I really want to thank Mysterious Press, Joyce Carol Oates and NetGalley for an opportunity to read this collection. This is my first brush with OatI really want to thank Mysterious Press, Joyce Carol Oates and NetGalley for an opportunity to read this collection. This is my first brush with Oates and I hoped it would prove indicative of how well I might like her writing. It delivered!
I let these stories of which there are seven roll over me slowly as I snuck them in between other reads. Started during a particularly turbulent period in my life, I got side tracked after the first couple of stories, but when I finally found my way back, I devoured the rest pretty quickly. They are deliciously dark, unsettling and impudently overstay their allotted time inside my head. Hey make some room guys!
Here are my top 3:
Dis Mem Ber: Do you want to be judged by the company you keep? The lure of bad boys with sinister results.
HeartBreak: Ever been jealous, sure and haven’t we all. This tale of sibling rivalry takes this concept one step too far and we find ourselves soaking in a tub of chilling possibility.
Great Blue Heron: (my personal favourite) Grief can be all consuming. We can be shaken to our very core. What if we are also isolated and under siege? Never underestimate the power of a woman’s love.
If you have a taste for exploring the dark, disturbing recesses of a deliciously, fecund mind this one is very tasty!
Now I definitely want to read more by this author. Any recommendations out there?...more
The Intoxicated Like Mother Used to Make The Witch Charles Flower Garden Seven Types of Ambiguity Come Dance with My personal favourites of this collection:
The Intoxicated Like Mother Used to Make The Witch Charles Flower Garden Seven Types of Ambiguity Come Dance with Me in Ireland Of Course Men with Their Big Shoes
and of course
The Lottery (it still stuns)
Every one of the stories in this collection is well worth your time, but of course we all have our favourites. Wonder what yours will be....more
This is a book of stories intended to describe that hand of mortal destruction in sixteen utterly different, yet apocalyptically stunning ways.
The EndThis is a book of stories intended to describe that hand of mortal destruction in sixteen utterly different, yet apocalyptically stunning ways.
The End of The World …….Eugene Mouton (2 stars) - Global warming- You know the path we are currently on.
The Comet …….W.E.B. Du Bois (3.5 stars) - What if you thought you were one of the last people on earth? What if you had a second chance? Would you have changed?
The Pedestrian …. Ray Bradbury (5 stars) - I loved this one. Mr. Leonard Mead loves to go for a stroll at night, then one night the police come.
No Morning After ……...Arthur C. Clarke (3 stars) - You know it’s time to quit drinking when……
Upon the Dull Earth ……… Phillip K. Dick (5 stars) - Another bright spot in this collection. Love is a many splendored thing, guard it well. And when all seems lost, remember if it seems too good to be true, well it likely is. Who you gonna call?
2 B R O 2 B …….. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - (4 stars) Think about the advances we have made in technology and medicine. Already the average lifespan is much greater than it was in the past. What if this trend continues and in the future people can be expected to live much longer, perhaps even 200 years. What other controls would have to be established in order for our little planet to accommodate everyone?
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream …...Harlan Ellison - (2.5 stars) Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty, that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better.
The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas …….. Ursula K. Le Guin - (3 stars) The city of Omelas is a truly beautiful and joyous place of crisp, clean fields and magnificent mountains with moss covered gardens.. A place where children could run and play and people danced in the streets. But in the basement under one of the beautiful public buildings of Omelas, there is a room. A room that houses the ultimate cost of their happiness. Too sad.
The Engineer and the Executioner ……. Brian M. Stableford - (3.5 stars) The best and the brightest of earth’s engineers has accomplished the unthinkable. A life- system on a previously dead asteroid. Everything is used and reused as the life-system evolves and improves. But wait. Could that spore that I detect put earth at risk?
The End of the Whole Mess ……. Stephen King - (4 stars) What if there was a way to stop the violence, put an end to war once and for all? Did you ever make a mistake and not realize it until it was too late?
Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man’s Back …….. Joe R. Lansdale (4.5 stars) If the end does come by way of nuclear warfare, who is to blame? The scientist or the politician? Still there are survivors who make it to an underground shelter. Years pass and who knows perhaps it is a brave new world up there. Shall we go see?
Judgement Engine ….. Greg Bear - ( 1 star) I did not care for this one at all. I had a difficult time relating and I do believe that it just went on for far too long. Endtimes, massive mistakes, genocide?
Automatic ……. Erica L.Satifka - ( 2 stars) Can’t leave New York City? The rest of the countryside uninhabitable? No worries you can rent out your body parts to survive.
The Black Mould ……… Mark Samuels - (2 stars) Forget cockroaches it will be mould spores that survive us all and take over the planet.
The Pretence ………. Ramsey Campbell - (1 star) This is a case of a mistitled story. It should have been called “How to Ruin a Perfectly Good Story 101” This one is about the apocalypse as predicted by a religious group. Too bad the author felt the need to go on and on and on and on, with pointless drivel. Hmmmmm?
