This is a great short story collection. I enjoyed each of the stories in the collection and my favourite was gifts. Although fulfilling in its own right, this story could definitely be developed further. I’d love to read more by this author.

A brutal and oftentimes heartbreaking short story collection. My personal favorite stories were Hospitality and Coyotes.

This collection of stories was very 'real' feeling. Intense, violent, and sad; but very truthful about how messed up the word is. If you want to feel better about your own life this is a set of short stories that is likely to help because these stories are brutal.

Story #1 - The Lesser Horsemen
I’ve always thought Death didn’t fit in with the other horsemen. I mean all of their powers result in death. This story really nails on the head this issue. As well as brings up a great ‘new’ horseman.
Although I can’t help but wonder if our buddy Pestilence should get a sequel since covid hit. (Nervous laughter?)

Story #2 - At This Table
Footnotes!! Gotta love a good (generally useless) footnote.
Sadly the story is meh.

Story #3 - Baby Jill
What is it about tooth fairy stories lately? This has to be like the fourth or fifth I’ve read this year! Granted three were in one fairy anthology; but still.
This one is odd… feels more like an opening to something bigger.

Story #4 - Their Souls Climb the Room
A. I like pork and no amount of gory slaughterhouse descriptions is likely to change that,
B. If this is attempting to compare slaughtering pigs to killing humans it misses the mark.
If the story is just about loving pigs and not eating them then I'm a poor target audience. *shrugs*

Story #5 - Hospitality
Wow, shocker of an ending. I can’t say anything about this without possibly tipping off too much. So I’ll just say wow.

Story #6 - This World or the Next
An interesting little story about the connection, or difference, between a head injury and what most would call a religious experience. Can they be one and the same?

Story #7 - Gifts
Dark, forbidding, and depressing. This story would make an amazing full length novel or movie.

Story #8 - Coyote
It feels like there are about 20 pages missing to this story. A piece where we learn about the brother a bit more; something other than his heartbreak.

Story #9 - Yes, We are Duly Concerned with Calamitous Events
Well this is very disturbing. A Lord of the Flies with office workers. Another visceral story in which I can't quite peg the reason that people are motivated to kill in awful ways. Very strange and a bit psychotic.

Story #10 - Winter, Spring, Whatever Happens After That
This is a very sad, yet realistic story of a family destroyed by alcoholism, poverty, and the failure of the ‘American Dream’. The children; a young boy and a teen girl, are stuck in the cross-fire of it all and suffer because of it. A good account of how circular life is and that the choices we make affect the children around us immensely and (all too often) negatively.

Story #11 - Forgive Me This
Another father to child (in this case a son) story that is sad all around. I can only wonder at Rosson’s relationship with his parents if he has garnered inspiration for his stories from them...

Story #12 - Dunsmuir
This may be the most hopeful story of this collection. While it has murder, drugs, and alcoholism. It also has rehab, (what passes for) justice, and a baby. Really well put together and could easily be a full fledged novel with a lot of introspective comments in it.
One critique is that snakes do not molt. They shed. These are very different activities. One involves feathers (molting), the other involves scales (shedding). It really bugs me when people get info on snakes incorrect! My poor babies are so misunderstood.

Story #13 - Homecoming
I’m not sure if Rossom means this afterlife to be a type of hell or not. But if hell is as desolate as described here then it might be worse than fires and constant physical pain. Bring on Satan and his whips instead please!

Story #14 - The Melody of the Thing
Brutally violent story about how one innocuous decision can bring everything to a grinding halt.
Also a reminder that we leave people with little proper care once they leave the hospital. Super sad; even if the ending has some hope in it. The violence here would warrant a warning; but then if you've read this many stories in the anthology, in order, you aren't likely to be surprised by this escalation in violence and gore.

Story #15 - Brad Benske and the Hand of Light
This final story is a bit odd but interesting. It is about a man with anger management issues (who is trying to 'handle' them); and a woman who is a bit flighty.

Overall
All of these stories so far are so well written and most have been very clever. I’m definitely going to keep my eye on Rosson. His early (first two) novels were only okay; but these stories suggest major talent. Highly recommend this for any horror fans or those who want some really dark insights into our lives as humans.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America

I am pretty sure the title for this anthology was specifically tailored to catch my attention—and it did! Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons? Sign me up!

It didn’t quite meet the expectations I developed from reading the title — it’s a lot heavier on the “trauma” than the “folk songs”

There is some really compelling and interesting imagery throughout, particularly in the stories that contain magical realism. There is also some graphic violence that while also incredibly evocative, was occasionally a little too much for comfort.

