Doorways for the Dispossessed is a book of 21 short stories by award winning writer Paul Haines.

I’ve mentioned before I don’t care a whole lot for short stories. I just can’t seem to work up the emotion needed to invest in anyone’s well being to really give a damn in such a short amount of time. Obviously I’ve been reading the wrong short stories. Those included in this book for the most part kept me enthralled and worried about people I had only met seconds before. And if I wasn’t worried about someone I was busy wishing some particularly nasty being would go away now please and thank you.

Not every story kept my attention and earned my praise, as meaningless as that is, but the good far, far outweighed the bad. And to be fair, nothing here was really BAD just too ambiguous for my tastes.

One of the best of the bunch is The Last Days of Kali Yuga, the winner of both a Ditmar and an Aurealis Award. It tells the story of two men traveling together, each a killer in their own way both secretive and obvious.

One of my favorites was The Feastive Season. It’s an old world holiday fable concerning the sacrifices that must be made to ensure a prosperous year. Plus it has lots of sex which never hurts. Er, no pun intended.

Slice of Life and Slice of Life II: Cooking for the Heart tell the stories of a cannibalistic man and the face shifting alien that follows him around. I suppose the alien was only in his head but I like to think its real somewhere, watching and hungry.

If you haven’t gathered already these aren’t flowers and kitten stories, not unless you’re making the flowers into a nice sauce to serve with kitten that is. These tales are dark and filled with sex, drugs, fear and paranoia with enough black humor thrown in to really make it fun.

Doorways for the Dispossessed is highly recommended by me especially if you’re the type whose sense of humor tends to make people uncomfortable.