Neil has produced some of my favourite short story collections over the years. He always has a knack for giving the reader a wide selection of tales that vary in style, genre and mood while still retaining the hallmarks that make Gaiman, well, Gaiman. And this collection is no different. In his introduction, Gaiman claims these shorts are far too random and unconnected to form an effective collection – but I’d beg to disagree. Several small connections hide beneath the surface, as little threads spider […]
Never Was One for a Prissy Girl
Admittedly, I am not a short story person. Most authors seem to think short stories should always leave the reader wanting more. I’m of the opinion that if I pay full admission to the museum, I get to see all the things and not be hustled out the door after making it past the lobby. Short stories should be appetizing little morsels, a blissful snack that may leave you with a ghost of taste long after you finish, but never still famished. Epiphanies in pastries […]
Once you go dragon, you wish for a wagon
Make 2015 the year that you introduce yourself to Ken Scholes. One of the beauties of the internet and social media is that you intersect with people you will probably never meet in person and then they introduce you to things you might not have otherwise seen. Many of my favorite things have come to me this way. Through a Facebook friend whom I may never meet in person, I read “If Dragon’s Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear.” I wrote a review and as […]
1001 Nights, for Beginners
Engraved on the Eye is a collection of 8 short stories told in various settings of Fantasy Middle East, drawing on Islamic and Middle Eastern folklore. It’s an extremely quick read. The stories are entertaining and the characters are lively, jovial, and diverse. Every story has some sort of supernatural creatures; ghuls feature prominently, along with ghul-hunters, martial artists, gunslingers, supervillains, rogues, dervishes,bounty hunters, and shaykhs. As with many short story books, there’s a range in subject matter and quality. I particularly enjoyed Mister Hadj’s Sunset Ride (about a gun-slinging Muslim wizard in […]
Bleak and more Bleak
One of the reasons I won’t hit my goal of books this year is the collection of short stories: Dear Life by Alice Munro which I read six months ago. The writing is terrific, and yet, the stark reality of these stories put me in a funk. Most of us live insignificant lives, the small details, the dramas, don’t add up to much in the end. Munro’s characters don’t learn lessons, their stories simply reminding us how small life is. Leaving Maverly is set in […]
Dearly Departed: If Thatcher had died in 1983.
I’ve been reading a lot of short stories lately. Both Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel came out with collections this year, so I’ve found it interesting to compare their styles. Atwood’s stories are often complex in their setups, whereas Mantel is quite stripped down (the reverse of her Cromwell novels, which I found slow-moving and very dense) in tone and style. While Atwood’s collection is about love, betrayal, and revenge, Mantel focuses on a more vague state-of-nation sensibility and covers a variety of ideas in […]
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