Review of Notes from the Underworld by Vik Shirley

A very short fantastical exploration of the traditional Greco-Roman underworld, full of gods, monsters and characters compiled from popular Greek myths.

 It is far to short, with prose poems or paragraphs taking up 1/4 of a page. It would have made a fine short story, but is packaged like a novella. The illustrations help pad the book, and are interesting enough. It is a rather wacky take on these mythologies, meshing them together in a literary collage, but I felt that the whole was lacking in tonal consistency. Was the author going for humor, tragedy, horror, or fantasy. If you are a fan of Borges, this reminds me of some of his shorter pieces. They are dark and unexpected, but it would have been more compelling if a recurring perspective was used. I expected a tour of the underworld, but what I got was random snippets.

I am intrigued by many of Sublunary Press’s publications, though I was hoping for something more substantial here. I would estimate it’s only around 10k words.