Misha Burnett

Among Misha’s stories, the voyeur’s comeuppance story, “The Silk of Yesterday’s Gown”, is especially brutal. After reading it, I just sat there with my mouth wide open. The story “Black Dog” gives us a peek at how the afterlife begins as witnessed by the eyes of a man that has been walked over by life. “The Blacklight Ballet” is an unsettling survival story involving a hellish show of sorts performed for those who enter an abandoned midwestern mall close to a busy interstate. “The Summer of Love” is an ingenious tale of how trying to help humanity by messing with history can backfire spectacularly. The story I liked best from Misha is “We Pass from View” which is a story about a cursed film in the tradition of John Carpenter’s film “Cigarette Burns”.
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Louise’s stories “Selena” and “The Statue” are stories about curses, which I happen to like a lot. While reading them you can actually feel the pressure gradually increasing on the main characters like a snake tightening its coils leading to the inexorable conclusion. The story “The Green Truck” is a creative piece of dark humor involving two brothers who share a passion for a very unusual kind of salvage operation. “The Ragged Angels” effectively portrays the helplessness and hopelessness of the main character as she tries to fend off a group of beings she calls “The Pale Ones” in the pursuit of her line of work. My favorite story from Louise is “Sinker Sailor” which reminded me of Lovecraft’s “Shadow over Innsmouth”, but with a scientific explanation.

Overall, I liked this book of short stories, their concept, and execution. I think the book would have benefited from an introduction to set the mood for the whole enterprise, but that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the stories. If you want variety in styles when it comes to horror stories, Duel Visions is the book for you!… (mais)

Misha Burnett and Louise Sorensen team up to create a collection of strange and horrifying short stories, Duel Visions. The two authors alternate contributions to this slim volume of the weird and macabre.

As a short story collection, I’ll do each story individually, then give my impressions of the volume as a whole at the end.

Black Dog ***** Misha Burnett
“Black Dog” is a graveyard story, and it ended a little differently than I thought it would. It also felt intensely personal for Burnett, with a man forced into hard, but honest labor by circumstances not of his choosing. There is a kind of zen to be found in this kind of work, and I liked Burnett’s portrayal of it, wrapped up in the kind of spookiness that graveyards are famous for.

Sinker, Sailor ***** Louise Sorensen
The title is a pun on the famous spy novel by John le Carré, but the story itself is reminiscent of H. P. Lovecraft’s “Shadow over Innsmouth”, the kind of horror that gets placed upon you by an uncaring universe.

The Silk of Yesterday’s Gown *** Misha Burnett
A sexually explicit fairy tale, in the sense of the fae, the older tradition of the wild and chaotic beings who live beyond the veil of ordinary existence. I think it was well executed, I just don’t care for this kind of imagery in a story.

Ragged Angels **** Louise Sorensen
The on-going epidemic of opioid overdoses is a psychic burden on the first responders who deal with them. It probably feels like no one listens you if you complain about this, as the victims are mostly invisible to the rest of society. And the vampires who benefit from it all probably don’t appreciate you prying….

The Summer of Love ***** Misha Burnett
A really sad alternative history, but beautifully done as a portrait of the consolations of simple labor to a man bereft of the ordinary joys of life.

The Green Truck *** Louise Sorensen
The style of the Green Truck is reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, as an interesting alternative world created solely for the purpose of the message the author wanted to convey. As time goes on, I like Neverwhere less and less, as message fiction isn’t my thing. It is more tolerable in a short story, but I feel like Sorensen dropped a rhetorical hammer on me. Unlike Gaiman, I feel that Sorensen at least has a sense of humor about it.

The Blacklight Ballet ***** Misha Burnett
The closest thing to an adventure in this whole volume, and an interesting protagonist, a middle-aged ex-military guy who has an unusual job checking out potential investment properties. I find urban spelunking or urban exploration a fascinating hobby, and so I really enjoyed this.

Selena *** Louise Sorensen
Another Neil Gaiman take, this time like American Gods. I found the story OK, but it didn’t resonate with me. I think this may have actually been better as a longer story, as Selena’s acceptance of her role as a god’s avatar would probably be more interesting than the preamble to it.

We Pass From View ***** Misha Burnett
A very creepy cursed movie story. Done in the interview style, I feel like this story works really well. Hollywood got really weird with the sexual revolution, and it was pretty weird to start with. I’m quite happy to see them get fictional comeuppance.

The Statue ** Louise Sorensen
A supernatural revenge story. This one just falls flat for me.

Ben’s final verdict ****
This volume is fun and creepy. It ended up with a lot of good stories, in a variety of styles.

