SFF

I Met a Traveler in an Antique Land

Subterranean. Apr. 2018. 88p. ISBN 9781596068766. $40; ebk. ISBN 9781596068773. FANTASY
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OrangeReviewStarJim's blog, Gone for Good, is based on the premise that nostalgia for the past is ridiculous and that things are meant to become obsolete. Now Jim is in New York trying to sell a book based on his online writings; after one publisher meeting is canceled and he blows a radio interview, Jim, annoyed and flustered, is driven from a rainstorm into the overstuffed and dusty Ozymandias Books, where he follows a pretty staff member into the back room. Here he is led down into an unimaginable space, an intriguing sorting system, with endless shelves of volumes that finally catch Jim being nostalgic for his favorite childhood tome, which he discovers the store actually owns. It is only after Jim is back on the street that he acknowledges the truth about Ozymandias and that losing things can be more tragic than he ever believed.
VERDICT Hugo Award winner Willis (The Domesday Book) packs a punch with this slim novella, inciting nostalgic memories, dropping publisher names, and taking overzealous weeder librarians to task about reverence for the written word.
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