Isaac Fellman is quickly becoming an author where I’m just going to read anything that he comes out with. I read The Breath of the Sun earlier this year and I knew I’d have to pick up Dead Collections once it came out. In The Breath of the Sun fashion, I bought Dead Collections expecting a fantasy novel about vampires that worked in a magical, never-ending archival labyrinth in the base of a cursed library. I was surprised when it was instead about a modern-day, middle-aged trans-vamp struggling with housing insecurity. While not what I expected, I still loved it. Fellman has an amazing talent for stepping into a story whenever it gets too stressful and whispering to the reader that it will end okay, so they can go ahead and enjoy the ride now. With the world and work being a mess of stress lately, I sort of wish somebody would do that for my everyday life.
For now, I’ll have to settle for a book.
One wouldn’t think Barcelona would match the tone of this story, but Dead Collections seems to have brought cosy weather with it. Off season in Barcelona is quieter and, while still a party city, I’m not a partier so I never saw that side of it. I walked instead. I brought the story where I went, unfolding the plot over the early morning flight, an empty night at the beach with waves crashing uncomfortably close, at the base of the unfinished Sagrada Familia, in a café themed after a fairy forest, on a bench in the sleepy blue corner of the shark tank at the aquarium, and at a bench up in the mountains. I finished it when a swell of rain came in, bunkered under a tree in a park that housed a fountain full of mercury. It felt right to finish it at the height of the sun, but only once a storm had come in and blotted it out.
It was a breath of cold, damp air. By the time I finished it, my Docs had torn my heels apart. I loved the story. I also felt incredibly called out by the fanfiction elements and wanted to throw it off the cliffside due to the embarrassment of having been too seen. I read it alone, but it felt very much like Fellman was behind me whispering ‘I know your fanfic past.’
Seriously though, read the book.
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