Tag: short stories

Review – Settling Scores

Posted November 27, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Settling Scores

Settling Scores: Sporting Mysteries

by Martin Edwards (editor)

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Short Stories
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Talented sportsmen inexplicably go absent without leave, crafty gamblers conspire in the hope of making a killing, and personal rivalries and jealousies come to a head on fields of play The classic stories in this new British Library anthology show that crime is a game for all seasons.

I thought I’d read these sporting mysteries (in this collection curated by Martin Edwards) in honour of the Rugby World Cup, the only sport I have so far managed to care about or even half-understand. The majority of these stories need no sporting knowledge at all to understand and follow; the sporting environment is just the backdrop. Even where you do need to know something, it’s fairly minimal.

It’s not a bad spread of stories, though the tone varies a bit (some stories feel rather brutal, and one involves spies and espionage, etc). Not one of my favourite collections, perhaps, but the sporting types might appreciate it a bit more. I did appreciate that it wasn’t just football and cricket stories or something — there was an archery story included, for example.

As ever, the collection is greater than the sum of its parts: it’s nice to read across a spread of the classic crime/mystery writers, and not just the biggest names, though there is (inevitably) a story by Arthur Conan Doyle.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Sacraments for the Unfit

Posted October 29, 2023 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Sacraments for the Unfit

Sacraments for the Unfit

by Sarah Tolmie

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories
Pages: 146
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic brought out the ritualist in many of us. In this collection of contemporary weird short fiction, a variety of different persons and beings try to fill up their days in varying states of isolation and mystery, real or imaginary. An angel outlives the Apparat that used to employ him; a deity complains about no longer feeling seen; a museum curator living alone begins to inexplicably alter; a medievalist suffering from vision loss gets into a strange relationship with the ghost of the codicologist M. R. James; enigmatic objects begin to work themselves out of the ground by the grave of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, prompting scholarly speculation. Sacraments For the Unfit is a series of vignettes about the transformations that can happen while staying in place.

I can see why this book has been compared with Ursula Le Guin’s work. It had the same quality I have with some of her more impenetrable stories where I just don’t quite “get it”. Some of them seem to require some outside knowledge for more clarity — a little knowledge of M.R. James wouldn’t hurt, or Wittgenstein, which is quite the ask (I know a little about James, almost nothing about Wittgenstein).

In the end I don’t regret reading it, but also it wasn’t quite 100% squarely my thing, if that makes sense. I’m eager to read more of Tolmie’s books and stories, though: I really liked The Fourth Island and All the Horses of Iceland.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky

Posted August 10, 2021 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of What it Means When A Man Falls From The Sky by Lesley Nneka ArimahWhat It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah

I am not the world’s biggest fan of short stories, in general, I must admit. There are some stories I’ve appreciated a lot, so it’s not that my mind is completely closed to them… but mostly I prefer something a bit meatier. Where I do like short stories, I often like the ones that surprise me, the ones with a sting in the tail. And there were one or two here that worked in that way for me, like the title story: a sudden moment of everything falling (ha) into place, and oh, oh, that’s what that was…

Overall, I didn’t really adore these stories, but there are some great moments that did catch my eye — ways of describing things, capturing a moment, etc — and some lovely writing. If you enjoy short stories more generally, I suspect there’s a lot here for you… but for me, they weren’t quite as striking or memorable as I’d hoped — which I know is more about me and what I like than the stories themselves!

Rating: 3/5

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Review – Permeable Borders

Posted May 17, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Permeable Borders by Nina Kiriki HoffmanPermeable Borders, Nina Kiriki Hoffman

I’ve been meaning to try Hoffman’s books for literally years. Not sure how long this one has been on my TBR, but long enough. Short stories aren’t always my thing, so perhaps it wasn’t the right place to start: nonetheless, it’s what came up on my Kobo first and I thought, well, why not?

I ended up bailing, I’m afraid; it’s competent enough writing, but I didn’t get hooked on the stories or characters, and one of the stories was just unbelievably gross, with a ton of rape and rape culture. I’m sure it wasn’t intended to be approving of rape, but it’s just not a sort of story I’m interested in, and the obsession with rape in that particular story turned me off all the others. I’ll definitely try some of Hoffman’s novels, but her short story writing seems to be unequivocally not my thing.

Rating: 2/5

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Review – Sum

Posted March 23, 2018 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Sum by David EaglemanSum, David Eagleman

Sum is a slim book, just 100 pages long, with 40 different views of what the afterlife might be like. Some of them feel too glib and flippant for me (though no doubt the same stories would make others smile), but there are some that are really inventive, bittersweet and clever, and some that just have really good lines. Like this one:

There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.

Yow. That’s just true in a sad way: the only afterlife everyone can be sure of is when people speak of them once they’re gone. There’s definitely poignancy in the idea of waiting for that last time your name is spoken before you move on.

I found some of the stories a little too similar in tone or basic idea, but it’s still a creative collection.

Rating: 4/5

Buy this book: Amazon UK | Amazon US | The Book Depository
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Review – Maps to Nowhere

Posted December 22, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of Maps to Nowhere by Marie BrennanMaps to Nowhere, Marie Brennan

Almost all of these short stories worked for me, which is a wonder (I can be picky!). Each of them had some really fascinating ideas, and the only one that left me cold was ‘Love, Caycee’ (and even then, I liked the idea, it’s just I don’t think it quite came together into a story I found fun to read). Of course, one of my favourites is the one featuring Isabella Trent, particularly for the last letter in the narrative. Of course Isabella would get herself arrested over a matter of science!

