I feel a bit bad about reviewing this book, my word knowledge just isn’t good enough to explain what this book does to the reader….but here goes my best attempt.

Lane’s debut collection would have shown anybody who picked up this book just what a good writer he was, such a unique style that will turn your world upside down, make your insides hurt and leave you desperate for more understanding of what you just read. One thought kept popping up in my head during this reading, I kept thinking this is like a pop-up book…without the pop-ups. The background comes across as very flat and grey, at times you almost forget it is there, a large amount of this is because of the characters burning so bright, but then Lane gives you one short line describing something as simple as water droplets hanging in the air around a streetlight and BANG! your eyes are suddenly opened and you see everything that is going on. It is quite disorienting, especially as Lane has filled you with despair up to that point. I doubt that makes much sense.

The standout story here was The Foggy, Foggy Dew, such a creepy story, like the other stories in the collection you will have no idea what is going on, Lane lets the reader’s imagination finish the stories. The foggy, foggy dew was next level stuff, it had me grimacing and saying out loud What The F*** is going on! One clever thing that Lane does is with character names, the stories are different but names are reused and you’re left wondering if they are the same person, a smart way of linking stories without actually linking them. Some odd violent events happen in the stories, the characters just accept them like that is the norm, and after a while the reader will start to think like that, Lane really does get in your head.

Blog review is here: felcherman.wordpress.com/2021/01/16/the-earth-wire-by-joel-lane/