Book Review: One Eye Opened In That Other Place by Christi Nogle

One Eye Opened in That Other Place collects Christi Nogle’s best weird and fantastical stories. The collection focuses on liminal spaces and the borders between places and states of mind. Though you might not find a traditional portal fantasy here, you will travel across thresholds and arrive at other places and times that are by turns disquieting, terrifying, and wonderful. Get up close with the local flora and fauna, peruse the weird art exhibits and special shows, and consider taking a dip in the mossy, snail-filled tank of water. Make sure to bring your special glasses

This new collection will appeal to readers of Jeff VanderMeer, Charles Wilkinson, Steve Rasnic Tem, M. Rickert, Lynda E. Rucker and Stephen King’s novel Lisey’s Story.

GENRE: Fiction Anthology (Single Author)

PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Christi Nogle writes psychological and supernatural horror, dark science fiction, and weird fiction. She is the author of the collection The Best of Our Past, the Worst of Our Future and the novel Beulah. Her short stories have appeared in over fifty publications including PseudoPod, Vastarien, Escape Pod, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and Dark Matter Magazine along with anthologies such as C.M Muller’s Nightscript series, Humans Are the Problem from Weird Little Worlds, Mixtape: 1986 from The Dread Machine, and Flame Tree’s American Gothic and Chilling Crime.

Christi loves learning and has studied visual arts as well as writing and literature. After twenty years teaching academic writing and occasional literature classes at a university, Christi moved on to spend more time focusing on her own fiction and supporting other writers in the horror and speculative writing communities. She enjoys sharing stories and critiques in various writing groups, mentoring and volunteering for writers’ organizations, teaching creative writing workshops, and learning more about editing and promotion. She is also an Associate Editor at the popular horror podcast PseudoPod.

She continues to write short fiction and is working on a new novel, All My Really Good Friends. She also hopes to someday return to painting, which was an obsession for many years.

Christi is an active member of the Horror Writers Association, Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, and Codex Writers’ Group. She lives in Boise, Idaho with her partner Jim and their gorgeous dogs. Follow her at christinogle.com or on Twitter @christinogle.

Review

After Promise, Christi Nogle is back with another collection of weird stories! This one's even weirder than the last, or at least it seemed that way to me. The titular One Eye Opened In That Other Place is literally about a man with a third eye that opened into another place, and it only gets weirder from there.

The stories that caught my attention were:

• Every Day's A Party (With You) - This had very strong The Magnus Archives vibes to me, which is great as it's a favorite!
• Waterfall - Those stories about being careful what you wish for? Yep.
• The Portrait of Basil Hallward - I miiight just be a sucker for inanimate object POVs, so.
• The Maiden in Robes - Just the kind of weird and creepy that I like.
• A Chronicle of the Mole-Year - The concept of a Mole-Year was so cool! Weird, but cool. I'd like to think I'm going to get ahead of my TBR pile if I had a Mole-Year... or I might procrastinate and do nothing. Or succumb to the weirdness.
• Gingerbread - Creepy houses, I'm here for them. Just don't let me live or stay in them.
• Little Cat, Little Hare - If you think it's the hare that got me because I like bunnies, nope, it's not that at all. Artworks that feel alive? The artist behind them being weird? Yep.
• The Pack - Creepy plants? Creepy plants.

Interestingly, I learned about the term slipstream from this book, which is defined as a genre denoting forms of speculative fiction that blends together science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction, or do not remain in conventional boundaries of genre and narrative, directly extending from the experimentation of the New Wave science fiction movement while also borrowing from fantasy, psychological fiction, philosophical fiction and other genres or styles of literature. If this sounds like your cup of tea, this book is for you!

As it is with collections and anthologies, however, not everything might be to your liking. I certainly found myself vibing with the above stories, while the rest were just okay or even confusing.

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Hi! I'm Marie, a Filipino fantasy author and book reviewer currently based in the UK. I’m the co-author of The Prophecies of Ragnarok, a Norse myth new adult urban fantasy trilogy, and I also have several short stories published in anthologies and literary journals.

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