Review - "The Brains of Rats" by Michael Blumlein

[CactusSmasher]

Based upon a heavy recommendation from Will Errickson of "Too Much Horror Fiction", I picked up Michael Blumlein's short story collection with fevered anticipation. Yet, the more I read, the colder I felt, and I ended up coming out of it with a profound feeling of indifference. Certainly, Blumlein is a talented writer, his experience as a surgeon lends a macabre clinical detachment to his work, and when he's firing on all cylinders he writes with a surgeon's precision. Unfortunately, nearly every story in this collection left me disappointed. Stories like "The Wet Suit", "Drown Yourself", and "Shed His Grace" are such vaguely written, self-consciously surreal oddities that they left me scratching my head rather than quaking in fear. Others, like "The Brains of Rats" and "Tissue Ablation," while weird and creepy, come off slightly gimmicky and forced once you take a step back from them. The one bright, shining spot in this collection is the closing story, "Bestseller," about a struggling author forced into a bizarre and macabre means of making money. In this 40 page novella, Blumlein plumbs the depths of financial worry, the sacrifice of dreams for comfort, and the fear of impending death, all in a neat, steadily mounting roller coaster ride of suspense, culminating in an ending so chilling that I visibly shivered after finishing. That such a disappointing collection should end on a high note only makes the disappointment worse. I'll be interested to read the novel Blumlein wrote for the Dell-Abyss line, but I don't hold out too much hope.