Genre: short stories

Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews
Grade A #AudioBookReview: The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. HarrowThe Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow
Narrator: Aida Reluzco
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: borrowed from Amazon Kindle Unlimited
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, dystopian, fantasy, horror, short stories
Pages: 36
Length: 1 hour and 17 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on March 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

New York Times bestselling author Alix E. Harrow weaves a dystopian fairy tale that follows the town storyteller as she struggles to protect a local demon from the knight hired to kill it.
In this gritty, haunting tale about doing whatever it takes for love, a small-town storyteller resolves to keep the local monster—and her own secrets—safe from a legendary knight.
Nestled deep in the steep hills, valleys, and surrounding woodlands lies Iron Hollow, a rural community beset by demons. Such horrors are common in the outlands, where most folks die young, if they don’t turn into monsters first. But what’s causing these transformations?
No one has the answer, not even the town’s oral historian, seventeen-year-old Shrike. And when a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest beast to haunt their woods, Shrike has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still human, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.
Determined to keep May safe, Shrike stalks the knight and his demon-hunting hawk through the recesses of the forest. But as they creep through toxic creeks and overgrown kudzu, Shrike realizes the knight has a secret of his own. And he’ll do anything to protect it.

My Review:

I picked this up for two reasons. The first reason – and the more important – is that I really loved The Starling House by this same author, also in audio. The second reason is that I’ve been experimenting with a Kindle Unlimited subscription and have really liked some of the Amazon Original Stories with audio that I’ve discovered, notably my holiday romp through the Under the Mistletoe Collection.

The Knight and the Butcherbird looked like exactly the kind of story I’ve been enjoying more lately, dark fantasy hovering over the edge of horror, in a nice, bite-sized audio version by an author I already like. It sounded like a win/win – and it absolutely was. All the more so because this is one of those stories that straddles the line between science fiction and fantasy in a way that chills, thrills, and makes the reader, or at least this reader, go both “Aha!” AND “Ahhhh” at the end.

It also turned out to remind me of a whole lot of different, differently weird and differently creepy stories while blending into a darkly satisfying whole.

This is very much a dystopia, the kind of dystopia you get when your story is set on an Earth that we’ve fucked around on and left the consequences for our descendants. At first, I thought it was a bit Mad Max but things aren’t quite that bad – or at least the violence isn’t quite that widespread.

Instead, it’s very much like the world of Premee Mohamed’s The Annual Migration of Clouds duology, where pollution has ruined the ground, the air, the wildlife and the weather, but people are hanging on by the literal edge of their fingernails, like the grim death that’s inevitably coming for them sooner than it should.

But that’s the view in the ‘outlands’, which is very much where Iron Hollow survives in remote, rural Appalachia. Just as in Clouds, there are “Enclaves”, protected places where technology is still functional, where the elite live in abundance, health and prosperity and look down upon the dying primitives that send them raw materials to keep their technology functional so they can remain all of the above.

Those outlands, still rife with pollution and radiation and microplastics, produce more than just raw materials. They are also plagued by monsters. Monsters that the Enclave-folk call demons. Monsters that used to be their friends and their loved ones, transformed by an alchemy that no one understands and no one can cure.

The Enclaves send out knights to eliminate those monsters. Not out of altruism. Not out of the goodness of their hearts. Out of need and greed. The populations of the Enclaves have grown too large for their technology to maintain. The outlanders are dying off, each generation smaller than the next. Extinction is in sight. All the Enclaves need to do is wait to sweep into what will soon be empty lands.

But those lands are filled with monsters, and until the science of the Enclaves can find a way to stop humans from becoming monsters, the land they covet is not safe for them to take.

The knight that comes to Iron Hollow has come to kill the latest monster. The monster that, as far as Shrike, Iron Hollow’s scribe and archivist is concerned, is still her wife May. Whether May is a monster or not. Because, when all is said and done, aren’t all of us capable of becoming monsters if the need is great enough?

Escape Rating A: This was a story that chilled me to the bone – even though I laughed myself silly when the knight of this story, Sir John, said that he had been sent by the “King of Cincinnati”. (I don’t see my old hometown mentioned much in fiction, and I absolutely wasn’t expecting it here.)

This story starts out dark, and it gets darker as it goes, and not in the ways the reader initially expects.

