I'm always a little uneasy with stories which bring Jesus back; after all, making him nice is just as partial a reading as the viciousness usually enacted in his name, and you can't really decry all the people who've put words in his mouth by doing likewise yourself. Jsem ráda, že jsem nepodlehla líbivé obálce a nekoupila si bezhlavě limitku, vypůjčit z knihovny naprosto stačilo. It’s full of deeply weird, but well thought out devices, all in service of a fairly simple revenge plot (which is also very Jack Vance).

There is a narrative that reveals itself in these footnotes, but it’s entirely too insubstantial to justify itself. Side note: I just read Moore’s Fashion Beast and I definitely got the feeling these were written around the same time in his career. Here is an author who possesses a mastery of language teamed with a seemingly limitless imagination, all underpinned by a sanguine, occasionally waspish sense of humour . This story, which takes up a majority of the total page count, shows an interesting set of interconnected lives belonging to persons in the comic industry. To add to the fact, I go in for anthologies with certain length expectations as I read the stories whenever I can squeeze a few minutes out of my schedule.This collection of Alan Moore’s short fictions contains five stories that have been published elsewhere – mostly in smaller, indie print venues – and four entirely new works. It’s a lightly fictionalized account of the US comic book industry from the 50s to the present, full of very thinly veiled versions of characters and their creators. In "Not Even Legend," a paranormal study group is infiltrated by one of the otherworldly beings they seek to investigate. I always enjoy when Moore plays with the concept of linear storytelling, and he pulls it off wonderfully with this one.

AND, AT THE LAST, JUST TO BE DONE WITH SILENCE (three stars) This one refers to an historical event in the middle ages with which I’m unfamiliar.

From ghosts and otherworldly creatures to theoretical Boltzmann brains fashioning the universe at the big bang, Illuminations is exactly that - a series of bright, startling tales from a contemporary legend that reveal the full power of imagination and magic. My only problem with this story is that I've been working on a similar story of my own including using a lot of the same verbiage and imagery, so I've had to put mine down for a while so that the influence of this story doesn't take over. The trick is telegraphed, and is more clever show-offy than new, but it’s a short story: a big idea and a clever trick is enough to carry it.

The title story has a similar sort of engine but to very different effect, a melancholy sort of ghost story in which a man hoping against hope to recapture the happiness he felt on childhood holidays learns that you can never go back, even when it turns out that you can. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.

Still, I would have thought that once we hit 240 pages, we were firmly in novel territory, unless the new definition is any fictional work shorter than Alan Moore's previous novel, the mammoth Jerusalem. Thank you to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing, and Alan Moore for this book in exchange for my honest review! The collection as a whole demonstrates that although Watchmen may be Moore’s best-known work, his storytelling has transcended its origins in the vexed commercial medium he now conscientiously eschews. If you do have that knowledge, you’ll recognize certain people, thinly disguised: Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Roy Thomas, Vince Colletta, Archie Goodwin, etc. In addition to an often dangerous undercurrent, another theme is the notion that no one can be trusted.