One Message Remains, by Premee Mohamed
24 Feb 2025The Book
Synopsis:
Pageantry, pomp, pretense, and peril—”The General’s Turn,” originally published in The Deadlands, drew readers into the dark world of a ceremony where Death herself might choose to join the audience… or step onto the stage.
Award-winning author Premee Mohamed presents three brand new stories set in this morally ambiguous world of war and magic. In “One Message Remains,” Major Lyell Tzajos leads his team on a charity mission through the post-armistice world of East Seudast, exhuming the bones and souls of dead foes for repatriation. But the buried fighters may have one more fight left in them—and they have chosen their weapons well.
In “The Weight of What is Hollow,” Taya is the latest apprentice of a long-honored tradition: building the bone-gallows for prisoners of war. But her very first commission will pit her skills against both her family and her oppressor.
Finally, in “Forsaking All Others,” ex-soldier Rostyn must travel the little-known ways by night to avoid his pursuers, for desertion is punishable by death. As he flees to the hoped-for sanctuary of his grandmother’s village, he is joined by a fellow deserter—and, it seems, the truth of a myth older than the land itself.
My Review
One Message Remains is a dark fantasy short story collection written by Premee Mohamed, and published by Psychopomp. An unsettling and thought-provoking set of four stories, that, together, create a tapestry about the Treotan Empire, touching themes such as how war is framed, the nature of evil, how a villain would see itself, and who needs to fight and who decides that.
The central piece of this collection, One Message Remains, follows Major Tzajos of the Treotan Army, who has been assigned to what he deems as a job to get a promotion, finding the bodies of the enemies to get them a proper burial. While this can be seen as a kindness gesture from the conqueror, we also experience how the unbalance of power can lead towards erasure; interestingly, with Tzajos we don't have an evil character or anything, just a man that is blindly following orders without questioning them. An excellent story by the quill of Mohamed outlining the consequences of imperialism over the conquered.
The Weight of What Is Hollow was also an impactful and creepy novelette; it explores the Treotan's tradition of the bone gallows, a vicious cycle where bones are used to get more bones. A family of gallows builders are used as the way to explore the dilemma between acting under threat or resistance, and how violence and blood are perpetuated in cycles unless somebody breaks it.
Forsaking All Others smartly plays with a double narrative, from the perspective of a Treotan deserter and an old woman that calls herself Nana; it offers us a peak into how the forced recruitment has created a resistance, but also the exhaustion of the lower class that are basically deemed cheap meat for the powerful.
And honestly, I can only define The General Turns as brilliant and macabre; how this mockery of a play is conducted by a general, a tradition that shows how rotten to the core the Empire is. We have an exceptional window that shows the heart of the Treotan Empire, making clear how, in reality, only death and bloodlust matters.
An excellent collection which also showcases Mohamed's excellent prose, a haunting proposal perfect if you are looking for a thought-provoking collection woven around a rotten to the core empire. A memorable read!
The Author/s
Premee Mohamed
Premee Mohamed is a Nebula, World Fantasy, and Aurora award-winning Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Ignyte, British Fantasy, and Crawford awards. She is an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod and the author of the 'Beneath the Rising' series of novels as well as several novellas. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on her website at www.premeemohamed.com. She is represented by Michael Curry of DMLA.