First because it’s saturated with Shrike’s bottomless grief. She and her wife were childhood besties, young sweethearts, happy marrieds, and now Shrike is a widow. At seventeen, because people in the outlands don’t live past 40 if they even reach that milestone.

Most monsters are found early, because the metamorphosis manifests as an illness that changes people from, well, people, to red-eyed shapeshifters with hoofs and horns, or feathers and claws, or gills and fins, and eventually to all of the above in a neverending kaleidoscope of transformation.

Shrike, as the historian, archivist, chronicler and storyteller of the hollow, knows that the mutation isn’t truly a disease, and that there is no real cure. Her only real fear about the nature of her wife’s condition is her fear that the transformation has wiped out May’s recognition of her and her memory of their love.

The knight’s secret provides Shrike with the answer she has long hoped for, even as her storytelling provides him with an answer that he wishes he had never learned.

As I listened to the audiobook of The Knight and the Butcherbird, read marvelously by Aida Reluzco, even as I was absorbed in the story I was surprised, teased and occasionally outright puzzled by all the stories it reminded me of. And I want to share those before I close as on the one hand this story was exactly the right length for what it wanted to tell AND I wanted more like it at the same conflicted time.

The setup of the elite Enclaves vs the disease-ridden outlands is very similar to The Annual Migration of Clouds and We Speak Through the Mountains, definitely including the patronizing attitudes of the Enclave citizens towards the outlanders they exploit. The slow, hidden transformation of humans into monsters, as well as that creepy border-shifting sense that the story is on the sharp and pointy line between the darkest of fantasy and the fear-shiver of horror is similar to T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead and What Feasts at Night as well as Kerstin Hall’s Star Eater. (Tracking down that the thing stuck in my head was Star Eater took quite a while because I didn’t even like it all that much but it there were parts of it that were creepy in exactly the same way that The Knight and the Butcherbird is creepy, although Star Eater has plenty of extra creepy bits that are all its own.) There are also hints of Idolfire in those dying dystopian outlands.

But the biggest surprises were just how much of The Last Unicorn and the movie Ladyhawke I found in The Knight and the Butcherbird. I wasn’t expecting both the state of the world and Sir John’s quest to hit so many of the same notes that The Last Unicorn did. And I absolutely did not come into this story thinking that Ladyhawke would fly away with the whole thing after all.

The Knight and the Butcherbird is not exactly a happy story, but it is a haunting one. It is also very, very satisfying, in an astonishingly rueful way. I’m glad I spent an hour with the knight, the butcherbird, and their beloved monsters.

#BookReview: One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | book reviews
#BookReview: One Message Remains by Premee MohamedOne Message Remains by Premee Mohamed
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, fantasy, horror, short stories
Pages: 188
Published by Psychopomp on February 11, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Pageantry, pomp, pretense, and peril—"The General's Turn,” originally published in The Deadlands, drew readers into the dark world of a ceremony where Death herself might choose to join the audience... or step onto the stage.
Award-winning author Premee Mohamed presents three brand new stories set in this morally ambiguous world of war and magic. In “One Message Remains,” Major Lyell Tzajos leads his team on a charity mission through the post-armistice world of East Seudast, exhuming the bones and souls of dead foes for repatriation. But the buried fighters may have one more fight left in them—and they have chosen their weapons well.
In “The Weight of What is Hollow,” Taya is the latest apprentice of a long-honored tradition: building the bone-gallows for prisoners of war. But her very first commission will pit her skills against both her family and her oppressor.
Finally, in “Forsaking All Others,” ex-soldier Rostyn must travel the little-known ways by night to avoid his pursuers, for desertion is punishable by death. As he flees to the hoped-for sanctuary of his grandmother's village, he is joined by a fellow deserter—and, it seems, the truth of a myth older than the land itself.
“Premee Mohamed is one of Canada's most exciting thinkers and writers of speculative fiction. Her stories bravely go where few dare to, each employing a deftness of language and surety of form that offers a fresh experience each time. One Message Remains and the stories within are no exception, each tale different from the other, yet all very much quintessential Premee stories. Readers of her works, long and short both, will find much to love here.” — Suyi Davies Okungbowa, author of Son of the Storm and Lost Ark Dreaming

My Review:

I picked up this collection because I found several of the author’s previous works compelling, particularly The Annual Migration of Clouds, We Speak Through the Mountain, and especially The Butcher of the Forest. (I keep finding more and more books that remind me of Butcher, including yesterday’s book!)

