Like the story says:
Aimee’s big trick is that she makes twenty-six monkeys vanish onstage.
Except it’s not really Aimee’s trick, it’s the monkeys’. Then Kij Jonhson’s “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” goes on to reveal that the monkeys (and one chimpanzee, who is not a monkey) have plenty of other tricks up their, um, arms.
On the surface the story seems to be a cute tale about monkeys in a circus. (Definitely cuter than Twelve Monkeys.) You have to look askance, out of the corner of your eye to see Aimee’s side of the story. So much goes unsaid, even more than in “The Dreaming Wind“, her story is downright oblique.
This bugged me at first, and it bothered me even more that nothing gets explained. There are awful things that never get explained. There are pleasant things that never get explained. But that’s the point. Lots of things will never get explained. Don’t even ask why. Better to realize what you have and go home.
Okay, I can see that.
Next.
Writing Every Day 