Sam J. Miller

This book throws you into a post-apocalyptic city through multiple short POVs without holding your hand with explanations. It's a bit hard to keep up at first, but the more satisfying it is once things start to clear up.

The characters are quite well built despite not having that much space for development. I found all of them interesting. Also, the city feels very alive, especially thanks to informative/thoughtful interludes from mysterious source.

All in all, very satisfying read. Just maybe not completely polished in the end.… (mere)

I received an early copy of this book from Net Galley, this has not influenced my review.

This book was the best possible version of a short story collection and really shows off the strengths of the genre. If a six star option existed, I would give this book all of them without a moment’s hesitation.
Like a really great box of chocolates, each story in this collection was fantastic, distinct, and memorable, no coconut clusters or teeth-shattering slabs of caramel in here! (Sorry if those are your favorites). I could have easily read whole books based on each individual tale.

The stories were enormously diverse and each affected me a different way, but each left their mark and each was a joy to read. This author blends horror, fantasy, mystery, and magic seemingly effortlessly, the way professional athletes or dancers are able to do incredible things that just seem like showing off until you remember the years of work that went into reaching that level.
The author’s range is astounding. From a story where King Kong really walked the earth and died at the foot of the Empire State Building to a retelling of the night of the Stonewall Riot, where oppressed, queer, New Yorkers discover a potent and deadly form of group pyrokenesis, I found myself completely immersed in each new tale from the beginning.

This author is one I’ve heard about for a while but have never read until now. After this truly stunning book I plan on reading his other works and keeping a careful eye on his upcoming projects.… (mere)

"Boys, Beasts & Men" caught me by surprise, turning out to be a set of more literary and satisfying stories than I'd expected from the descriptions. While there are homosexual characters and themes in most of the stories and it's certainly fair to call this collection 'Queer Fiction,' it would be totally facile and reductionist to leave it at that; Miller has a very aware and painterly voice, crafting captivating tales of alienation, loneliness, and hidden natures, of being the voice of That Which Is Other, those Outside-Looking-In. Really, his stories -- while more masculine in tone and gay at heart -- hit like classic Joni Mitchell songs in terms of the images and impulses voiced. In the acknowledgements, Miller cites Ray Bradbury as a major, early influence on his writing and that is evident; the light and dark creatures of human nature breathe within everyone and the stories are the fora in which they play out their parts, with swaths of the fantastical woven through the mundane and everyday. He also threads a unifying, interstitial story through "B,B&M" very reminiscent of that around Bradbury's own certain man of many tattoos.....

All of these stories affected me on an emotional level, if not all the same flavor of emotion, but that alone alerts me that this was not just an ordinary read. "Conspicuous Plumage" and "Ghosts of Home" had the strongest immediate impact, partly wistful and partly grief, but the two-sided coin that is the pair "Calved" and "When Your Child Strays From God" lit up my empathy boards; as a dad, it's tough to read those two. I not only recommend this collection to anyone with an interest in urban-SFF, light horror, or human psychology itself, but think that any of these stories would work brilliantly as discussion fodder for bringing xenophobes around to empathetic awareness of others.

And Miller is right about one other thing: you can make just about any story better by adding a dinosaur.… (mere)