It might look like all of the above are novellas – only because they are. The stories in this collection are as well – or toe up to that line from the novelette side. In other words, none of these are terribly long – and they don’t need to be.

Together, they make a fractured whole. Fractured because they are loosely centered around a fractured place, the conquered province of East Seudast by the conquering country of Treotan. The individual stories, three of which are new for this collection, revolve around the states of conquering and being conquered. Of what it means to see every country in the world as ‘lesser’ and ‘barbaric’ and ‘incapable of using their resources properly’, as though that gives another country the right to roll right over them.

And all of those are mere excuses for overweening cupidity and above all, hubris.

On the other side, there’s the cost of all of that rapaciousness. That seeing everyone and everything else on the face of the map as beneath their notice means that the conquerors learn nothing about those they conquer, learn nothing about the land, and learn nothing about the beliefs that bind those who resist.

Not even the dead.

“One Message Remains”
Major Lyell Tzajos believes that he has been assigned an important duty by the Treotan military, a task that will result in promotions all around once he – and the team whose names he can’t even manage to remember – completes their task. A task which Tzajos considers a humanitarian mission towards the people of their newly conquered province.

But Tzajos is a small man in a job that is still much too big for him, assigned to this command because, on paper at least, it suits his punctilious, meticulous, duty-bound, bean-counting nature down to the literal ground. Which is, in fact, the literal bedrock of the duty. Digging up the graves of the enemy, identifying each and every one of their bodies, and repatriating those bodies and their effects to families who must still be looking for closure in regards to the fate of their family members.

Of course, the Treotans didn’t ask the Dastians what they thought about this mission, because from their perspective, including Tzajos’ obedient, practically slavish devotion to the standards of his homeland, the Dastians are ‘barbarians’ and their beliefs about corpses and spirits and Death are unscientific and illogical.

Even though, as it turns out, those beliefs are entirely true.

There is a LOT to unpack in this story, so it is fitting that it is the longest one in the collection. We’re inside Tzajos’ head – and the man is a hot mess from the beginning. He is truly a small man, trying to pretend that he is bigger, failing, knowing that he’s failing, and still not seeing the ways in which he is. He IS, after all, trying to do his best. It’s just that his beliefs about what constitutes best are so deeply ingrained in his own culture that he is WAY off course. He’s not actually evil, he’s just so brainwashed that he can’t see that what his country is doing IS evil. He starts out lost and gets even more so and doesn’t take any control of anything at all until his end, and even then he only gets glimmers of understanding. That I could easily map Tzajos onto any overworked, underqualified functionary in any rapacious empire, fictional or historical, made this story even more compelling and more thought provoking than the premise hinted at. Escape Rating A

“The Weight of What Is Hollow”
This is the story that should have been the creepiest – and it is – but not in any of the ways that one might think going into it. Because it’s not really about the truly creepy idea of building a gallows out of human bones for the purpose of hanging a criminal which will provide more human bones. Because the bones may be the creep but they’re not the point.

The point is about creepy humans with power, and quiet resistance to that power. The local Treotan commander thinks he can overpower a female apprentice boneworker through might, intimidation and threats. Her family is afraid, and begs her to submit – because they fear for their own necks and they are right to do so. So she appears to step on the path the commander wants, knowing the end. But she only appears to, and appearance as it turns out, is everything.

I liked this a lot. OTOH, at its heart the story could fit into pretty much any fantasy world, and I adored the way that Taya subverted the narrative that was planned for her. Very much on the other hand, the details of their traditions added depth to the worldbuilding and pulled me in hard and well and truly. I also enjoyed the way that this story was about the war without being buried neck deep in the war. It’s a much subtler way of fighting back that was needed in this collection. Taya’s the one character in all of the stories that I would LOVE to see more of. Escape Rating A+

“Forsaking All Others”
This one didn’t quite stick for me. I was into it while I was reading it, but it didn’t catch at my memory the same way that the other three stories did in their different ways. At first, it’s a story about two deserters trying to find a place to lay low where the Treotans won’t find them. But then the story changes into something that’s more about the traditions and beliefs of the conquered land – and that they are still alive and well and may have deadly consequences for anyone who believes that they’ve won. Escape Rating B

“The General’s Turn”
This is the one story in this collection that has been previously published, in this particular case in The Deadlands, Issue 3, July 2021 as well as The Long List Anthology Volume 8: More Stories from the Hugo Award Nomination List because this story was on the long list for the Hugos in 2022. It’s also the one story in this collection that leaned the furthest into horror AND the one story out of the four that didn’t work for me, although not because of the horror.

