Tag Archives: short stories

Pruning some of the <100 page stories from the review request shelf

3 Replies

ShortStories
Today I set out to read a number of short stories, as opposed to a single book for review. Before I post those reviews though, I’m going to allow myself a small, selfish gripe. It’s really just to make myself feel better. We all need that on occasion.

I say this a lot, but I’m not a huge fan of short stories (or novellas, novelettes, etc). I respect that it takes a lot of talent to cram any amount of punch into a short piece, but I generally find them less than satisfying. And this feeling has only intensified with the recent trend of serialised shorts, in which stories are apparently no longer expected to stand on their own. Rather, they form part of a larger whole. I am not a fan. In fact, I hate this. A lot. I’m of the opinion that if an author wants to write a 100 page work there is no good reason to break it into four 25 page stories. There just isn’t.

But I digress. My initial point was just that I dislike short stories. Somehow, however, my review request list is always cluttered with them. And though I find their presence an annoyance, I can never bring myself to just delete them. I’ve promised to give all books  sent to me consideration (though I don’t honestly consider a short story a book), so eventually I’ve so far always given in and read them…basically just to remove the detritus form my TBR list.

It always feels like homework when I do it, though. With few exceptions, any enjoyment I get out of the experience is of the ‘creating order and neatness’ kind. Not that there aren’t good shorts out there (I always hope to be reading one) and not that I don’t give each a fair crack at a good review. But they really aren’t my thing. OK, now that’s out of the way…

Passion of an AngelDescription from Goordreads:
A captivating, mystical and erotic story about the life before Earth. The first world was ideal, the first humans were immortal, everything was given to them to ensure a happy and endless future and life seemed to be going perfect. But there was a curious angel who changed the course of life.

To begin with, angels hadn’t any feelings, they were cold, emotionless creatures wandering around the new world and examining the surroundings. But one of them learned to feel and to see the beauty of God’s creation and for that life, even the angel is surely ready to leave even Heaven.

Review:
This is essentially the exodus of Adam and Eve. It just starts a little earlier in the timeline. I’ll confess that I don’t gravitate toward religious stories at all. But even if I did, I’m still not sure I would think well of this one. There is a lot that is assumed…or rather, presumed. For example, Eve and the Angel hide their actions from Adam. However, two such innocent creatures wouldn’t have even had the moral understanding necessary to perceive those same actions as anything but natural in the circumstances. So, there is no reason they would think to hide them.  It requires the reader to impose modern western morality (or rules God doesn’t set out until far later in the Bible) to circumstances that would essentially be wholly without need for them in order for this story to make any sense at all.

Plus, the passionate ‘Love’ referred to in the title is 100% based on sex. There isn’t a single conversation between the characters prior to ‘the love.’ Guess even in Eden a woman’s worth still boiled down to her willingness to open her knees.

I also thought that the writing was rough and overly dramatic. I don’t think it was originally in English. Too many adjectives are used in the dialogue tags. As and example, in about a page I found “answered shortly,” “confessed honestly,” “sighed desperately,” “responded abruptly” and “cried out maliciously.” As well as “sneered the man smugly,” which isn’t a dialogue tag, but just felt like one more of the same. The dialogue itself was also really stiff, the POV was inconsistent and the whole thing felt as if it moved ahead in jolts instead of a smooth progression.

I’ll admit that a devoutly Christian reader might really enjoy this. But I’m not that reader and was less than impressed.

Blood for GoldDescription from Goodreads:
It all begins when fate starts to play a twisted game with a young female thief, Ulian, destroying her calm life in the capital and sending her to the island of Vrisiok – the most dangerous place in the kingdom of Remmiak, where human and orks are in constant war for its rich gold mines. 

While Srevtiur and Ulian cannot read this book and unveil their uncertain future and each other’s past, you have the Arasak blessing to do so!

Review:
This could have been a good story, if it was a complete anything. It’s not. It is, in fact, apparently the first five chapters of a much larger work. Why do authors do this, publish part of a book? A full quarter of it is a flashback and nothing in it concludes. What’s the point of reading it then?

The writing itself is fine, if a bit stiff. It suffers from a painful dearth of contractions, as is common in a certain sort of sword and sorcery book. The story seems really interesting and I was falling in love with the characters. Too bad I didn’t get to see them accomplish anything. All in all, disappointing, but only in it’s incompleteness.