I think the problem I ended up having with this collection was the sense that there was a sort of “gleeful meanness” to some of the stories. Something I was struggling to put into words until that phrase itself popped up in one of the stories. There are points were it feels like these stories delight in being unkind when they don’t need to be that way, wielding words like knife intending to cause harm. Another story made this observation: “...she’s seen him pass up numerous opportunities to be cruel, which seems to her a clearly measurable currency in people her age, boys and girls alike.” And afterwards, I felt like that particular currency was one I desperately needed if I was going to finish this collection; I needed coin in the form of cruelty avoided.

(* marks my favorites in this collection)

*THE LESSER HORSEMEN

Fans of Good Omens will probably enjoy one, it has a similarly irreverent approach to the idea of the apocalypse and the four horsemen. However, there is something surreal and unnerving about Pestilence sitting on a cruise ship in forced semi-retirement and lamenting to the devil that the last time he was truly great was during the Spanish Influenza a hundred years ago. You know, given everything about the last year.
“Call Him whatever you want: The Good Lord, Jehovah, Yahweh, The Beginning and The End, God; we loved Him and we feared Him, and perhaps it was intentional but when He was in human form, we were also a bit disgusted by Him.” This god is gross and also a douche.


*AT THIS TABLE

Second person POV, which is unusual, along with a deliberate and matter of fact tone that sets a *vibe* that is so distant and uncomfortable—not as a criticism, but as a tonal and structural choice that is really interesting to see. It’s a ghost story and the end of a love story. “In the spirit—no pun intended—of pure kindness, something the living so rarely manage, he’s trying to give you the opportunity for a different ending.”
(warning for internalized homophobia)


BABY JILL

“The room is empty save for the tens of thousands of teeth carpeting the floor. Mounds of them. Hills and valleys of little pale teeth. The room is not particularly big, but still.”
The tooth fairy is having a moral crisis; how much can you witness without reaching out to try to help.
(warning for death of a child and implied child abuse)


THEIR SOULS CLIMB THE ROOM

“At night he could feel the souls of all the dead hogs pressing on his chest, pressing down on his ribcage like something real. A near-tangible weight that he could nearly touch. All those souls pinning him to the mattress, pressing down on the animal meat of his heart.”
(warning for drug use, animal cruelty, and gore)


*HOSPITALITY

A series of vignettes situated around a failing motel.
(warning for torture and gun violence)


THIS WORLD OR THE NEXT

Traveling revival/faith healer style religious spectacle. Some pretty lines, but little plot.
(warning for self harm)

GIFTS

I disapprove of killing women in stories simply to fuel some misplaced man pain. Otherwise a perfectly good dystopian apocalypse. Honestly, I think the story would have worked better in many ways if she wasn’t killed. Open with a breakup and not a murder: Struggling through a breakup at the end of the world is interesting—like watching the world end on multiple fronts.

*COYOTE

<i>Upsetting</i> is the word. Two brothers, in the aftermath.

YES, WE ARE DULY CONCERNED WITH CALAMITOUS EVENTS

“Twenty-three days after the world kind of ends, we all watch as Human Resources Randy strangles the temp with a mouse cord.” The words all hit the tone for comedy while the content dives fairly heavily into horror. And this story starts off strong. The , unfortunately, there is a truly disgusting section where it talks about a disabled child and “how hard it might be to love her in her shunted, curled little body and pink wheelchair,” and I was so grossed out by that bit of ableism I couldn’t finish this story for a long time. I almost put the book down entirely during this one. See, being “offensive” on purpose is more or less fine, occasionally effective, and usually more than a little flat, but still more or less a commonly accepted way to show off the broken bits of society. Satire shows love to do it. It’s usually not great, but you see it and people use it and it’s...fine. But, there is also a point where using politically incorrect language as a weapon feels vindictive and spiteful and so unproductive, as though the only goal of the words is to cause harm rather than to provide any kind of insight at all. The words in this story means to cause harm.

WINTER, SPRING, WHATEVER HAPPENS AFTER THAT

This is a really well written story about a pair of children whose mother has abandoned them with their alcoholic father. It is painfully realistic in a way that doesn’t really fit in with the other stories in this collection, which almost all have at least a hint of magical realism. I do think the structure of the story is hurt by the open ending; a stronger conclusion would have served better.
(Warnings for homophobic language and child abuse)

FORGIVE ME THIS

2nd person POV? I don’t know, a weird choice with no particular pay off that makes the POV choice worth it. Also has incesty vibes.

DUNSMUIR

A slice of life for an alcoholic going through rehab while his pregnant girlfriend copes with the murder of her sister.
(Warnings for addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence)

*HOMECOMING

“You really are trying hard to hold on, aren’t you?” he gasped, “Just hanging on tight as you can to the skin of the world.”

This is a really weird one, that starts off with some light magical realism, but by the end and before you have a chance to adjust you’ve been boiled in to something a lot more from and deeply fantastic.

THE MELODY OF THE THING

“The fan creaked back and forth, pushed our misery around the room.”