The story here feels like it’s about exploring the rot at the heart of the Treotan ‘empire’. On the one hand, it’s VERY creepy, all about an elaborate murder machine operated by a bunch of supposed elites who claim to be carrying out a grand, old, ritual but are really just there for the humiliation of the chosen victim and the inevitable carnage as that victim is toyed with and then literally ground into a bloody pulp.

We’re in the head of the ‘general’ controlling this whole affair, someone who believes in the spirit of what this ceremony used to be, and who is tired – possibly unto death – of all the inevitabilities baked into it. In a fit of ennui – he decides to change the script. It’s not mercy, it’s not enlightenment, it’s just another and different way of turning the screws.

It’s probably intended as a play on the idea that the ‘empire’ is really a gigantic clockworks that is intended to grind everyone, friends and enemies alike, under the wheels of its so-called ‘progress’ and ‘efficiency’. I may have needed to message to be a bit more explicit if that is the case. Escape Rating C

Overall Escape Rating B

#AudioBookReview: Merry Ever After by Tessa Bailey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> book reviews> C Reviews
#AudioBookReview: Merry Ever After by Tessa BaileyMerry Ever After (Under the Mistletoe Collection, #2) by Tessa Bailey
Narrator: Summer Morton, Connor Crais
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, erotic romance, holiday romance, short stories
Series: Under the Mistletoe #2
Pages: 59
Length: 1 hour and 32 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

A single mother working in a thrift store. A gentle giant farmer who can’t find jeans that fit. When opposites attract, they find themselves making alterations in more ways than one in this smoking-hot short story by #1 New York Times bestselling author Tessa Bailey.
Evie Crowe is starting over in a strange town with her newborn, and men are the furthest thing from her mind. If only the quiet, hulking farmer, Luke Ward, would stop coming into the thrift shop and piquing her reluctant interest. Evie wants to stay single all the way—she can’t trust anything more than friends-with-holiday-benefits. But Luke is in it for the long haul. He’s fixed on making this a Christmas Evie will remember forever. If she gives him a chance.
Tessa Bailey’s Merry Ever After is part of Under the Mistletoe, a stirring collection of December romances that thrill and tingle all the way. They can be read or listened to in one swoony sitting.

My Review:

Today is the last day of 2024. It’s part of the ‘twilight zone’ of time between Xmas and New Year’s, when time is really REAL, when the days all sort of blend together, when it seems as if time is sorta/kinda infinite and not necessarily in a good way.

I am a terrible completist. By that I mean that I have a tendency to feel compelled to complete things – especially when it comes to book series. Not that I absolutely can’t stop if something isn’t working for me, but when something is working then I have to get and finish them all – no matter how long it takes.

Because this is New Year’s Eve, I have to confess that I don’t expect Reading Reality to get a ton of readers today. But I feel compelled to have a post every single day – there I go with the completist thing again. Adding to that compulsion, I have listened to all of the other novellas in the Under the Mistletoe collection, so I simply couldn’t let the season go by without finishing this last story in the set.

Which leads us to today, December 31, 2024, and my review of Merry Ever After. (It’s still Hanukkah, so it could also be said that from my perspective it is still very much the holiday season and not too late for a holiday read or listen. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!)

The first, and possibly most important thing to know before jumping into this story is that I was wrong about Merriment and Mayhem being the steamiest story Under the Mistletoe. Because hands down – or perhaps that should be other parts down (and potentially getting rugburn in places no one wants rugburn) Merry Ever After is definitely the steamiest.

To the point where I wouldn’t listen to this where anyone else could hear it. I felt a bit like a voyeur listening to it all by myself in the car. (Also, one never arrives at one’s destination at a convenient point for either the scene or the listener.)

Second, while all of the stories in this collection are short by the very nature of the collection, this one was too short for the depth of the relationship it dove just about straight into. While all of the stories except Cruel Winter with You had hints of insta-love – and Cruel Winter had considerably more than hints – they all did a good job of making the relationships seem a bit longer, at least as friendships and/or leaned into the holiday romance fantasy aspect enough to make it seem not quite so instantaneous.

