Perdition, Brian Kubarycz's debut, is a collection where each story, linked or otherwise, focuses not on an action but on a single arresting image - a symbol, in the Romantic sense of the term - an ambiguous vision that emerges despite Kubarycz's determination to avoid anything which might appear merely sensational. While these stories are decidedly dark and moody, they are never crude nor morbid, and despite their darkness, they do not lack humor, though the laughter tends tocome from the balconies. Not wholly noir, gothic, or horror, these stories curate qualities of each in the cultivation of a unified and pervasive atmosphere that is equal parts psychological and visceral. Sometimes crescendoing, at other times merely popping, each fiction results in what can only be qualified as terror , and the air in each is "filled with the very instant of it." Singular in theme and surprising in musicality, Perdition is a bright beautiful light that will entrance the reader while bearing down with the force of a train.