The Three Sunrises

by Edward Mullany

The Three Sunrises is a collection of three novellas, and is the final installment of Edward’s trilogy, which began with If I Falter at the Gallows and Figures for an Apocalypse.

The first novella, Legion, is about a man who lives and works in a city during the time in his life when his mother dies.

The second novella, The Book of Numbers, is about two men who are lost in a desert and who are trying to make their way out of the desert.

The third, The Three Sunrises, is about a man who, walking one morning, sees his doppelganger, and who then follows this doppelganger around the city for three consecutive days.

400 pages, Paperback

First published June 9, 2015

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know how Edward Mullany makes things so dark in his books, but also so funny—but I love it. He's able to make a page-turner out of people just walking around in a bizarre world. This final book in the loose trilogy that started with If I Falter at the Gallows and Figures for an Apocalypse is the only thing it could have been -- a collection of three novellas.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three mysterious and disconcerting novellas, loosely connected by theme, follow unnamed and rather flat characters, sometimes in the company of others, occasionally in the company of animals, other times alone, as they travel through vast and empty or razed landscapes, sometimes deserts, sometimes cities, occasionally marked by post-apocalyptic Biblical imagery. The first and third of these are written in first person POV, yet the emotional closeness this perspective often carries with it is largely absent. The voices are calm and steady, almost monotone, in the delivery of their observations of the strange and horrible events occurring around them. The second novella is written in a shifting third person, mostly kept close so the effect is similar to that of the other novellas, in that the tone remains calm and steady in the face of these bizarre events. The reactions of the characters are resigned and distant, and the distance can't be bridged. The narrators are either solitary or separated from the others in their lives, with what seems like no hope of return. They can't connect—they are removed, from other people and from their surroundings. Yet they continue to move forward, and movement forward is at least a reaction—it implies a curiosity, and by extension, hope. However, hope has its limits, especially while operating in a world of ever-changing context, such as what results from the blending of virtual and non-virtual realities. What Edward Mullany describes is in part an extreme and metaphorical magnification of what's occurring to and around us today. With these novellas Mullany has looked into the future and delivered to us several scenarios, none of which are encouraging.

And I knew that if what I was experiencing was actual (that is—if it wasn't an hallucination, or the equivalent of such) I no longer could hope; I no longer could harbor something like hope. For I didn't understand what I ought to be hoping for. And I felt both sad and resigned.

[Benjamin Niespodziany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike anything I've ever read. I think about 'Legion' often.