OK so this one has this really viscerally upsetting graphic violence where where a former ufc fighter just destroys a man the street who tried to intervene in a domestic violence dispute and then the story details the painstaking recovery from horrifying injuries that resulted. It is graphic and it left me with a sour feeling in the pit of my stomach.

BRAD BENSKE AND THE HAND OF LIGHT

“Splay-legged in my recliner, I’ve just returned from putting another note under Marcus’s door (In the next life your penis shall be multipronged, insectile, hot and bristling with pustules, gloriously prone to infection)”

I am a big fan of short story collections, especially when all the stories are great. That's hard to pull off -- most collections like this are a mixed bag. However, Keith Rosson has put together a mix of twisted, funny, intriguing stories that kept me rivited from start to finish. Usually I read short story collections a little at a time, but I went through this one in a day. I look forward to more of Rosson's work.

This is the first work I’ve read by Keith Rosson and I guarantee it will not be the last. The writing in each of these stories is amazingly well done. Everything flows naturally with just the right amount of dark undertones or raunch (in some places) to not feel pretentious.

I can’t pick a favorite story here. I loved them all so much. Each one has their own merits and I just refuse to pick a favorite. Sue me.

The writing about addiction in these stories is just so brutally honest but at the same time heart wrenchingly emotional. Everything works so well.

This is one of those collections I went into blind. I liked the title, quirky and just enough to get me interested. This is also one of those collections that I slowed down to a snails pace to read because I wanted to savor every word. It was worth it.

An eclectic mix of short stories that range from whimsical to disturbing and twisted. Some of the stories felt more like a teaser or flash fiction and I was left wanting more.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was the standout story for me, but overall a decent collection. I will definitely be looking out for more of Rosson's work. Good commuting read.

Recommended for fans of: Jacob M. Appel

Thank you to Netgalley and Meerkat Press for the ARC.

Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons is a short story collection that combines the everyday mundane with the fantastic and extraordinary.  Like all short story collections, there were stories I loved, and stories I could live without.  Most of the stories in Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons were strong for me, taking everyday events and adding unexpected details to create something exciting.   
The first story of the collection, The Lesser Horsemen caught my attention with three out of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse sent on a cruise to work on their team building.  This unexpected scenario combined with such a commonplace work task created an interesting and amusing story.
Baby Jill another favorite story of mine creating an emotional rollercoaster with the tooth fairy and what seems like run-of-the -mill workplace dynamics.  
Yes, We Are Duly Concerned With Calamitous Events creates a humorous look at the kind-of end of the world through a group of dysfunctional office coworkers.  
Homecoming is a heartfelt examination of the choices we make in life and the consequences we face after.
These are just a selection of my favorites from the collection. These stories made me think and all had deep emotional connections.  Many had open endings creating a world of imagination for the characters when I was done reading.
This book was received for free in return for an honest review.

It's a great collection of short stories. Rosson has a knack for writing the uncanny and surprising readers at every turn. What I appreciated most were the endings. It's rare to see authors nail it. It's even rarer to see authors nail it every single time. Quality stuff.

I love finding a good hidden gem of a book! This book is haunting and indelible on the mind. i find myself thinking about the stories every now and again, and the questions of identity and family they bring up. This is an excellent collection for people who want to feel like they are reading a dark mirror episode and one I'll be buying for my friends who like macabre, creepy books

Folk Songs for Trauma Surgeons is a well curated collection of shorter fiction from Keith Rosson. Due out 23rd Feb 2021 from Meerkat Press, it's 206 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.

This is a mixed bag of short fiction, 15 in all (plus a short acknowledgements and author bio). One reason I prefer collections and anthologies is that short fiction is really challenging. It's spare and the author doesn't have a wealth of wordage to develop characters or plotting. Well written short fiction is a delight. I also love collections because if one story doesn't really grab me, there's another story just a few pages away. The book doesn't include author notes or previous publishing info.

These are generally high quality speculative fiction/fantasy realism. About half are distinctly dark with original takes on the world and our reality in it. Probably my favorite story (there are several standouts) was "The Lesser Horsemen". Who know the afterlife was streamlining their corporate culture?

Four and a half stars. Outstanding stories from a talented author at the top of his game. All of the stories were previously unfamiliar to me.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This wasn't really to my taste but that's just me. I like to try new authors and that's what I did here. Other readers will probably like or love these, so if it sounds appealing I'd say give it a go.

My first experience reading Keith Rosson was Road Seven, an off-kilter yarn about a disgraced cryptozoologist’s journey to a pumpkin farm in Hvíldarland to investigate a unicorn sighting. Oh yes, there is also a secret military base nearby potentially plotting to bring about the end of the world.

This sense of zany fun is definitely present in ‘The Lesser Horsemen’, which is Rosson’s wacky take on the fallout if God were ever to instruct the Four Horsemen to go on a team-building cruise. Yes, there is a corporate pecking order even with the Apocalypse.

