or they set you thinking. The story collection here isn’t set in any particular universe nor intends to focus on it. Each story stands in its own world, own universe.

The focus is NOT the technology of the future. Focus is people and their perspective of things. The perspectives are different and interesting since they are set in a different world. It is interesting to see how people (and lets include aliens in this as well) react to the situations.

Some of the stories have interesting concepts of the future – like the sleep surrogates – people who will sleep for you while you benefit from 24 ‘waking’ hours every day to accomplice whatever you want … uninterrupted.

Overall, a good set of stories to read.

 Rating: 3/5




Addendum -

I wrote a good review about the book and still rated it 3 and not 4 or 5. More than the quality of the book, it is reflective of my own perception and expectations. I have been spoilt by Isaac Asimov and Philip K Dick as far as sci-fi is concerned. They set me thinking by their space age stories. They introduced you to mind boggling technologies of the future without even making them the core of the story. Their stories always had the human and their emotions at the core. This collection attempts to do the same and have managed it too … but the comparison with Asimov and PKD will always be there. Just like the comparison of any action thriller novel with those written by Ludlum and Reilly.