Duel Visions only has a couple of physical copies left in stock, and the publisher will be taking it out of their catalog. The price is good, $5.99 USD right now. Or, if you are sufficiently intrigued, why not check out the rest of the two authors’ books?… (mais)

Bad Dreams & Broken Hearts by Misha Burnett is what you get when you combine a gritty police procedural with the mad genius of Tim Powers. Detective Erik Rugar is a world weary investigator, but his problems are illicit thaumaturgical substances and unregistered wizards. That in and of itself is a pretty good setup, but then Burnett adds a dose of the routine absurdity of normal life. Or at least what passes for normal for a cop.

Burnett described his intent with Bad Dreams & Broken Hearts to me on Twitter as “Joseph Waumbaugh with demons and wizards“. I haven’t read The New Centurions, Wambaugh’s most famous work, but upon reading a description of it, I feel like I already know it, as it has become a part of our culture. It probably helps that Los Angeles, explicitly the setting of The New Centurions, and implicitly the setting of Bad Dreams & Broken Hearts, is the big American city with which I am most familiar.

However, I almost feel as if Dracoheim, the city of Erik Rugar, has some hints of Atlantic City or Coney Island about it. It isn’t just the many boardwalk scenes, which feel more like the East Coast than the West to me. Dracoheim is just a little too old to be Los Angeles, which while the Pueblo was established in 1781, didn’t really take off until the early twentieth century, when William Mulholland begged, borrowed, or stole every water source within 250 miles to make the city we now know as Los Angeles possible.

We get hints of the history and politics of Dracoheim as we move through this collection of vignettes in the life of Erik Rugar, but that is never the focus here. Erik is just a man doing his job, maybe even a man more than a little obsessed with his job. And what a job it is! Erik is the man who protects Dracoheim from the things that go bump in the night. As we follow Erik, we get to see the grand sweep of his city, from grungy tenements to glittering towers.

I do think my favorite scene was the murder mystery set in the tabletop wargaming club for the rich and famous. I think in some ways, Erik’s world is better than ours. In many ways however, it is simply alike. Erik must deal with strange and unspeakable horrors, but the motives of his opponents are readily recognizable: greed, revenge, lust for power, even boredom. Magic is just a part of the world, and when something goes wrong, Erik Rugar is on-hand to set things right again.

I bought a copy of this book because I was intrigued by the concept, and I was handsomely rewarded. I am pleased with how well executed this book is, and I think it should be better known. Why don’t you pick up a copy and see what it’s all about?… (mais)

When required to place this book in a genre Burnett has previously chosen science fiction and urban fantasy. It might also be categorised as supernatural fiction or horror. The opening scenes have an ambience of crime noir and spy thriller. While the book very definitely contains speculative elements, the story takes precedence over the speculation, refusing to be confined by genre.

This novel is the first in the Book of Lost Doors series. The protagonist, James Ozryck, has shared his body with an inhuman consciousness since early childhood; a consciousness he calls Catskinner. Catskinner gives him access to superhuman abilities but also kills without apparent reason or compassion. He finds work as a contract assassin but the murder of his boss reveals Catskinner is not the only unnatural being in the world, and not all of them are as content to merely exist. Before James can build himself a new future he must try to understand his past.

At the core of this novel’s strength is the characterisation. As with Byronic heroes such as Milton’s Lucifer and Hammett’s Sam Spade, James Ozryck is unashamedly not a good man, but from the first page Burnett paints him a character flawed by extreme circumstance and environment; a man worthy of our sympathy. Catskinner is similarly well handled, possessing a distinct intelligible character without sacrificing its otherness. The competing drives of the two main characters blend to produce a dynamic balance between ensuring survival and having a reason to survive.

The complexity of motivation in James/Catskinner continues into the other characters. While characters might be of a particular gender or sexuality they act like individuals and not stereotypes, each displaying personal goals that temporarily coincide or conflict with others. However Burnett does not fall into the trap of making characters defy stereotypes for the sake of it; beyond the nuanced interaction of the key characters are many background interactions which realistically portray the hollow biases that power our stereotypes.

A similar depth is evident in the cosmology. The reader is slowly exposed to more of the magic concealed within every day society, each piece building on others and providing new possibilities for previous events until the disparate pieces fit together to not only show they are all aspects of one whole but also ignite speculation about how it might explain anomalies in the real world.

The book is written entirely from the perspective of James, which portrays very well his search for answers and frustration when he does not find them; however this identification with James can instil the same drive and the same frustration in the reader. As the book is well paced, and Burnett does not withhold information merely to extend the story, this frustration is quickly eased, but this is not a book for readers who do not enjoy the satisfaction of a hard-won explanation.

This is one of the best books I have read this year. The fusion of an engaging plot with a complex world make it enjoyable both as a thrilling adventure and a metaphysical exploration. I recommend it to anyone who does not limit themselves to strict realism.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair review… (mais)