It’s not just that Evie and Luke jump into bed really, really fast – or in their case get down and dirty on the living room rug – it’s that the depth of their commitment seems to go from zero to sixty too fast for the emotional baggage they’re each dragging along – as well as Evie’s sincere need not to bring someone as undependable and untrustworthy into her baby son’s life as his sperm donor turned out to be.

Not that Luke isn’t reliable and trustworthy, as it turns out, but Evie hasn’t had time to find that out, at least not yet.

And while I did like that this was multi-voiced, with Summer Morton voicing Evie’s perspective while Connor Crais handled Luke’s, Luke’s internal monologue veered really close to some fairly possessive lines right on the verge of stuff that made me really, really wary.

Escape Rating C: In the end, I had a LOT of mixed feelings about Merry Ever After, making it my least favorite story in the collection. Either this one needed a LOT more story to get these characters to the point where their relationship makes sense, or it needed to be a lot simpler by making it about just two adults who are still in a position to potentially screw up their own lives without collateral damage.

This turned out to not be the greatest end for my reading and listening adventures this year, but, it certainly felt cathartic to wrap-up the set, which, overall, I did have a lot of fun with.

As always, your reading/listening mileage may vary.

#BookReview: Love in Other Worlds edited by Tracy Cooper Posey

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: Love in Other Worlds edited by Tracy Cooper PoseyLove In Other Worlds (Christmas Romance Digest Book 2) by Tracy Cooper-Posey, Taylen Carver, Meg Napier, Michelle Moras, Erin M. Hartshorn, Chelsea Mueller, M L Buchman
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy romance, Hanukkah romance, holiday romance, romantasy, short stories
Series: Christmas Romance Digest #2
Pages: 274
Published by Stories Rule Press on November 7, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

A Magic-filled collection of Christmas-themed portal fantasy romance novelettes

Slipping through a portal to another strange world, filled with magical beings and fantasy creatures, and finding true love is challenge enough for any self-respecting hero or heroine. How much more magic and mischief can Christmas deliver to transworld-travellers and their loved ones?

Here are seven delightful Christmas romances featuring fantasy worlds reached from ours via portals of all varieties, where our heroes and heroines struggle to find true love at this most magical time of the year.

"Veilbound" by Taylen Carver
"Winter Fruit" by Chelsea Mueller
"Second Christmas Solstice" by Meg Napier
"The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy" by M.L. Buchman
"Crowning the Snow Queen" by Michelle Moras
"Ornaments of Ice" by Erin M. Hartshorn
"Blackmont Bitters" by Tracy Cooper-Posey

The courage to step into another world brings risks…and sweet rewards, made sweeter by the joys of Christmas.

My Review:

I’m always on the lookout for Hanukkah romances this time of year, as there aren’t many. If you’re looking for the same, or at least curious, I highly recommend Love You a Latke and Eight Nights to Win Her Heart. I’ve also heard very good things about Magical Meet Cute and I’m thinking about squeezing that in this Hanukkah season – which lasts until January 2, 2025 this year.

The above is NOT a non sequitur, as I picked this collection up for just one story, “The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy” by M.L. Buchman. He’s one of my favorite authors – as evidenced by my review of his latest thriller, Wedgetail, earlier this week. But I also love ‘portal fantasies’, as this collection most definitely is, so the idea of a whole book filled with stories of people who get a peek into worlds that aren’t QUITE our own, (think Narnia but for grown-ups), mixed with stories of holidays set on or around the winter solstice (December 21 this year) also sounded like a lovely thing to read this holiday season.

And so, we have seven solstice stories. One is that Hanukkah story. Some of the others are Christmas, at least sorta/kinda, and some are explicitly the solstice. I enjoyed the mix of perspectives and wish that the blurb did a better job of reflecting it. (Again, I’m not in full agreement with the blurb of a book I just read. It’s been that kind of month.)

Most of the stories are fantasy, which makes sense now that I think about it. Two of the stories are by the same author, as Taylen Carver is a pen name for Tracy Cooper-Posey, the author of the final story in the collection as well as its editor.

Because there are only seven stories here, and because I was having a good time reading them even if the individual stories didn’t always work as well as I’d hoped, I’ve given a mini-review and rating for each story individually.

For the collection as a whole, after some extremely fudgy math, I would rate the collection as a whole as Escape Rating B.

