Falling Bodies

Book 2 of the Far Reaches collection

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I’d assumed that each of the books in this series would pick up where the last left off and take it in a new direction like that improv game where a person says a word and the next person in line says any word as long as it keeps the story going. Nope, I was wrong.

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Ms. Roanhorse’s short story focuses on a single person and his life over the course of three weeks. It has a completely different feeling from the first story in the series. That first story is abstract; we are given concepts to consider and ideas to extrapolate. This story, though, is gritty, violent and raw.

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We are taken inside the head of a young person who has lived most of his life with a race of aliens who’ve conquered Earth as he grapples with where his loyalty lies.

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I dream, and I’m back on the Genteel homeworld, Empyrean, in the Senator’s house, a big dome-shaped mansion in the Genteel style. There’s someone knocking at the door, but the Senator’s away, somewhere important, and I can’t be bothered to answer it. But the door opens anyway—blows open—and into the foyer burst all these Earthers wearing combat gear and carrying blaster rifles.

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I stare, not only in shock but because I haven’t seen a human face besides my own in a decade. A woman rushes toward me, big blue eyes like the oceans of Earth I’ve only read about in books.

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“We’re here to rescue you,” she says, and her mouth moves in slow motion."

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This author wrote a collection of stories that I absolutely love. I was looking forward to her contribution in this series, but honestly, it’s the story I like the least. It could have easily been set on Earth and had very little to do with space.

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All that said, it’s worth taking 45 minutes to read this.

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