Taking another break from the Harry Hole saga (which I really hope never ends), Jo Nesbo delivers this collection of stories - and, really, a couple short novels - outside the world of police procedurals. And for the most part in warmer settings outside of Scandinavia, though he has to keep reminding the reader where they’re set because Nesbo’s voice always conveys Nordic darkness to me. The first set of stories is loosely united by the theme of jealousy and the second by the theme of power, though that’s kind of an artificial classification. Several of the stories are in the realm of speculative fiction, but definitely not in the optimistic vein. No matter how society progresses (and in the worlds of these stories, it only progresses for the well-off and undesperate few who are decidedly not the subjects of the stories; their world devolves), people remain the same with all their venal and mortal imperfections and selfishness. There are scant few chances at noble redemption in the unending quest for survival, security, and satisfaction of appetites. Nesbo is a master at narrative sleight of hand, whether featuring an unreliable first-person narrator or conveniently skipping over key moments and conversations in such a deft way that the reader is inevitably surprised by a twist that pulls everything together ominously. That talent is on display fully here. The book could have used one more pass with a proofreader, though. There are a lot of errors, mostly sloppy repetitions of words, subject-verb mismatches, and pronoun errors. The first story is a tightrope of voice, weaving first and second person narration together hypnotically … until there are mid-sentence slip-ups into third person that break the spell.