No One Will Come Back For Us is an anthology that another review described as postcolonial Lovecraft, and that is apt but incomplete. This is a collection of stark and often understated fears, of confrontations between humanity and the unknown.

Mohamed shuffles her themes like cards. There is rational narrator, perhaps some kind of professional rational observer (literally in "The Evaluator" and "No One Will Come Back For Us" to pick two stories at random), sometimes a concerned parent or uncanny child, who is confronted with a situation of cosmic horror. The unknown threat balances between the Old Gods of the Land, spirits who demand respect, offering, and the occasional sacrifice, but who are basically beneficent, and Elder Things, extradimensional monsters entirely anathema to sanity and human existence. And of course, rationality and professionalism are thin shields against the true nature of the universe, and end up broken. Fortunately not in the histrionic prolixity of a Lovecraft protagonist, but more in the soft snap of despair and acceptance.

The collection suffers due to its format. If this had been about half the length, eight stories instead of seventeen, I would have had no hesitation rating it five stars. At a certain point, however, I started feeling like I was returning to The Complete Short Stories of J.G. Ballard, and its thematic repitition. "Okay, I get it. Let's move along." This is unfair, Mohamed is a much less nihilistic and hateful author than Ballard, and is on average a better storyteller, but the collection is a lot to take in. The good news is that I only disliked one story, which is a great hit rate.

To pick my eight: Instructions, The Evaluator, The General's Turn, Fortunato, Four Hours of a Revolution, No One Will Come Back For Us, Willing, and For Each of These Miseries.