Review: _Afterdead_, by Donna Barr

This book collects a number of stories, beginning with what would have been issue 31 of The Desert Peach. This issue picks up roughly six thousand years after the previous one. No, this is not a typo. The Peach has been in some sort of Hell all this time, but (after six millennia) has finally managed to forgive himself, and reincarnates.

He finds himself in some sort of strange post-Singularity version of the Third Reich, one which also includes (versions of) the characters from all of Barr's other series: Stinz Lowhard, Bosom Enemies, Hader and the Colonel, etc. His social status, as both an "Afterdead" and a cyborg (so-called due to medical replacements during his lifetime), is hard for me to puzzle out, and he seems both to be a military officer and a piece of property. A few characters he remembers from life make appearances, but changed almost beyond recognition, and with no memories of *him*.

Although she has been one of my favorite creators for many years, I must regretfully conclude that Frau Barr has jumped the shark. Giving her creativity a totally free rein seems to me to have had very unfortunate results. The new setting is *so* strange, that I have to spend a huge amount of time just trying to puzzle it out. And since, to anyone who isn't Barr, the 'puzzle pieces' are pretty arbitrary and don't fit cleanly together, I can't accept it as 'real', and thus can't immerse myself in the story.

This reminds me of when Terry Moore decided that he had written himself into a corner with "Strangers in Paradise" and more-or-less gave up and rebooted the series with an explicit lack of continuity. Is this an inevitable result of long-term self-publishing? Do all of them eventually go off the rails and leave their audiences behind?

Review: _Afterdead_, by Donna Barr

This book collects a number of stories, beginning with what would have been issue 31 of The Desert Peach. This issue picks up roughly six thousand years after the previous one. No, this is not a typo. The Peach has been in some sort of Hell all this time, but (after six millennia) has finally managed to forgive himself, and reincarnates.

He finds himself in some sort of strange post-Singularity version of the Third Reich, one which also includes (versions of) the characters from all of Barr's other series: Stinz Lowhard, Bosom Enemies, Hader and the Colonel, etc. His social status, as both an "Afterdead" and a cyborg (so-called due to medical replacements during his lifetime), is hard for me to puzzle out, and he seems both to be a military officer and a piece of property. A few characters he remembers from life make appearances, but changed almost beyond recognition, and with no memories of *him*.

Although she has been one of my favorite creators for many years, I must regretfully conclude that Frau Barr has jumped the shark. Giving her creativity a totally free rein seems to me to have had very unfortunate results. The new setting is *so* strange, that I have to spend a huge amount of time just trying to puzzle it out. And since, to anyone who isn't Barr, the 'puzzle pieces' are pretty arbitrary and don't fit cleanly together, I can't accept it as 'real', and thus can't immerse myself in the story.

This reminds me of when Terry Moore decided that he had written himself into a corner with "Strangers in Paradise" and more-or-less gave up and rebooted the series with an explicit lack of continuity. Is this an inevitable result of long-term self-publishing? Do all of them eventually go off the rails and leave their audiences behind?