Rosson then veers off into some truly unexpected and dark territory: ‘At this Table’ is a quietly effective ghost story about a haunted restaurant, while ‘Baby Jill’ relooks at the Tooth Fairy myth through a very twisted prism.

In line with the theme of ghosts and hauntings, ‘Their Souls Climb the Room’ is a harrowing look at the Good Acres Foods hog-slaughtering plant and one man in particular who works there, the ex-con Nolan, who “could feel the souls of all the dead hogs pressing on his chest, pressing down on his ribcage like something real.”

‘Yes, We are Duly Concerned with Calamitous Events’ is a quiet end-of-the-world tale confined to a single office building, which begins with the memorable sentence: “Twenty-three days after the world kind of ends, we all watch as Human Resources Randy strangles the temp with a mouse cord.”

An apocalyptic cult called the Hand of Light features in a couple of tales. What is interesting about this collection is that the bulk of the stories are very interior and low-key, focused on intense characterisation rather than narrative sleight of hand. A lot of stories also do not have traditional endings, leaving the reader with a strong sense of ‘in media res’, as if Rosson is merely giving you a glimpse of an alternate reality before shutting the door in your face.

It is a brave choice for a writer to make, and I am confident that readers attracted to this collection will enjoy the ambiguity and nuance that Rosson brings to this fresh crop of tales. I must say I was expecting the title to pop up in one of the stories. While music does play a large role in many characters’ lives, especially in the background, we never do find out what sort of folk songs trauma surgeons could possibly listen to.

If I had to characterise Rosson’s aesthetic as a writer, I would have to say that he is a hybrid of (dark) Ray Bradbury and (kooky) Stephen King. If reading short stories is not your cup of tea, I am sure that this book, with its careful curation of dreams and terrors, failures and lonely epiphanies, might just change your mind.

I enjoyed the variety of stories in this collection, and obviously Keith Rossum is a very talented writer. I would say this is not my favorite genre, but others may enjoy it more.

This is my absolute favorite read of 2021 so far. Normally short story collections contain a mix of stories that are hit or miss for me. Not this one - every single story blew me away. The first in the collection is a strong standout and had me hooked immediately. Rosson manages to create such meaningful characters and relationships in such a short amount of space. I’m looking forward to picking up a physical copy at release and this will definitely be one that I revisit.

This is a really solid collection of short stories, and it gave me a lot of feelings. Rosson manages something that is pretty difficult to do- walking that thin line between multiple genres while still creating a cohesive whole. The stories here range from darkly humorous to deeply emotional portraits of life, if perhaps lives in a world not quite like ours.
Standouts for me included:
The Lesser Horsemen: The other Horsemen of the Apocalypse (not Death, he’s doing just fine) are sent on a teambuilding cruise.
Baby Jill: A tooth fairy is starting to lose her touch.
This World of the Next & Brad Benske and the Hand of Light: These two stories give different points of view on a family torn apart by a cult.
Yes, We are Duly Concerned with Calamitous Events: The world has kinda ended & we watch the employees of a novelty sex toy office fall the fuck apart. This one was both hilarious and disturbing.
This collection has lingered in my bones for a few days, and I find myself rolling the language around in my head. Rosson’s language is both lyrical and sometimes very raw, a combination that really worked for me. So I have already looked up his other books. I give this one a solid 4 stars, and the only reason it doesn’t get 5 is that I was pulled out of the stories a few times by some overly repeated phrases and unusual words. Like “limned” and “rimed.” Anyways, overall, I think anyone who enjoys dark, literary, or even speculative fiction will enjoy this. Many reviews use the phrase “magical realism” to describe the stories as well.

NetGalley removed the book before I was able to read it. This review is purely a place-holder
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Rosson has talent and it shows here. I'll have to circle back to some of his earlier work. This is a nice collection with a variety of stories of good to high quality. Rosson is often able to convey a lot with very little, which comes in very handy in short stories. Recommended for short story fans.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

Outstanding collection.

Keith Rosson has such a great way with words. So often we are inundated with anthologies, where you may get two or three stories that truly stand out. With Rosson's writing, the prose grabs you and never lets you go. It not only accentuates the stories, but is a character in and of itself.

I would highly recommend this to anyone that is into the fantastical. Truly a stand out book from the end of last year, and will certainly hold its own now in 2021. Grab it on release.

three star average for the stories. stand outs were "winter, spring, whatever happens next", which i thought ended rather well and i liked faith, the main narrator, "yes, we are duly concerned with calamitous events", which gave me dark 'the office' vibes (keep in mind i've never seen the show, just the odd clip here and there), and "the lesser horsemen", which was a great opener and really kind of cool and original.

extra star for the title, which i am obsessed with.