“Veilbound” by Taylen Carver (aka Tracy Cooper-Posey)
Two grumpy, anti-social guardians of portals guard openings to the veil that keep the world in balance. Guardians bound to SEPARATE and DISTANT portals, thankyouverymuch. Vera Thorn and Kellan Delacroix clearly don’t like each other much – although it seems they have history as well as a shared responsibility to keep their world in balance with the one on the other side of the veil. A balance that has been violently thrown out of whack in a way that will destroy everything if they don’t put aside whatever it is between them long enough to cross the veil and FIX IT. The fantasy parts reminded me a LOT of Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest, so the fantasy worldbuilding of this worked well for me even if the analogy didn’t completely hold true. The romance worked less well, because we just didn’t get enough of it to make this really feel like a romance. But it also felt like it got as close to a romance as these particular characters were able to get – which was not very but possibly much, much, later. Escape Rating B+

“Winter Fruit” by Chelsea Mueller
This is a much, much, MUCH more romantic version of the Greek myth about Hades and Persephone. Also a whole lot sexier and all of it blissfully consensual as well as sensual, which the original myth definitely is NOT. This story is a bit of the opposite of the first, as the worldbuilding is minimal and the romance is EVERYTHING, but then we already know this story so it doesn’t need much to get going. So to speak. Ahem. Escape Rating A-

“Second Christmas Solstice” by Meg Napier
This story is SF, and I think it needed something it just didn’t have. The SFnal aspects were VERY much handwavium, and the romance felt nebulous. Danica was a miracle to the parents who adopted her, but she’s also a refugee from an alternate, adjacent-ish world. Someone comes to retrieve her on Christmas, and she’s just not nearly skeptical enough. For SF, it’s way too much woo-woo magic and feelings and fate. TL;DR this just didn’t work for me. Escape Rating C

“The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy” by M.L. Buchman
This is the story I picked up this collection FOR, and it did not disappoint. It also confirms my reflections from both of the Hanukkah romances I read this season, that the eight nights of Hanukkah create the perfect length of time for a quick but not too quick romance to feel just right. This particular romance is the story of a holiday miracle of a romantic match that also makes a terrific recipe – and is one as well. Aaron has inherited his grandfather’s bakery and his grandfather’s recipe for root beer pretzels – but the recipe card is faded and the handwriting is indecipherable. Unbeknownst to Aaron as the holiday begins, one of the key ingredients for those pretzels was the small-batch root beer that Elizabeth’s Great Uncle Sam used to make – and she’s just inherited his small bottling operation. With the help of an adorable little tenth-ranked angel, and a bit of magical peering into the past through the Hanukkah lights reflected in their menorahs, Aaron and Elizabeth manage to find each other, the secret ingredients to each other’s recipes, and the keys to each other’s hearts. Escape Rating A

“Crowning the Snow Queen” by Michelle Moras
This story reads as if Cinderella and The Bachelor had a book baby – or at least a short story baby, even though the main character is named after one of the roles in The Nutcracker ballet. This story also feels like the fantasy version of that SF story in this collection, “Second Christmas Solstice”, in the way that Freya is rather abruptly presented with the fact that, just like Danni in “Solstice”, she has family on the other side of a mysterious – and in Freya’s case outright magical – barrier that give her entree into an entirely ‘other’ world. In this case the world of the fey. This one works a bit better, at least for this reader, than “Solstice”, in that the worldbuilding is able to borrow a bit more from fairy tales and stories we already know to fill in its corners. The romance also has a bit more time to work with, so it’s a bit insta but in a way that can be at least partially chalked up to the magic of the fairy kingdom. Escape Rating B

“Ornaments of Ice” by Erin M. Hartshorn
This one is my second favorite after “The Hanukkah Pretzel Prophecy”. It’s short and sweet and self-contained. It’s also simply lovely, and a true portal fantasy as Bran literally steps through a portal imbued in a Christmas Tree ornament, finds a rather different and considerably less royal fairyland than the one in “Crowning the Snow Queen”, takes a magical walk through that fairyland with a fairy who doesn’t quite feel like she belongs, just as he feels like he doesn’t completely belong among his people. As they journey together, they discover that they have bigger magic together than they do separately, and that they can find a place where they both belong by realizing that where they belong is together, on both sides of the portal. Escape Rating A-

