$40 (Cemetery Dance Publications)

Reviewed by Brian Keene

Tim Lebbon is considered to be by many one of the best horror and dark fantasy writers of his generation. His work has received accolades from both the critics and fandom-at-large, earning him several awards, including a Bram Stoker Award, a Scribe Award and an August Derleth Award from the British Fantasy Society. His readership is diverse, encompassing all genders, nationalities and ages and crossing socio-economic boundaries. His loyal audience includes everyone from steelworkers and janitors to attorneys and Wall Street brokers to esteemed veteran scribes such as Joe R. Lansdale (who provides this volume’s introduction), Ramsey Campbell and Jack Ketchum; and actor Doug Bradley (best known as Hellraiser’s Pinhead).

Although mainstream readers are probably most familiar with Lebbon’s series of dark fantasy novels set in the world of Noreela, or his New York Times bestselling novelization of 30 Days of Night, the author is at his absolute best when it comes to short horror fiction. He can do more in two-thousand words than many writers can do with a full-length novel, and that’s what makes this massive new collection from Cemetery Dance such a momentous occasion. Last Exit for the Lost is billed as “collecting the best of Lebbon’s output from 2000 to the present day.” And for the most part, it lives up to that promise.

Devotees will be happy at the inclusion of such fan-favorites as “In Perpetuity” (originally published in Night Visions 11), the Poe-influenced “A Ripple In The Veil”, “Hell Came Down”, and the Cthulhu-mythos tale “The Stuff of Stars, Leaking”. There are also a few rare, hard-to-find gems, such as 1999’s “The Cutting” and 2000’s “Pay the Ghost”. The book is rounded off with two original, never-before-published novellas: “The Evolutionary” and “Nothing Heavenly”. Both are worth the cover price alone.

Like the song by Fields of the Nephilim (from which both the collection and the lead story take their name), the stories in Last Exit for the Lost often start off slow and subtle, and then build to a furious crescendo. They cannot easily be pigeonholed by the constraints of genre. They cross many spectrums. One moment, the reader is captivated by a quiet, haunting tale with barely a hint of anything supernatural. The next, we tread through a bleak, post-apocalyptic (or perhaps personally apocalyptic) landscape. All of Lebbon’s common themes are on parade here. Age. Children. Love. Loss. The thin line between reality and the unreal. Most of the tales are imbued (whether consciously or unconsciously) with a sense of…decay. It may be physical or moral, mental or emotional, literal or metaphorical, but it is there all the same, along with a sometimes beautiful sense of sadness.

Lebbon’s greatest strength has always been his characterization, and the stories in this collection are no exception. We know these protagonists (and indeed, his antagonists, as well). They are us. And when they begin the inevitable descent , or the corners of their world darken , we feel it as readers. That is a rare gift, when a writer can so thoroughly and seamlessly engage his audience, and Lebbon pulls it off almost flawlessly.

There are a few missteps–a few disappointments. “The Horror of Many Faces” and “Body” both read like what they are–stories written specifically for themed anthologies, and lack the emotional potency of Lebbon’s usual fare. But a mediocre story by Tim Lebbon is still better than ninety-eight percent of what his peers have to offer.

I highly recommend this collection. It’s an absolute must for fans of the author’s work, and a fantastic introduction and overview for those who have not yet had the pleasure of experiencing his unique and powerful visions of things we know…and more importantly, the things we don’t know, or are afraid to know about ourselves.