No One Will Come Back For Us by Premee Mohamed

I would like to thank Undertow Publications for an advance copy of this collection in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Undertow Publications

Published - Out now

Price - £19.52 paperback £6.51 Kindle eBook

Here there be gods and monsters - forged from flesh and stone and vengeance - emerging from the icy abyss of deep space, ascending from dark oceans, and prowling strange cities to enter worlds of chaos and wonder, where scientific rigor and human endeavour is tested to the limits. These are cosmic realms and watery domains where old offerings no longer appease the ancient Gods or the new and hungry idols. Deities and beasts. Life and death. Love and hate. Science and magic. And smiling monsters in human skin.

Premee Mohamed's debut collection of contemporary cosmic horror and dark fantasy heralds the arrival of a new and vibrant voice on the cutting edge of modern speculative fiction.

I tend to think of short story collections as albums. A chance for the author to show us their work in the round; what I love is seeing variety; sone surprising styles and reinvention of classic ideas. I’m very pleased today that Premee Mohamed’s excellent collection No One Will Come Back For Us and Other Stories delivers all of this and more making it one of the best short fiction collections I’ve read this year.

This collection has a skill in never letting us know exactly what type of story we are in for and keeping us one our toes throughout is part of the fun. What we can gather is how accomplished Mohamed is at creating a setting, story style and also importantly throughout voice of various narrators.

We get taken to alternate versions of the past such as in ‘Instruction’ that takes the form and style of a WW1 travel manual to soldiers going to France but gradually strange messages all highlight this is a supernatural battleground! There is a more subversive element in ‘The Adventurer’s Wife’ where a reporter tries to get the story of his a famous British explorer died. Finding out his wife is a young African woman jars the reporter and then we get a tale within a tale of gods, magic and deadly bargains with a delicious last line.

Alternative presents and figures can also be found as we meet a company agent in ‘The Evaluator’ who deals in strange events and has to battle a particularly smart monster in the woods. I really liked the Twilight Zone-esque ‘Sixteen Hours’ a man races nuclear Armageddon; gets into his bunker but abandons his family and whose companion is now a hidden rat. Disturbing, bloody and brilliant!

Mohamed is as comfortable with the fantastic and horror as with science fiction and in the great ‘Fortunato’ it has the feel of a space marine tale such as aliens but involves the rescue of a failed human colony that has developed into a very menacing cult. What they bring aboard may be a new type of battle. But science and experimentation is also explored. I loved ‘The Redoubtables’ where a reporter explored the mass destruction of a secret research facility and gets to interview the mild mannered but thoroughly evil man who made the decision. It s a tale of menace but also explored the dark side of science and the choices sone make to work there. In another clever tale ‘Quietus’ we get a man continually dying in strange battles and two scientists trading emails about life, work and slowly we see how the stories feel. Science that forgets about its impact on others will have consequences.

Many of these stories have their own narrators and it’s how voice is captured and gives you a sense of character that really brings the reader to understand both them and their world. Two very impressive stories are ‘The General’s Turn’ where a war in a nameless country now leaves the winning side to decide to take time out to play a deadly game on one of their prisoners. A man has to choose with our narrator’s prompts a decision that will either kill him or save him. But our narrator is a villain and he is deciding what he wants to do too. It reminded me of The Prisoner in its style and games but the weariness and evil of our cat like narrator is this time enhanced by unexpected moments of fantasy. Another unusual tale ‘Four Hours of the Revolution’ is narrated by Death herself awaiting her next target to meet their doom. It’s fascinating worldbuilding and in just a few pages we get a huge and epic war, betrayal and battle scenes and all the time Death’s clock is ticking towards zero.

Many of the tales deal with a world where magic and gods if not the norm are increasingly being felt. They’re all glorious but I particularly would draw attention to ‘Below The Kirk, Below The Hill’ where an artist in a seaside community find a lost child on the shore. It manages to be both menacing and also very heartwarming and really gives you a lot of backstory. The title story ‘No One Will Come Back For Us’ pulls all these elements together as a reporter and a famous medic go in search of a strange patient and illness. It captures worldweariness; suspicion, hope and an ever increasing sense of a world falling apart and becoming something stranger and more dangerous. Cosmic horror is less humans can never win but humanity still doing its best against the odds and even just surviving it means we did a good job to perhaps fight and win another day.

There are so many more tales to enjoy taking from the deep sea to the forest and also battling marauding surreal yet monstrous cathedrals! I loved all the stories in this book and what this further cements in my mind is that Premee Mohamed is one of our best upcoming authors in ALL of the genres that they cross and blend like a virtuoso performer. We readers in the crowd just get to appreciate this again and again with each story - for this whooping and cheering is always a proportionate response. One of my books of the year and I strongly recommend you get a copy!