{"id":294,"date":"2025-01-01T05:32:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-31T18:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/?p=294"},"modified":"2025-10-13T14:40:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T03:40:52","slug":"book-review-it-came-from-the-trees-by-joel-mckay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/2025\/01\/01\/book-review-it-came-from-the-trees-by-joel-mckay\/","title":{"rendered":"Book review: It Came From the Trees by Joel McKay"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joel McKay\u2019s collection of short stories It Came From the Trees is an interesting mixture of horror, action and monster adventure tales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sinister airline threatens a scientist working on the cutting-edge of travel technology in \u2018A 21st Century DB Cooper\u2019. A lone warrior finds a kindred spirit in an unexpected place as he runs for his life in \u2018The Warrior\u2019s Task\u2019. A Lovecraftian horror bleeds into our world in a museum full of stolen First Nations artefacts in \u2018The Silent Screamer\u2019. And a mysterious disease besets a group of tree planters out in the wilderness in the titular \u2018It Came From the Trees\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These stories are highly imaginative, drawing tropes and inspiration from a variety of tropes and genres, including horror, pulp westerns, Lovecraftian monsters, action thrillers, and even high fantasy. The main thread that most have in common is a connection to, or setting in, British Columbia, the author\u2019s home, but they are otherwise quite unique in plot, character and genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite being such a short collection\u2014there are five stories, the longest being 32 pages\u2014they are so rich and far-ranging in themes that it feels like a much longer work. McKay\u2019s choice to write a subsequent two-pager explanation of each story shares with the reader why he chose to explore a specific theme, orient in a particular setting, include a certain monster, and so forth. Far from dulling the magic of the stories, these rationalisations add a richness to the texts, making the reader think critically about what they\u2019ve just read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good for writers and readers of speculative fiction. This collection is short but packs a punch\u2014well worth a read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This review first appeared in Aurealis magazine<\/a>, issue #175.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joel McKay\u2019s collection of short stories It Came From the Trees is an interesting mixture of horror, action and monster adventure tales. A sinister airline … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":295,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[248,302,44,250,301,303,67,70],"class_list":["post-294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","tag-aurealis","tag-birchwood-press","tag-dark-fantasy","tag-horror","tag-joel-mckay","tag-lovecraft","tag-short-stories","tag-speculative-fiction","latest_post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":403,"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions\/403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddfeather.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}