“Panoramic in scope, precise in detail, stirring in content, Hour of the Crab is exhilarating and poised, a mythos of modern times. Here are fire gods, migration, and extraterrestrial messages, strange spirits and apparitions rendered harrowingly real. Deftly speculative, menacingly real, these stories compel you to change your life.” — David Huebert, author of Peninsula Sinking
“The stories in this sure-footed collection take us deeper into the world and invite us to see outside our usual framing of things. In times when our literary options might seem to be diversion or despair, Patricia Robertson offers a third way: to look steadily and respond humanely.” — Joan Thomas, author of Five Wives
“Patricia Robertson’s beautifully written, intelligent stories take us into the clash of cultures — African and European, the elderly and the young — across the defining borders of our time, to show us that our habitual ways of confronting change are no longer working. Her stories re-align what we think we know about the world — they are that good.” — Wayne Grady, author of Up from Freedom
“Hour of the Crab is fascinating and dark, playing with the edge of what is real and what could be.” — Miramichi Reader
“The stories in Hour of the Crab are compelling, touching on a wide range of human emotions and motivations and told in an interesting and thought-provoking way.” — Winnipeg Free Press
“Robertson manages to articulate her own electrifying turns of phrase in her speculative short-story collection. Plaintive ghosts, vengeful gods, and prophetic dreams haunt the book’s pages, and viscerally uncanny words and symbols often accompany these unearthly phenomena.” — CNQ
“Robertson’s prose is faultless, imbued with breathtaking imagery. Many of the stories involve a sense of otherworldliness, capturing the wonder of the world beyond the 'consensual reality.'” — Prairie Books Now
“Robertson achieves a balance between adrenaline-filled scenes of refugee rescue and fierce firefighting and contemplative moments of youthful yearnings and intellectual introspection to create a cohesive work where readers will want to be lost.” — Atlantic Books Today
“I would inwardly be predicting how [Robertson] might resolve the stories, but the final scene slid into something else entirely, in a quiet and ordinary way.” — Buried in Print
