World's Edge: A Mosaic Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A compelling call for compassion and resilience in the maw of social dissolution from literary legend James Sallis, master of many genres and Nebula, Edgar, and Shamus–nominated author of Drive
All I wanted was for my life, when you picked it up in your hands, to have some weight to it.
In a not-so-distant future the United States has fragmented, balkanizing into unstable provinces often at war with one another, and Americans, their great promise not so much lost as forfeited, are encountering the terrors and devastation so much of the world daily lives with. Throughout a land littered with refugees, ruins, orphaned children, soldiers, militia, and fugitives, people go on about their daily lives as best they can.
The five linked stories of World’s Edge track the false starts and stall-outs of a nation and civilization trying to rise again, to rebuild, and of individuals caught up in that rebirthing. As ever, the only true history lies in the story of individual lives, in the old rag and bone shop of our hearts.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sallis (Bridge Segments) delivers a fragmented take on social mayhem in this near-future dystopian tale. Following a devastating civil war, the United States has fractured into independent provinces ruled by warring factions, "each one working chiefly to aggrandize itself, then push through some recondite agenda for social order." Told by a motley crew of survivors, these five loosely connected stories form a collage of political and personal turmoil. A soldier recounts commandeering armaments in Free Alaska while longing to be reunited with a woman rebel fighter he met early during the war; an orphaned boy tells of witnessing his sister's death at the hands of a soldier returning from battle; and a surgeon relates his tribulations as a "frontier doctor treating cancer with hacksaws and dressmaker's thread," and learns more about the state of the world after one of his patients is abducted by soldiers. The stories have a slice of life feel as they eulogize the lost nation and the ruined hopes of its citizens. While the big ideas are resonant and timely, Sallis offers few surprises and favors telling over showing, making it difficult to connect emotionally with the characters. Readers will find more nourishing food for thought elsewhere.
