by Eugen Bacon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m going to try very hard to be fair here. This is about 3.5 stars for me. I love clever, quirky, and twisty short stories with last line reveals. None of these are that kind. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good; because they are. Overall this is a decent collection of stories with paranormal, fairy tale, or existential spins. Worth a read.
It’s also note worthy as it is written by an Australian woman of colour. Certainly a minority not often found in writing circles. I would absolutely read more from Eugen Bacon in the future. In fact a couple of the stories in here, I think, need desperately to be made into longer stories. They have a lot of potential and could easily be fleshed out to be more than how they were presented here.
I know it’s always a fine line between word count and content and it’s certainly not always the right decision; but at least two stories have that quality. In between each of the stories are little snippets of tales that seemed to be native to Australia and like the type of tale you might tell to a child. I really adored these, and the illustrations were lovely!! They broke up the larger stories nicely, and in some cases setup a feel for the next story. This showed that the order of the stories was very intentional and I do appreciate that kind of effort being put in to make the reader feel immersed; even when each story is its own.
Certainly worth a pickup and read; and an author to watch for!
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
View all my reviews
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m going to try very hard to be fair here. This is about 3.5 stars for me. I love clever, quirky, and twisty short stories with last line reveals. None of these are that kind. That doesn’t mean they aren’t good; because they are. Overall this is a decent collection of stories with paranormal, fairy tale, or existential spins. Worth a read.
It’s also note worthy as it is written by an Australian woman of colour. Certainly a minority not often found in writing circles. I would absolutely read more from Eugen Bacon in the future. In fact a couple of the stories in here, I think, need desperately to be made into longer stories. They have a lot of potential and could easily be fleshed out to be more than how they were presented here.
I know it’s always a fine line between word count and content and it’s certainly not always the right decision; but at least two stories have that quality. In between each of the stories are little snippets of tales that seemed to be native to Australia and like the type of tale you might tell to a child. I really adored these, and the illustrations were lovely!! They broke up the larger stories nicely, and in some cases setup a feel for the next story. This showed that the order of the stories was very intentional and I do appreciate that kind of effort being put in to make the reader feel immersed; even when each story is its own.
Certainly worth a pickup and read; and an author to watch for!
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
View all my reviews
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