Veritas Liberabit Vos Description from Goodreads:
A Skydive goes wrong and the participants share an experience that on the one hand gives them a definitive explanation for a controversial phenomenon, but on the other, sets before them a myriad of questions they decide to investigate. They go their separate ways and back to their normal lives, yet things aren’t quite the same and for some, life seems to have taken a twist towards the surreal.

Review:
Um….um….I’m sure something interesting was going on in this story somewhere. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it is…something about crop circles and a convoluted interweaving series of events. But it was all so confusing I never did catch on. What’s worse, by about 75% I was so bored with all the telling and not being sure what the point was and some of the painfully mundane events that I started skimming instead of reading. (That couldn’t have been helping my understanding any.) I gave serious thought to just not finishing it. It’s also another short story that doesn’t actually conclude. I seriously don’t understand the point of short stories that don’t end! Wouldn’t it be better just to write a novella that does?

The Loving Husband and the Faithful WifeDescription from Goodreads:
The Loving Husband and the Faithful Wife
A cutesy tale of romance and domestic bliss? Step inside this suburban home to find out what happens when the couple decide to have an extension added. What could possibly go wrong?

The Debt
Meet Del. Meet Tel. Two men from the wrong side of the tracks. Del stayed straight. Tel, well, he didn’t. Now Del is in debt up to his eyeballs, facing ruin. Only Tel can help. Will he though? And if he does, can Del afford the terms? 

Two dark tales of fear, paranoia, and good intentions, set in situations where grey bleeds into black, and where there are no easy answers. Kit Power invites you to see the world through the eyes of the faces that pass you every day. Discover how it feels to really know someone.

Review:
The first story started out well and then tapered off into mundane predictability. It was well written and all, but after a certain point you just knew where it was going to go. Though, I do have to admit that the final dénouement pulled everything together nicely. The second was better and I really appreciated the interpretable ending. Both stories show a real talent for placing the reader in the characters’ heads and they all felt real to me. I’d be well up for reading more of Power’s books.

Shades of Grey

Book Review of Shades of Grey, by Michael Cargill

Leave a reply

Shades of GreyBook five of my Taking Care of My Own challenge is Michael Cargill‘s Shades of Grey. I think I picked it up from the Amazon free list. But I’ve had it so long I’m not even sure anymore.

Description from Amazon:
John is not a very nice man. He works for the government. So who has tied him to a chair and what do they want?

James is a British soldier during WWII. Tom is a young boy with a terrible secret.

Three stories. Three very different people. All of them battling to survive.

Review:
Shades of Grey consists of three short pieces, two of which I would classify as vignettes as opposed to actual stories since they seem to simply relay the events of a segment of time rather than possess any sort o beginning, middle and end. Having said that, I rather enjoyed them all, the first most of all.

I’ll admit that the writing occasionally felt a little stiff and there was a certain juvenile (or maybe just male) preoccupation with excrement jokes and sexual/masturbatory references. I would be hard pressed to call this highbrow reading material, but I never got the impression it was trying to be. I enjoyed more than I grimaced at. What more could I really ask for?

Cleaning out the short stories from my 'Taking Care of my Own' challenge shelf banner

Cleaning out the short stories from my ‘Taking Care of my Own’ challenge shelf

Leave a reply

I collected all the books that I own, written by people I ‘know’ into one place with the intent of spending the next month reading them. In doing so, I noticed a couple are actually novellas, novellettes, or short stories. So, I’m taking this opportunity to sit down and systematically work through anything less than 100 pages all at one time.

I’ll be honest up front, and I’ve said this before, I’m not a huge fan of short stories in general. I’m a bit mystified how I always seem to have so many on my Kindle. I think they breed. Anyhow, following are reviews of 6 very different stories, grouped for no more reason than that they matched an external criteria. Enjoy

When You Were PixelsOh my goodness! Oh my goodness, fan girl swoon! I loved this sooo much. (Honestly, I’m not just saying that. I really loved it.) It was the feel of it, more than anything else. Yes, I could wonder how Antho could see a proficient assassin as even remotely fragile. I do. But I don’t really have to understand where self-destructive, self-sacrificing, obsessive love comes from to believe it. Emotions are slippery things and sometimes they have a mind of their own, especially the emotions of already damaged people. (And aren’t we all just a bit damaged, in the end?)

The open, all out on the table, completely exposed autobiographical letter style of the story is extremely effective in stirring emotions. I wanted very badly to see Antho and HIM to find some peace, but know it can’t be.

Apparently this is a stand-alone short for a series that doesn’t exist yet. I will DEFINITELY be reading it all when it does. A full five stars for this one.

