Beneath Ceaseless Skies #433, May 29, 2025

“Last Train from Deadwall” by André Geleynse

“Last Stop: Tomb City” by Justin Howe

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

“Last Train from Deadwall” by André Geleynse takes place in a steampunk fantasy world. The protagonist died long ago, but has been resurrected as a living skeleton with mechanical parts attached. He has no chance of ever paying off his debts to the company that revived him, so he will have to work for them forever.

Attempts to enter the afterlife through suicide fail. He sets out to obtain the key that will free him, but a battle between the ruler of the mechanical realm and the lord of the afterlife complicates matters, as does the main character’s promise to a locomative made from the resurrected skeleton of an ancient beast.

The plot and concepts in this imaginative novelette are even more complex than I have indicated in this lengthy synopsis. The author manages to make everything perfectly clear to the reader while supplying a multitude of fantasy premises. The combination of steampunk technology and supernatural beings is an intriguing one, and the author keeps these seemingly disparate elements in harmonious balance.

The narrator of “Last Stop: Tomb City” by Justin Howe is able to transport others from one reality to another. Reluctantly accompanying an agent on a journey to a world that mixes death with immortality, the narrator struggles to survive the fight between those who wish to keep someone in that realm and those who want to remove that person.

This is a greatly oversimplified and misleading description of a story that is dense with notions that are difficult to understand. The author creates a truly unique setting, but at the expense of clarity. Without being openly comic, the work has a tongue-in-cheek feeling that may appear to those willing to ponder its many ambiguities.

Victoria Silverwolf is working an extra day today.