The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Reporter

by Daniela Tomova

A reporter travels to the Norwegian Arctic to cover an unusual sled race with the undead leading the living into unknown territory.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Fantasy, Zombies

46 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 16, 2022

Reviews

[karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Icebound Race is in the pure literal frozen ice-hell of the Norwegian Arctic. You know, the kind of Norway which is all the way out to Europe and then all the way up to a town where the ratio of polar bears to people decidedly favors the bears.

this is a longish, hallucinatory story about zombie sled races.

going into it, i thought it was going to be like the iditarod, but with zombies pulling living humans along the ice, which is an arresting visual, but here it's somewhat different.

during "revenant season," the zombies buried underneath the snow are unearthed by the driving winds and begin walking around, where they are gathered by handlers who take care of them until race day. they have more motility than yer average zombie, because they race alone, on kicksleds, drawn by an impulse towards...something located at the north pole.

they can also speak

“Why do you race?”

“It is inevitable.”

the zombie racers are given a head start before the human competitors follow on their dogsleds and sometimes there are unfortunate encounters between the two types of racers. the event is new, but gaining momentum, and our heroine, an extreme-sports writer, is there to cover the race and its history, and also participate.

her interview style is casual at best:

“But how did it become the Icebound? How did people go from ‘Yeah, let’s all get on sleds and chase each other around some hungry undead corpses’ to—uh—‘Let’s get the hungry undead corpses on sleds and send them off at high speeds’?”

“Reason other than poke-the-bear, bread-and-circuses kind of thing?” he asks, reaching over me to get the bottle.

it starts out funny and jokey like that, but once the race begins, it's nothing but white wilderness as far as the eye can see, hour after relentless hour, and although the possibility of a zombie lagger always a tension-making possibility, the brain naturally slips into a hypnotic resting-state of introspection and self-scrutiny.

and then the weird shit starts happening and the story gets slippery and jagged and i probably didn't understand all of it, but the parts i did were great, especially the way it keeps circling back to fate and choices, and i loved the narrator's voice and her ruminative wrestling with her own family legacy.

Don’t get me wrong, I do have a survival instinct. I got it from my father, who managed to escape the old country by snaking under a kilometer of razor wire and throwing himself over concrete walls twice his height as he was shot at by fellow officers armed with Kalashnikovs. He made it, though his twin brother didn’t.

“I had been right there,” he’d repeat with the same disbelief every time he told the story, “where he was hit. That same spot, a second earlier.” And he’d instruct me, cryptically, “Learn from me.”

I was never sure what I was supposed to learn but I grew up obsessed with what it was that made the difference—one zag instead of a zig and I wouldn’t exist. Snap. Just like that.

One zig instead of a zag and the bullet that felled my uncle would have chipped a concrete wall instead. And I’d be working in a tech startup or in marketing, because I wouldn’t have had to grow up with the horrible sentence: “I had been right there, a second earlier.”

But zigs were zigged and zags were zagged and here I am, seeking out experiences on the edge of survival that I can package into marketable epiphanies for eight cents a word.

this race is very much not for me, but the story, despite the murky whasshappening bits, very much was.



read it for yourself here:

https://www.tor.com/2022/03/16/the-lo...


come to my blog!

[Fiona Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now, in my many years of making questionable choices, I have learned to spot your classic Bad Idea, especially when it comes grinning at you from behind a cloud of sour beer breath.

Still—we all have that one friend who always says, “I know, but . . .” And the “but” is always more compelling than any reason you can throw at them? Tonight I’m that friend. The gal who got an interview with a revenant! That gal gets two cents more per word. That gal’s heating is on all winter. That gal buys quality tampons—the silk-lined ones!

I thought this was absolutely stunning - and though you have to keep your focus up, the ending does deliver payoff. This is one of the examples that make short form writing so appealing to me - the writing is atmospheric, and a whole world is built between the lines. Beautiful, and made me want to check out more from this author.

https://www.tor.com/2022/03/16/the-lo...

[Lizzie S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trippy zombie sled races in Norway? Sign me up (from afar).

[Albert Marsden]

Wanted to like this but ultimately didn't. I thought the setting was going to be important but ultimately it just felt like a generic winter landscape. The revenant race was a neat idea but it only teases you with the idea of a zombie Iditarod and the actual race is more complicated. The works-for-clicks extreme sports journalist didn't do much for me either. Oh well you can't win em all.

[Netanella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently revenants have a herding instinct to head to the North Pole (Frankenstein's monster, anyone?), and in this story, the frozen zombies are put in racing suits and strapped to sleds in an annual zombie sled race in Norway. Add an intrepid reporter who thinks this is great fun, a lot of alcohol, and a hallucination filled race, and I'm not sure what the outcome really is. It's about the junction between individual choices and inevitability, and our reporter is stuck right in the middle.