The Phoenix CycleWould someone tell what the heck I just read, because I sure don’t know. It’s set in some mysterious dystopian future (no cause of the decline of civilisation is provided) and predominantly focuses on a mysterious character named Steve (no defining characteristics are provided) and his even more mysterious girlfriend, Leslie. So, essentially an unknown man, in an unknown future, fights some unknown social oppression, comes to some unknown decision, which then lead to some unknown consequences. Ummmm….

It’s my understanding that this is a small piece of a larger work. I had forgotten this when I sat down to read it. (To be fair, I’m fairly sure the author did mention it in his email.) If I had remembered, I probably would never have picked it up. I detest the trend of publishing teasers marketed as complete pieces of work. It pisses me off to realise too late that I’ve just invested time in a mere piece of something.

What’s more, and I’m really not trying to be mean here, I get the impression from the blurb (and the author’s ascertain that this somehow ties into a graduate thesis) that this whole series is being developed as some sort of university assignment. It feels like it too. From the synopsis:

The revolution is headed by the forgotten inmates of Alcatraz. These inmates are actually powerful philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Camus, Gandhi and others. Together they will take on The General (who is based off of The Marquis de Sade. A rather dark philosopher.) and a populace that struggles to care about anything other than themselves.

We’re name dropping here. We’re ensuring that the reader (professor) knows we’ve done our research. We’re creating artificial gravitas for ourselves. This sense of self-importance wasn’t just apparent in the write-up, but carried through the book too. It showed up in the way the vague inferences (and HEAVY descriptions) suggested that the reader should know what was going on, and if only they too were just a bit smarter, they would.  When really, there simply wasn’t enough solid information provided to allow understanding to develop. Plenty of others love this story; so maybe despite all my education I’m really not up to sophist par. It’s off-putting. Or at least it is to me.

The writing is technically fine. There is a palpable atmosphere to the story and as a longer piece, the world could be interesting. But on it’s own, this is just an anchorless, random (and largely undefined) series of events that mean nothing to the reader.

The Rock Star in the Mirror

Ms. Cathcart and I aren’t technically ‘friends’ so this doesn’t technically qualify for the challenge. But we’ve interacted a number of times in the forums and such. Since I’m reading shorts today, I figured I might as well throw it in.

I thought this was an interesting little story chronicling one young man’s attempt to find himself, when he wasn’t even originally aware that he was lost. An obsession with David Bowie, once removed, is just such a random way to go about it. I especially liked that the HEA isn’t one that brings all the happy people together. Joe had to face the consequences of his actions, but was still happy with the end result. It did seem to wrap up unexpectedly quickly, but it’s well-written and worth the time to read.

Dead Doughboy WalkingI suppose this was all right, just not really my thing. I was well written and self-contained, which is all I really ask of a short story. You get a fairly firm grasp of both Cecil and Horace’s personalities, though I have to admit I’m not sure if Cecil started out quite as evil as he ended up or if he became that way in the course of the story. The synopsis would suggest he started that way. All in all, for the right reader, probably a real win. For me, I can appreciate that it’s mechanically sound and makes sense, but can’t say I particularly enjoyed it.

Kiss and Spell

This was all right I suppose. In a way it was a sweet little romance and the sex was hot, though I’ve never been a fan of the courser language in soft sex scenes. By all means, call it  a cock, cunt or pussy if it’s a dirty fuck and all, but if two people are supposed to be making sweet, gentle love the same words feel horribly out of place.

I do have one major complaint, though. It bothered me that Marissa was a sexually liberated woman who happened to like being in control in the bedroom, but she spends most of the book being ashamed of this and trying to change herself. Why can’t she just be a sexually aggressive woman who knows what she likes? Promiscuous girls can be good too. Why does this have to be portrayed as wrong?  What’s more, she eventually found someone to happily submit to. So, the whole subtext appears to be that her initial behaviour was somehow unnatural and by accepting  the “natural” monogamous, submissive role all is well with the world. Bah! What a waste.

Wheels and DealsThis looks to be an interesting start to something bigger. It introduces a lot of interesting characters, but never returns to any of them after moving on. How they all tie together remains a mystery. The writing is sharp and quite readable. It’s also well edited. But what I like most about it was it’s grittiness. Not everyone is pretty or noble or even clean. There are drug addicts, violence, and sex devoid of love or even affection. Characters have ulterior motives and sinister intents. However, this is in no way a stand-alone piece.