Underworld Dreams

In 10 eerie speculative shorts, ranging in genre from horror to urban fantasy, Braum (The Wish Mechanics) explores the boundary between the real world and the supernatural world, and the slippery line between psychological and paranormal phenomena. Braum loads these pieces with sinister atmosphere and tangible tension, creating the impression of complete otherworlds sitting just beneath the stories’ surfaces. “Goodnight Kookaburra” immerses the reader in the everyday strangeness of the Australian outback, while in the standout “Between Our Earth and Their Moon” a sinister union rep hires an occult detective to clear the way for a transdimensional train line. Recurring images thread in and out, unifying the collection: water, waves, and islands feature in “How to Stay Afloat While Drowning,” “Palankar,” and “Rum Punch Is Going Down,” while other tales invoke animal presences that take on a semimythical quality, as with the sharks in “How to Stay Afloat While Drowning” and the bats in “Sogni Del Mundo Sotteraneo (Underworld Dreams ).” Braum occasionally undercuts the power of his tales by leaning too heavily on cliché motifs of dead girlfriends, cigarette smoke, and mysterious female strangers. Still, the dark unreality and ambiguity of these stories make this collection an easy pick for fans of weird fiction. (Oct.)