Mysterion, April 2023
Reviewed by László Szegedi
The premise of this short story might be familiar: a pet coming back to life after years of its death. It’s so close to the Stephen King classic the children in the story even ask whether it isn’t going to be like Pet Sematary. Unfortunately, not, as the text is full of sentimental details without a strong plot that might advance the story.
We receive the weird details of coming back to life like in a /nosleep reddit post, but I didn’t feel frightened nor weird at all here. There are moments of normal family life and struggling with everyday challenges, but basically that’s all we are given. Moreover, the resolution proved to be rather circular in nature, returning the story back almost where it began, without giving any moral or lesson to the reader to take away. And the “2.0” from the title is never explained, leaving the reader to wonder if it might be some cyber-world reference, but nothing of this nature took place in the story.
László is an SF enthusiast living in middle Europe, who also writes songs in his attic.