In The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake, we can sense the sort of geographical despair that could drive a person to self-extinction: human life is closed in upon, almost crushed between ragged slopes of landscape, almost lost in the hollows between the rises. There is so much violence in this setting, so much bleak, gun-metal despair. It thrives in the mines, in such stories as "Hollow"; in the off-time thrills of cockfighting (and man-fighting) in "The Scrapper"; and in the simply dark and perverse private lives of the people, as in "The Mark."

However, the best stories are those in which men and women strive for a momentary redemption, for an ascension out of the emotional morass that tugs at their heels. In "Trilobites," a young man stares out across a valley at the glint from a copper roof; the roof, like the woman who lives beneath it...