The Book of the Dead (Part 3) Edited by Jonathan Strahan Book Review
The Book of the Dead
(Part 3)
Edited By Jonathan Strahan
Published Year: 2026
Page Count: 475 pages
Medium Used: Oneplus Nord Ce6, Moon Reader
Genre: Horror, Thriller, Suspense, Anthology, Short Stories, Collections, Various Authors, 2026-read.
Link to Part 1&2 stories
Now Watch Me as you hold your Breath by Sylvia Park
Rating : 4/5
What a crazy story!! This tells the experiences of a girl who has lost her parents and dog in a car accident. She cannot relate to the world and mainly to sex. She has no cravings for it. She has two friends - Aya, whom she once saw having sex with a local band vocalist where she literally snacks on him(creepy and is this the narrator's imagination!!?) , and Rinko who finds happiness only through relationships with older men that inevitably turn sour. I can understand why this story made the cut into this book. I mean there is death in this even though not like in the other stories so far - death is her and Rinko losing their parents, Aya killing her partners and the feelings of the narrator in the aftermath. She definitely misses her parents and often wonders if that tragedy has shaped her into the asexual person that she is today. And it also makes us wonder if Rinko is the way she is because of her loss of parents, albeit in a different way?
The Invocation of the Ghost, the Exorcism of the Muse by Isabel Kim
Rating : 4/5
Very ordinary story but evokes some convincing, powerful emotions!
A woman had died and become a ghost. A young painter also works as a part time exorcist. On one ocassion, he comes across the ghost of this woman. She offers him great wealth if he can trace the location of her son and get her near him. So thats what the young man does. But when they are in the presence of the now young son, she acts unpredictably and comes unmoored. The painter briefly wonders if he should call another, more powerful exorcist to get rid of her.
I liked the bond a mother has with her son. I liked the lesson the painter learned through this experience. I liked the idea of a soul/spirit not leaving this dimension because of unfinished business. It is not something novel to me because in my culture it is well accepted and even accepted to be a fact!
Death Letters by Vajra Chandrasekara
Rating : 3/5
This is the most confusing and confounding story for me in the book. The prose is beautiful but there is some ambiguity as to some points in it. This tale is narrated in the form of letters, written by a sister to her younger brother. She explains to him their initial trials and later prosperous turn of events all the while chiding him for poor grammer, being a hypochondriac, not sending blood in right form etc. Their elder brother, Amoghi, who goes to battle to make money and send home, dies on the battle front. She extracts blood from her younger brother's letter and uses it to awaken revenants - i thought they are like robots? Or is it necromancy? - who do all the manual labor without complaint and without tiring. I didn't understand why these letters have gained importance? She mentions that some in the government are also using these revenants so it's not exactly like they have gone against the law, right? It made more sense to think of these revenants as robots than walking dead!
Varanasi by Priya Sharma
Rating : 3.5/5
A brother comes back to visit his sister forty years after leaving home. She accuses him of not being there for the deaths of their parents and uncle Pete. She had to handle it alone. Theirs is a family business of crematorium/funeral house. When they were young, an almost dead woman was brought into their funeral house and she passes on something(like a plume of smoke) to the brother through whispering, before dying. Here, I was thinking something along the lines of soul hopping between bodies at the time of death. But it is not that. After that ,he moves to Varanasi in India which is the most notable site for the dying and the dead to meet their ends. Even though it is not explained what the woman said and where her soul went, it seems like these spirits have a different path. Interesting read!
The Leaving Season by Angela Slatter
Rating : 4/5
This is the story of a lot of the past generation women who did all the work at home, slaved to their husbands without complaint. Here too, Hilda has always been an obedient wife and mother. She gave her husband two daughters, he cannot distinguish between them. How callous and indifferent this man is. I wanted to kick him good while reading the story. He is a brute that hasnt learnt his lesson, even after his wife leaves him, very much like his mother did to his father. He sets his eyes on a widow and that's that. The wife has left him because she is nearing death and perhaps the story ends with more than one! Felt good to read. Total honest take on the affairs of the old! This generation women are too independent to really understand the woes of the woman bygone, I feel.
The Grand Opening by Stephen Graham Jones
Rating :4/5
This is my introduction to the author's writing and I liked it. The main character Redding discusses with his work mate, Chuckles, what happens to people after death. Chuckles' cruel - not so kind - elder brother tells him something when he was a kid as a way to trick him. But that almost comes true and Redding runs away from a home where he is working. I liked the way the story is written. The characters are well developed. So is the ambience which is eerie.
This is what happens when you die by Catherine M Valente
Rating: 0/5 (skipped)
Boring. If I wanted to read something that read like non fiction, I wouldn't have picked this book. Sorry. Its a travesty.
The Well of the Martian Queens by Tamsyn Muir
Rating : 5/5
This story is so thought provoking and tries to shed some light on fictitious Martian civilization that has stowed away the embalmed corpses of their queens in circular shafts down into the crust of the Martian surface. This is an inverted pyramid style of storage. Each tomb contains the remains of a queen and there is one of them which is completely empty. They locate the tomb quite far from the burial site. The body is mangled and contents of the tomb looted. What explanation can they divine for this anomaly? Its an interesting take. I liked how different the martians seem from terrans yet similar in some ways!
The Heart in Service to Hunger by Nghi Vo
Rating : 5/5
This is one weird story. Two servants .. maids by day, lovers by night. One of them falls sick and the other takes care of all the household chores and feeds the sick one at night. The sick one confesses to her weird, bloody cravings like fried milk, cooked duck blood etc which the other brushes off as sick person's wanderings of mind. Yet, as the story progresses, the sick one gets sicker and the other is clueless as to how to help her. And then the sick one helps herself. Quenching her enormous appetite. What transpired simply rocked me to the core. I was shocked. Beyond it. One of its kind of a story. Its a thoroughly horrid tale. I havent read any of the other works by the author but would gladly pick now.. after this chilling story.
Down the Interstate by E. Lily Liu
Rating: 4/5
A man, traveling in his Kia car, along a highway notices that his time doesn't move fast enough and his tank doesn't empty fast enough. He also realises that he is a victim in a car accident on that very highway. He laments over his life and choices to stay work oriented than spend time with his family. I wondered if he is already dead and is being carted to an afterlife? Perhaps that's what this is. He has meaningful conversations with his family members - wife, daughter ,mother - who magically appear next to him and express their complaints with his life choices and their regrets .. then he goes on like all those around him .. to a place of no return possibly!
Uncle Hermit by Kaaron Warren
Rating : 5/5
A soul, post death, lingers in the surrounding objects and walls without leaving. One such soul is that of uncle Hermit who has locked himself effectively in his hermitage and died there. When someone, typically a male, in the family mistreats his wife, he is locked up here and uncle Hermit's soul or embodied spirit takes care of that person. I liked the novelty of the concept. Also the idea of punishing and getting rid of men this way felt nice!
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