Cold, Black & Infinite: Stories of the Horrific & Strange

Release day edit: Cold, Black & Infinite is now available! A few months and many many books later there's still a few stories from this collection that will randomly pop up in my head and I've purchased a couple more of the author's books so I'd say this would be a fab place to start if you're curious about Keisling's work but buyer beware it's kind of addictive!

4.5 rounded up.
This collection was my first Keisling and from the first page I knew I had found a literary voice that I would enjoy, some authors are very upfront about what you're getting into with their book, Keisling is one of them.

A few of the stories came across as “the capitalist deity will eat your soul” kind of tales, The Smile Factory chief among them, to my great delight. Speaking of Smile Factory, that story contained some absolutely magnificent lines for the office worker soul such as "Don't look an HR rep in the eye" and "don't call them the eldritch gestapo". That being said, it's not an aggressively in your face thing so if that kind of criticism isn't your jam you'll still be able to enjoy the stories.

There's a couple revenge fantasies and a couple of stories that confront religious trauma and religiosity in general.

A few of the stories felt very familiar to the point where I wondered where I might have read them before and in one instance, I was absolutely certain that the story was in another anthology, by a different author. In my reading notes I also marked 2 of the stories as “I'm sure this one was an SCP story at some point” (the strange radio station one and the magic show one). Considering that I've encountered Keisling's name in author notes/dedications I think that this sense of familiarity is proof that I have seen his shadow and influence in other people's work.

The variety of themes made for a consistently engaging read and while some stories seemed to be part of a larger narrative every story came across as a completed work.

I received an eARC of this book from Cemetery Dance Publications through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.