But the others are all worth the time too, and I particularly liked ‘Once a Goddess’, the first story of the collection. Brennan is really great at atmosphere, as these stories show; each of them evoked its own landscape in my head.

Rating: 5/5

Buy this book: Amazon UK | Amazon US
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Review – Snowdrift and Other Stories

Posted October 29, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Snowdrift & Other Stories by Georgette HeyerSnowdrift and Other Stories, Georgette Heyer

Received to review via Netgalley; publication date 3rd October 2017

I’ve been a fan of Heyer’s Regency romances and adventures for a while now, so when I saw this was ‘Read Now’ on Netgalley, I confess I pounced. It’s actually the collection Pistols for Two (which I hadn’t read yet) but with three extra stories from early in Heyer’s career.

While Heyer’s short stories aren’t precisely what I like in a short story — something with a twist, something maybe a little unpredictable, something packed into as small a space as possible — they’re fun little stories, very much like her longer works but compressed. The same types of hero and heroine, the same sorts of love scene and the same sort of happy ending abound, along with Heyer’s usual wit. If you enjoy the banter between her characters and the sparkle of her writing, all of that is in evidence here. If I had to call the collection anything, I might call it Miniatures!

If you don’t love Heyer’s work, well, this won’t be for you. It’s very much typical of her, and she doesn’t have the space to make her heroes and heroines distinctive. And if you’ve never tried Heyer, well, I’d start with The Talisman Ring instead, if I were you.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Starlings

Posted September 28, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Cover of Starlings by Jo WaltonStarlings, Jo Walton

Received to review via Tachyon; publication date 30th January 2018

It’s no secret that I love Jo Walton’s work, and I’d better add here that I’ve spent time with her as well — I’d call her a friend. Still, I knew her work first, and this is a fun collection. Jo may say she doesn’t know how to write short stories, but all the same everything here works pretty well. I only knew ‘Relentlessly Mundane’ and some of the poetry before, I think. It was nice to re-encounter the poetry here and spend some time with it — reading it online wasn’t the same at all. I hadn’t read the play, either, ‘Three Shouts on a Hill’; entertaining stuff.

My favourite of the short stories… hmm, possibly ‘Sleeper’, and I liked ‘What Joseph Felt’ a lot too.

Really, I never know quite how to review short story collections: suffice it to say that I enjoyed it, and I think it’s worth it, especially if you’re already a fan of Walton’s work. I’m glad I got to read it ahead of time.

Rating: 4/5

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Review – Outer Space, Inner Lands

Posted September 10, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 1 Comment

Cover of The Unreal and the Real by Ursula Le GuinOuter Space, Inner Lands, Ursula Le Guin

Outer Space, Inner Lands is the second of two volumes collecting together the best of Ursula Le Guin’s short fiction. It’s also the one containing all the SF work, or at least all the less realistic work, and it contains stories like ‘Those Who Walk Away from Omelas’, one of Ursula Le Guin’s most famous stories (at least among people I know) — though not my favourite, as I think the moral is obvious from the beginning.

As always, Le Guin’s writing is clear and strong, and the stories chosen here span her career and showcase all kinds of different ideas and different phases of her work. I prefer it to the first volume, because I find Le Guin’s speculative fiction more accessible.

She’s brilliant. Do yourself a favour.

Rating: 5/5

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Review – Dangerous Women (Part III)

Posted May 19, 2017 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of Dangerous Women ed. G.R.R. MartinDangerous Women, ed. Gardner Dozois & G.R.R. Martin

Overall, the whole collection is pretty disappointing to me. The stories might fit the theme of ‘dangerous women’ on a technicality, but few of them feel genuinely dangerous. Usually the twist is that, surprise! She’s not a good girl after all! Righto.

‘Some Desperado’, by Joe Abercrombie — One of the better ones in the collection. The main character is, indeed, a desperado, and things don’t go too well for her — but she defends herself and keeps on running.

‘City Lazarus’, by Diana Rowland — I’ve kind of avoided Rowland’s work since I saw her on a panel at a con and all she did was sell her work, and this didn’t really change my mind. The writing is okay, but lord, the set-up is so typical and the twist so obvious.

‘Hell Hath No Fury’, by Sherrilyn Kenyon — The title doesn’t even make sense, since the ‘woman scorned’ is actually driven out of a village she helped to found, not just scorned. She lays a curse on the land, people with cameras come in long after and try to film a paranormal exposé, she rips ’em to shreds. Yawn. Isn’t this an episode of Supernatural?

‘The Hands That Are Not There’, by Melinda Snodgrass — For a female author, wow does she cater to the male gaze. I didn’t get through the bar scene.

‘Caretakers’, by Pat Cadigan — This kind of… fizzled, for me. It was slow and it took a long time to get where it was going, and once it got there, it wasn’t such a shock at all.

‘Nora’s Song’, by Cecelia Holland — It’s Eleanor of Aquitane, it should be completely badass. Didn’t work for me, though.

‘Bombshells’, by Jim Butcher — Skipped entirely, with a side-eye at the spoiler for the Dresden Files in the intro. I get that it’s been out a long time, but maaaan.

Rating: 2/5

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