There's some strong emotion here, also. I loved the memories of the reporter's grandmother.

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 3 out of 5]

A story about a reporter who goes to report on an unusual sled race in Norway that involves zombies. It starts out like an investigative story by the reporter but when the reporter takes part in the race to see where the zombies are going, the story takes a strange, surreal turn into possible paths taken by the reporter in her life that may, or may not, lead to her life being in the hand of the zombies.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

it took me a little while to get used to the writing style, but once i did I found this so absorbing and hypnotic. a zombie-sled race through the arctic sounds like suuuch a smart, non self-destructive move right. nothing bad could ever happen here.

[Bonnie Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

This short story was fairly atmospheric and creepy, but also quite confusing. It was fine.

[luna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not too sure what to make of this short story. On one hand, it is environmentally immersive through the snow, and the strange sort of emptiness of the wilderness the main character finds herself within. The revenants as well appear to be well-developed, and I find their ability to talk to be one of my favorite aspects the story's world.

Outside of this realm, however, I feel as though the story is detached (Whether or not that is intentional can be debated). By detached, I mean that it doesn't feel as though a close connection is formed between the reader and the main character. We are privy to her thoughts and emotions, as well as her slight familial history, but the writing never felt like it really made her seem like a person (Not to say that the writing wasn't good, of course). She felt extremely stiff. I wouldn't go as far as to call her a caricature of a real person, but it kind of felt like it was nearing that point.

Other than that, I'm interested in reading other works Tomova has written, or will write in the coming future. They clearly have a solid foundation in world-building, and have the ability to make their stories rather charming through their creativity.

[Richard Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is about the Icebound, an extreme race, that is not just huskies and sleds, but with the UNDEAD. The Dunning–Kruger effect is “a cognitive bias whereby people with low ability, expertise, or experience regarding a certain type of task or area of knowledge tend to overestimate their ability or knowledge.” We get introduced to the revenants. Which for me is so much creepier and weirder and more dangerous than zombie or undead. In folklore, a revenant is an animated corpse that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living. The word revenant is derived from the Old French word, revenant, the "returning". The walking normally bit when they visit the revenants, that was creepy. Tense. The sense of electricity that permeates this story. The magnets, for safety, over the cages. The whole idea of fate—zigging or zagging. The story of her father and uncle, running from war, trying to survive, a bullet getting one of them. Then they are lost, the dogs gone, and the woman! She is so creepy, so unsettling. The idea of our protagonist living out many lives, many fates, and seeing them ALL in this moment—zigging and zagging. Powerful stuff. The woman—the zoetrope—a world, a universe. The revenants disappearing into the blind spot. And then the end—wow. I love that hope. One of my favorite stories I've taught in my workshops.

[Alicia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought the idea was interesting, but the last half didn't work for me. There was too much trying to figure out what was going on. Is she in the tent or wandering around hallucinating? Or was there something more literal and much more weird going on? I also would have liked a bit of closure, but that wouldn't have fit with the trippy nature of the last half.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sad to say that I didn't really get it, just like the other reviews here. What started out as an extremely exciting premise turned into a lot of confusion. I'd like to see this concept revisited.

[Fatima · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the atmosphere to this, and the overall concept of how humans use zombies for entertainment was interesting. The last bit in the end was too surreal for my understanding at times, but overall I did really like this.

[Vi No · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somehow genius but, as most short stories it unravels completely at the third act trying to come up with The- spectacular-so worth it-finale. I'd prefer a lukewarm ending to a bad paced, rushed third act.

[Per · Rating 2 out of 5]

https://www.tor.com/2022/03/16/the-lo...

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this. Starts out like an Outside Magazine article with a horror twist, ends up in a Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror place. A lot of fun, really weird.

[Constant Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly, I hated the writting style. It relied on dumb disciptions,if that amkes sense.

[chelsea · Rating 3 out of 5]

i don't know if i really GOT this 100% but what i did get was really sensory and creepy af. ive never smelled so much reading a story before.

[Kieran McAndrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Norwegian Arctic plays host to an uncanny race.

A fascinating and somewhat disturbing short story. Tomova knows how to write a strange and unnerving tale.

[Sam - Spines in a Line · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up. A reporter desperate for a killer story decides to check out this unique sporting event, where sledders race alongside literal zombies. And not only is she going to cover the event, she’s going to race in it!

The true horror at the heart of this story is slow and sneaky. We get hints of the danger throughout, but there are so many guards and checks in place, nothing bad could ever really happen! But no one knows what the zombies are racing towards each year and it’s much worse than anything anyone imagined.

This was such a creepy read. It feels perfect as a winter read to match the weather these characters are experiencing but perhaps you’ll much prefer reading in a safe warm space to vastly differentiate yourself from their circumstances.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this, I think it could make an intriguing full novel. I don’t really get what the woman was supposed to be, but it still was a good read.