Review by Booklist Review
In his debut story collection, Key deftly moves the sf, fantasy, and horror genres forward with works of short fiction that explore the Black experience, racism, power, prejudice, and fear. He uses historically white-dominated genres to depict the humanity (or lack thereof) in all of us. In "The Perfection of Theresa Watkins," a bereaved husband puts the consciousness of his Black wife in the body of a formerly incarcerated white woman with disastrous personal, psychological, and cultural consequences. In "Afiya's Song," both the life of an enslaved woman and the mythology surrounding her after her passing are detailed. With the voices of her ancestors in her lungs, Afiya can stitch her wounds back together following a whipping, but what is going to happen when her enslavers notice this? And in the title story, a lamenting father has a conversation with his son about the world we live in--one that sees Black skin as a threat, an act of violence, or criminal intention--while trying to teach him how to maneuver through injustice. Embodying these genres while simultaneously using them as a means for conversation, Key has brought Jordan Peele and Black Mirror to the world of literary fiction.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The eight horror shorts in Key's equally unsettling and thought-provoking debut collection dip into different subgenres, including historical fiction ("Afiya's Song"), science fiction ("The Perfection of Theresa Watkins") and medical horror ("Now You See Me"), but are united in their deep explorations of racial, gender, and class inequality--and in their truly stomach-churning imagery. Key has a talent for crafting memorable characters, among them Darnell Lee in "Spider King," a father and ex-con whose prison sentence is erased in exchange for his participation in a drug trial that causes him to hatch spiders from under his skin. The conceit is emblematic of the way Key employs fantastical elements to highlight social justice issues, in this case the exploitation of the incarcerated. The horror elements hit just as hard: "One Hand in the Coffin," in which an autistic child's late abusive brother is reanimated in a puppet, is so upsetting many readers may struggle to get through it. Key's influences are wide-ranging, from genre greats like Octavia Butler to B-movies, and he has a sure-handed command of horror tropes. Readers will welcome this formidable new voice in Black speculative fiction. Agent: Adam Eaglin, Cheney Agency. (Sept.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Short stories using the tropes of horror and science fiction with intelligence, compassion, and wry abandon to analyze and analogize racial misunderstanding. One of many distinctive new Black American voices in the fantasy genre, Key shows throughout these eight stories the range and ingenuity of such grandmasters as Ray Bradbury, Robert Sheckley, and Theodore Sturgeon, with whom he also shares acute empathy for human vulnerability--even when, as in the poignant title story, an extraterrestrial race is involved. That story examines the life of Jordan, a "Keplan" who, along with his human father, is compelled to engage with earthbound bigotry and injustice in their grandest and pettiest manifestations. In "Spider King," an inmate is released from custody after receiving an injection that transforms his body into a breeding nest for spiders. It may sound like high-concept gore, but as in other Key stories, "Spider King" is elevated above such fare by its up-to-the-minute social detail about the struggles of ex-convicts to avoid both recidivism and stigmatization. As in the best SF, the topical and the universal blend seamlessly here. "Wellness Check," for instance, convincingly presents an alternate version of our world whose social norms have been battered and restructured by a series of pandemics. (Never leave home without your Viral Detection Reality glasses!) Another "what-if" tale, "Afiya's Song," imagines a different pre-Civil War South where a young girl's resistance to her master lights the fuse for what becomes a widespread, successful slave insurgence. About 200 years later, in "Customer Service," an unhappy client of something called Two Places at Once finds his A.I. doppelgänger going way too far in his prescribed duties as a substitute. Perhaps the most haunting and heartbreaking is "The Perfection of Theresa Watkins," in which a grieving husband downloads the consciousness of his dead Black wife into the body of a white woman with distressing psychic baggage of her own. Key resolutely carries on the tradition of the modern SF writers who always found new and rueful ways of reminding readers that no matter how much technology changes, humanity, in its loneliness, folly, and constricted vision, somehow never does. Key acknowledges all kinds of terrifying possibilities for dreaming the future--and inhabiting the present. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