Inventory ……… Carmen Maria Machado - (1 star) A deadly virus you say. Well it is not here yet. May as well have some mind numbing sex with as many different partners as possible.
Personally I find reviews of this nature tedious. I say that as someone who reads a great many reviews on a daily basis and sure there is the exception, but still. Now I know they are tedious to write as well, so my apologies. ( I will not be doing this again ever.) Do not let that deter you from giving this a try. There are some good stories to be had here.
My thanks to Dover Publications and Netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review....more
It was bound to happen at some point. I have never before acquired one of these ½ books or companion books if you prefer. So why now? We are talking LIt was bound to happen at some point. I have never before acquired one of these ½ books or companion books if you prefer. So why now? We are talking Laini Taylor here, goddess of words, high priestess of literary magic. And I needed a fix. It has been a long time since I finished The Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy and I had a deep hankering for more of this woman’s magic pen.
So enter Night of Cake & Puppets, which is really just a little novella about the night that Zuzana and Mik got together. Here it is and it is delightful.
No need to worry about fallen angels or marauding chimaera. No Karou and Akiva around to steal the spotlight.
Better still, an elaborate, little treasure hunt of sorts is afoot; one that is set in winter and winds through the picturesque streets of Prague. Our violin boy, Mik, starts out with a clue left to him in secret by Zuz, who is determined to finally have a conversation with the musician she cannot seem to stop thinking about. If he interprets and follows her clue correctly he will surely find another. A little bit of magic may even unfold as Zuz has a small handful of scuppies left.
Mik is doing great and Zuz is preparing herself for the end game when she suddenly realizes that the tables have been turned and now she is the one following questionable directions.
There are puppets, sometimes they even embrace and there is most assuredly cake.
Who knows there may even be a kiss or two before Mik and Zuz part company for the night. You will just have to read it and enjoy a sip or two of Laini’s delectable words for yourself. Even if they are, oh so sadly, served in an all too small teacup.
Boy howdy! Where did this goddess of words with the pink hair come from? I am not usually a big fan of the short story, but I do declare, I will read Boy howdy! Where did this goddess of words with the pink hair come from? I am not usually a big fan of the short story, but I do declare, I will read anything this literary seductress writes, even her stroked out grocery list, so send them on down, and I will eat them up.
Why oh why, would I, with my meagre abilities, even try, to persuade you to read these stories, each of which involve a kiss, when Laini herself awards us a brief glimpse of what is to come.
Goblin Fruit (my favourite)
There is a certain kind of girl the goblins crave. You could walk across a high school campus and point them out: not her, not her, her. The pert, lovely ones with butterfly tattoos in secret places, sitting on their boyfriends’ laps? No, not them. The girls watching the lovely ones sitting on their boyfriends’ laps? Yes. Them.
The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls. Like Kizzy.
Kizzy wanted it all so bad her soul leaned half out of her body hungering after it, and that was what drove the goblins wild, her soul hanging out there like an untucked shirt.
Spicy Little Curses
Kissing can ruin lives. Lips touch, sometimes teeth clash. New hunger is born with a throb and caution falls away. A cursed girl with lips moist from her first kiss might feel suddenly wild, like a little monsoon. She might forget her curse just long enough to get careless and let it come true. She might kill every-one she loves.
She might and she might not.
A particular demon in India rather hoped she would.
This is the story of the curse and the kiss, the demon and the girl. It’s a love story with dancing and death in it, and singing and souls and shadows reeled out on kite strings. It begins underneath India, on the cusp of the last century when the British were still riding elephants with maharajas and skirmishing on the arid frontiers of the empire.
The story begins in Hell.
Hatchling
Six days before Esme’s fourteenth birthday, her left eye turned from brown to blue. It happened in the night. She went to sleep with brown eyes, and when she woke at dawn to the howling of wolves, her left eye was blue. She had just slipped out of bed when she noticed it. She was headed to the window to look for the wolves – wolves in London, of all impossible things! But she didn’t make it to the window. Her eye flashed at her in the mirror, pale as the wink of a ghost, and she forgot all about the wolves and stared at herself.
It was no trick of the light. Her eye was an eerie white-blue, the color of ancient ice in a place that never thaws, and as startling as it was, there was something profoundly familiar about it too. Esme’s blood quickened as a shock of memories pulsed through her: a world of snow and spires; a milky mirror framed in jewels; the touch of warm lips on hers.
Esme swayed on her feet. These weren’t her memories. This wasn’t her eye. She clamped a hand over it and ran to wake her mother.
As a prelude to each of these stories Jim Di Bartolo graces these pages with graphic illustrations, which in themselves are well worth the price of admission.
Gather round boys and girls and listen to these fairy tale type stories from a writer of unparalleled imagination and singular panache.
It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE And tThe Master himself
It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my ANNABEL LEE; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful ANNABEL LEE So that her high-born kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me- Yes!- that was the reason ( as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we- Of many far wiser than we- And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE,
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling-my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Arah-Lynda
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