Pandemonium: Ash

by Jared Shurin (Editor), Richard de Nooy, Nerine Dorman

When Krakatoa exploded, it shook the world. The volcano rained fire and unleashed floods, but the worst was still to follow. 1883 was a year of darkness and cold, as the global temperature dropped and the skies were wreathed in ash. It was also a year of fiery sunsets and blue moons, where the impossible could - and did - happen...

Ash explores a world where myths come to life and strange creatures wash up in the shallows - a world where survival is only the first of many struggles, and the monsters can take many forms.

Ash contains new (very) short stories by Lavie Tidhar, Charlie Human, Nerine Dorman, Timothy J. Jarvis, Dan Green and Richard de Nooy.

The stories of Ash take place in the same shared setting as A Town Called Pandemonium and 1853, as well as the forthcoming The Streets of Pandemonium and The Rite of Spring. Ash can be read on its own or part of the shared world series.

Genres: Fantasy

ebook

First published October 8, 2013

About the author

Jared Shurin has edited or co-edited over two dozen anthologies of original and reprint fiction, including The Djinn Falls in Love, The Lowest Heaven, The Outcast Hours, the Best of British Fantasy series, and The Big Book of Cyberpunk.

He has been a finalist for the World Fantasy (twice!), Shirley Jackson (twice!), and Hugo Awards (twice!), and won the British Fantasy Award (twice!).

He currently writes about strategy, books and pop culture at Raptor Velocity.

Reviews

[Richard]

"Corpus sancti dancing on my decks" | A review in six excerpts

“Volcanoes generate earthquakes, tsunamis, rivers of magma, boiling mud, poison gas... They are portals to all possible hells, from which nightmares emerge with no warning and less mercy,” writes Jared Shurin in his introduction to this compact collection of short-short stories, which I read with growing elation over the course of an hour. (Did I say it was compact?)

Take a look and download Ash as free e-book, but be warned that you’ll hit the final page too soon, gagging for more. Enjoy.

“But I, in the wheelhouse, behind the glass, beheld sights. Pink fire at the masts and corpus sancti dancing on my decks, inextinguishable balls of flame sinking through the hull and not a splinter of wood singed!”
(From Dan Green’s Duidain)

“The ceremony is simple and the atmosphere on the raft reverent. When husband and wife are unable to move near enough to kiss one another, I kiss each of their lips in turn, a chain to join lips and hearts together.”
(From Charlie Human’s A Raft)

“They eat the slime,” says my guide, pointing to the dusty herd milling around on the shoreline. Several horses are kissing algae off the rocks, tails swishing a warning that alert hooves await those that cannot wait their turn.”
(From Richard de Nooy’s Delft)

“Martin, after first reading about the Krakatoa eruption, felt the sublime urge stir once more, had been moved to paint a few scenes of seething seas turgid with swollen corpses. But it was when the blazing sunsets started up he’d grown truly inflamed, obsessed with limning the nightly phantasmagoria.”
(From Timothy J. Jarvis’s Under the Sign of the Cockatrice)

“The clouds form leering faces, hands that reach down to us, grasping and the dark sea roils and the waves grow tall like the waetman’s metal canoes and there are no stars by which to tell the way.”
(From Lavie Tidhar’s Waves)

“Strange fish with jelly bodies caught in the trek nets, their too-wide mouths gaping; even a giant sunfish. Johanna and I had danced around on the flat body until Oupa had called us away.”
(From Nerine Dorman’s I Dreamt I Held Her Hand)

[David H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A chapbook anthology in the shared-world universe of Pandemonium, Ash includes 6 very short stories relating in some way to the aftermath of the explosion of Krakatoa in 1883. My favorite was probably Richard de Nooy's "Delft" but I was quite amused by Jarvis's "Under the Sign of the Cockatrice."

[Mieneke · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories collected in Ash are about the aftermath of an apocalyptic catastrophe and what is released by the opening of the volcano. It's an interesting collection set in Jurassic's shared world of Pandemonium. Compared to Jurassic London's previous short story chapbooks, Ash contains double the amount of stories, but the stories are of a much shorter length, at most 700 words. One could almost consider them flash fiction. Ranging from ship's logs relating the immediate aftermath of the eruption to stories of survival and the monstrous creatures surfacing not just close by Krakatau, but also as far away as South Africa, these stories show the resilience of human life and the weirdness of this alternate version of Earth. My favourite pieces were those who focused on the human aspects instead of the monsters. Charlie Human's A Raft is rather entertaining in the utter insanity of its dialogue, until the twist is revealed and it’s not funny, but horrific. My other favourite was Lavie Tidhar's Waves, a thoughtful piece from the perspective of an inhabitant of a Pacific Island, who remembers his own people's history with volcanoes.

Ash is a very, very quick read, due to its short length. Despite the shortness of the stories, they provide plenty to mull over and if you're looking for a collection of quick, bite-size stories to read over lunch or during your commute, Ash is a good choice. The collection is available for free from various online retailers, so at that price of entry, who could resist?

[Nerine Dorman]

I suck because I still have to read this. TERRIBLE, I know.

But here I am reading my short story at last year's SA HorrorFest Bloody Parchment event instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBJ8x...

[Tiah]

Put the quotes in later this week.