TRIANGULATION: END OF THE RAINBOW

Edited by Bill Moran
Published by PARSEC Ink

Fourth in the Triangulation anthology series, End of the Rainbow provides a diverse selection of fantasy literature. The book boasts quality authors throughout, and the tales range from retellings of cultural myths to science fiction. All of them enjoy vivid imagery and a sense of wonder, appropriate to the title.

David Sklar starts the book strong with “The Rainbow Vendor” as a man struggles to sell his supply of the optical phenomena to an unreceptive town. “The House at the End of the Rainbow” and its teleporting structure imprison an old woman faced with a young stowaway. Meanwhile, Amanda C. Davis utilizes the rainbow as a symbol of wish-fulfillment to chilling effect in “David is Six.”

Tinatsu Wallace’s “A Womb of my Own” follows with a harrowing character study (probably the best in the book), as a gay man, impregnated through surgery, grapples with an identity crisis. Cate Gardner’s trademark whimsy lightens the mood in the first pages of “The Meaning of Yellow” before exploring far deeper themes in a world robbed of color.

Eugie Foster provides his spin on a Chinese creation myth in “A Patch of Jewels in the Sky,” even as Aaron Polson allows those populating the town in “The World in Rubber, Soft and Malleable” to disappear through strange doors in their basements. Cat Rambo’s, “In Order to Conserve” closes the collection proper via a world where a scarcity of color fuels government sponsored fear and deprivation.

After reading such an impressive collection of stories, Editor Bill Moran’s afterword comes off as particularly bittersweet. Each Triangulation is clearly a labor of love, and heavy labor at that. One can only appreciate the care expressed not only for the anthology, but quality fiction as a whole, when too much of today’s audience seems to have forgotten how to appreciate it.

Buy it here.

Reviewed by Patrick Rutigliano

Patrick Rutigliano resides in Indiana with his wife, Hannah, and a very peculiar cat he found on his doorstep. He began his professional writing career in 2007 with a sale to Permuted Press. Since then, his work has appeared in History Is Dead, Monstrous, and Shroud Magazine. A full bibliography of his work is available at http://patrickrutigliano.blogspot.com/ , although he advises the reader to take any of his rambling outbursts with a grain of salt.