Nemonymous Three

Nemonymous #3

by D.F. Lewis (editor), Michael Kelly, Jeff Holland

96 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Writer, editor and publisher, active in the small press. Winner of the British Fantasy Society Special Award (the Karl Edward Wagner Award) in 1998.

Reviews

[J. P. Wiske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, a return to form. Although still less narratively cohesive than Nemonymous 1, the hits consistently outweigh the misses. I was happy to see less of that aimlessly un-Weird weird that Nemonymous 2 indulged. Some of my favorites included: "The Bluest of Grey Skies", "Practice", "Sirens", "The Small Miracle", and "Sleeping Beauty". These all occupy their own little spaces of Horror and the Weird: farce, existential horror, conte cruel, numinous weird. Des Lewis's catholic approach to the genre—which served him poorly in vol 2—justifies itself splendidly in this collection.

The exercise of matching authors to stories—having read through the collection first nenomymously—is a consistently fascinating and satisfying exercise, and one that I suspect I will ultimately miss when there are no more [N/n]emonymous stories left to read. Whereas I experienced the first volume as a reader unencumbered by the baggage of reputations, the somewhat underwhelming experience of the second volume collection has resulted in my approaching each new story with a harsher degree of critical skepticism—making each successful story feel like a harder won victory. In either case, there's a "truth" to one's final assessment that seems purer than the vast majority of one's reading experiences. It also softens the disappointment and frustration of the duds, in a way, since at least there's no questioning the sincerity of the editor. This is an increasingly rare quality in anthologies, where editors of prestige projects like A Mountain Walked now boldly confess marketability is a priority over quality.