Title: The Galleria

Author: Alexander Michael

Release date: January 2nd, 2024

Thanks so much to Alexander for sending me a digital review copy of this one!

I wasn’t really sure what I was getting into with this one, as I saw a brief synopsis, but I’m fairly open to going into everything blind either way.

The story does feature a foreword that illustrates there are three interconnected novellas that can be read in any order or the reader doesn’t need to read the other two novellas at all, as all things lead towards a full length release coming up. I can safely say that I never felt lost or that I was missing something by having not read the other two, which was great, but I could imagine other readers who’ve read the other two as well, will have enjoyed whatever little Easter eggs that have been dotted throughout.

What I liked: The story follows a cab driver, who has a love/hate relationship with his job. It pays the bills and he gets to meet eclectic people, but he also dislikes a large percentage of the crazy folks who hop in late at night.

On one seemingly normal evening, a young woman jumps in, and has a strange hypnotic effect on him. Within their short interaction, she opens his eyes to some potentials that lay just beyond what we can normally see and from there, he becomes almost obsessed with her, hoping she gets back in nightly.

Michael does a great job with this scene and then having her burrow under our taxi drivers skin. It’s an element that can either work or not, but in this case, we get to walk that line between ‘enough already’ and ‘he needs to find her!’

As the story unfolds, she disappears and he takes it upon himself to find her and its at this point that we go from a fairly mundane story to a seedy underbelly world where drugs, sex and violence lead the way.

Describing things like Clive Barker or Barker-esque can sometimes be overused, but in this case its spot on. Reading this I felt like I was reading something that Stanley Kubrick adapted from Barker. An ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ through Clive’s imagination, if you will.

What I didn’t like: Truthfully, this book was really, really solid, but it never completely grabbed by the throat and held me down, forcing me to turn its pages. I think this is just more of a case of the ‘noir’ aspect to it, that this readers brain typically stays away from, as it never fully connects. So, this one will definitely grab others WAY more than it grabbed me.

Why you should buy this: Michael has done a wonderful job of taking a ‘basic’ character and thrusting him into a world he clearly doesn’t belong in. It makes for some uneasy and awkward moments, which are only heightened by our Taxi drivers desire to find the girl, but also to see everything that he has been missing out in his boring life. A very unique take on the classic ‘fish out of water’ trope.

4/5