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

Publisher – Pyschopomp

Published – 11/2

Price – £15.79 paperback $9.99 ebook via https://psychopomp.com/product/one-message-remains/

Pageantry, pomp, pretense, and peril--"The General's Turn," originally published in The Deadlands, drew readers into the dark world of a ceremony where Death herself might choose to join the audience... or step onto the stage. Award-winning author Premee Mohamed presents three brand new stories set in this morally ambiguous world of war and magic. In "One Message Remains," Major Lyell Tzajos leads his team on a charity mission through the post-armistice world of East Seudast, exhuming the bones and souls of dead foes for repatriation. But the buried fighters may have one more fight left in them--and they have chosen their weapons well.

In "The Weight of What is Hollow," Taya is the latest apprentice of a long-honored tradition: building the bone-gallows for prisoners of war. But her very first commission will pit her skills against both her family and her oppressor.

Finally, in "Forsaking All Others," ex-soldier Rostyn must travel the little-known ways by night to avoid his pursuers, for desertion is punishable by death. As he flees to the hoped-for sanctuary of his grandmother's village, he is joined by a fellow deserter--and, it seems, the truth of a myth older than the land itself.

There is a tendency when debating evil that people will say well to the villain, they always think they’re the hero. That can be true but is everyone so self-involved. Is it worse when we consider people indeed know they’re the bad guys?  Are people that oblivious and when you are part of the evil empire exactly how can you safely take a stand when the alterative is usually terminal? These are the unsettling questions that Premee Mohamed asks in their excellent fantasy collection One Message Remains with four stories all set in an Empire that very much makes its own rules for those it fights and those who it requires to fight.

In the title story we have the centrepiece novella ‘One Message Remains’ we follow the hapless Major Lyell Tzajos of the Treotan army who are after a vicious war in the battlegrounds finding the bodies of their enemies to enable a proper burial. After a battle this could be seen as a gesture of kindness, but this story explores the power of the conqueror.  Tzajos is very much seeing this as a job towards promotion, they’re not evil just a middle-ranking officer who demonstrates a lack of people skills and yet is actually interested in the Dastian language of the newly conquered lands. There is a mix of the weary job that needs doing but slowly more fantastical and indeed horror elements creep into the story as thing go wrong and the group find themselves very far away from any other members of their army. Tzajos finds himself having different memories and his family letters veer into strange direction. This is a story about the obliviousness of the conqueror who manipulates the news, terrified its own soldiers and while Tzajos is pretty harmless he is ultimately a creature of the empire he serves and that blindness to the truth as to what has actually happened after the war and those now under its rules really comes across – the lack of his ever questioning the truth is fascinating and means we are not too sure where this story will end up which means its engrossing as to whether Tzajos can break out of his own conditioning or will he just continue onwards and be doomed. There is a gorgeous scene where Tzajos’ translator finally calls him out for his behaviour and that of his people but other countries and their endless greed and lack of interest in other cultures or ways of life may come to mind when we read it.

Of all the characters I expect to be invested in a person who builds gallows for public executions is not one I’d pick but in ‘The Weight Of What Is Hollow’ we explore the Treotan’s tradition for the bone gallows. Taya is a 16-year-old woman apprentice in her family in a long line of gallows builders. Lyta is required by an ambitious new officer to make new gallows and is made clear she needs to make their prisoner suffer. The moral dilemma here is if your family under threat of torture and murder what are you supposed to do. As well that tense battle we delve into this family’s history. Their role protects them but also Tyra finds that she too is a product of this Empire’s ever-growing desire for land and people. Cycles of war and violence keep turning so in such places are there actually any moral choices you can make on your own that won’t destroy you?  It’s another story where you’re not sure how it can end and the stakes are very high but that makes it a captivating and tense read. The very technical manuals interspersed with the story that are explaining the gallows construction and the sanitised language about their source material add a certain chill to the tale that keeps us on our toes that no one here is safe.

A different perspective again appears in ‘Forsaking All Others’ where we have two very different stories that appear unconnected. We meet Treotan deserter Rostyn running from the military police and not too sure if he can rewatch his destination. He forms a friendship with a fellow escapee and we follow their draining trek across the land to avoid detection. The other narrative is more colourful it’s a woman who calls herself Nana telling us her life story and her many marriages and brushes with death leading forms of resistance/banditry to aid her family. This story explores the impact of a country on its own citizens be they recruited and exhausted soldiers or just townspeople swallowed up and now on the sharp end of endless war. The two narratives join unexpectedly but remind us that brutality not simply an empire against those it fights but also what it constantly shows towards its own people that really comes across in this story and the myth of devils hiding in plain sight has some useful commentary on how easy it is to be corrupted.

Then in the final story ‘The General’s Turn we meet the high command of the Treotan army, and they truly show the face that by now we are not surprised by to see is one to be scared of. An enemy prisoner has been chosen to play a game. Set on a stage of rotating giant and sharp gears and masked players he must decide who is the character of Death or face death. To ‘aid’ him is Vessough a General who explains the game and acts as the tormentor designed to push the prisoner into making a deadly mistake. But this story ponders even if you are doing horrible things day in and day out will there ever be a time you consider doing something different? Does that even really wipe the slate clean or at least make you re-evaluate your own life choices? There is an ambiguity here I appreciate as we follow the General’s own journey of discovery that he may still have some conscience. We also see how much the Treotan leadership enjoys this tradition of macabre death that makes the wider stories become a lot clearer they mask it up in games, elaborate stage sets and glamour but it’s really bloodlust and a desire to humiliate that it’s all designed to play towards. That this story revolves around Death in unexpected ways makes the finale feel a lot more mythic and magical than the other takes but feels a suitable way to end things in the collection.

These four stories do something unique they tell us the story of the Treotans via snapshots but that explores their attitudes, government, fears and culture. You come away understanding them a little not as simple villains but something human, rotten and yet hard to stop. It reminds us that evil can be banal but also ruthless to those within as well as those outside it. It explores the legacy of being colonised and how that cycle of pain continues, and it explores the ways even small acts of resistance can be made always at great risk. This is a thought-provoking collection that in the dark days of the 2020s filled with so many leaders trying to own the world that the stories hear both serve as a warning as to what may come to pass and what we may have to do if we end up in the same place as so many other characters here. Mohamed continues to be one of my favourite authors and I strongly recommend this collection!