“Blackmont Bitters” by Tracy Cooper-Posey
I ended with mixed feelings about this one, mostly because even as I read it it felt like it was a piece of something much, much bigger, as if a serious chunk of the worldbuilding had been or would be done elsewhere and that the reader was just supposed to ‘roll with it’ in this short story. I didn’t discover until afterwards that my feeling was correct, as this story is set in the world the author created in The Branded Rose Prophecy. So this story read as if an attempt was being made to make this shorter work stand alone that doesn’t quite, well, work. It’s a bit of a tease in its way, as the world sounds fascinating, dangerous and more than a bit down the other leg of the trousers of time from our own, a world in which the Norse gods came back, or were found again, or a bit of both, and the Earth that results from their return seems fascinating and very techno-magic oriented but I needed more of the setup to make this story work as the tension and tragedy in the romance was all based in the worldbuilding I didn’t have nearly enough of. Escape Rating C+

#AudioBookReview: Merriment and Mayhem by Alexandria Bellefleur

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Merriment and Mayhem by Alexandria BellefleurMerriment and Mayhem (Under the Mistletoe Collection, #4) by Alexandria Bellefleur
Narrator: Amelie Griffin
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audio
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, short stories
Series: Under the Mistletoe #4
Pages: 58
Length: 1 hour and 30 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

This Christmas, a hot fireman makes a holiday rescue and sparks fly in this funny, sexy holiday short story by bestselling author Alexandria Bellefleur.
When Everleigh Dangerfield’s baking disaster necessitates a call to 911, firefighter Griffin Brantley douses the flames in the kitchen, but the ones he stokes in Everleigh are an entirely different story. Unfortunately, Everleigh’s only visiting and doesn’t do casual hookups, no matter how smoldering the temptation. But Everleigh’s holiday mishaps have just begun. And Griffin is seemingly always on call. If Everleigh is game for a change of plans, he can give her the merriest Christmas of her life.
Alexandria Bellefleur’s Merriment and Mayhem is part of Under the Mistletoe, a stirring collection of December romances that thrill and tingle all the way. They can be read or listened to in one swoony sitting.

My Review:

In this last week before both Christmas AND Hanukkah, I found myself looking for something a bit lighter than the books I had originally planned. Which is when I remembered that I still had two short little holiday pick-me-ups left in the Under the Mistletoe collection, and thereby hangs a tale. Or at least an Xmas stocking.

And this story certainly is a pick-me-up – or perhaps I should say it’s a pick-her-up. Because that’s exactly what firefighter Griffin Brantley does to, with, and for Everleigh Dangerfield the very first time they meet.

As she’s falling off her kitchen counter after setting her kitchen on fire and failing to turn off the wailing smoke alarm now that its warning has been heeded and the damage from the fire as well as from Everleigh’s successful attempt to put it out have succeeded.

Everleigh is past the point of needing the fire department, when they arrive. But that doesn’t mean that she’s past needing a hot firefighter in her life. Pretty much the opposite, in fact. The very friendly and endlessly flirty Griffin is EXACTLY what Everleigh needs this particular holiday season.

And not just because she keeps living up to her name. She really does bring a “danger field” wherever she goes. Which is only fair, as Griffin has absolutely endangered her heart. It’s a good – and delightfully naughty – thing that she’s done the same to his.

Escape Rating B: First, foremost, and most importantly, this was the right book – in this case audiobook – at the right time. While I was enjoying both the book I was reading (Miss Amelia’s List) and the book I was listening to (Blood Jade), neither of them is exactly light in their respective ways. And the third book I was planning on this week (Echo) is set in the depths of a Chicago winter, which brings its own heaviness to the story even before the murders begin.

In other words, I was looking for something light and fluffy, and this collection has consistently delivered.

Having now read/listened to four of the five, including Cruel Winter with You, All By My Elf and Only Santas in the Building, with Merry Ever After yet to go, I have to say that all of the stories have been a lot of fun, just right for a quick listen or a very quick read in a few spare minutes in the holiday rush.

This particular entry in the series is kind of the opposite end of the spectrum from Cruel Winter, and not just because that’s the longest and this is one of the shortest. The stories take place, almost in each of their entireties, over the Xmas holidays. There’s not a lot of time for the romances to develop, and they absolutely do give off insta-love vibes but it does work.

The holiday season, after all, is supposed to be just a bit magical. Just like falling in love.

Cruel Winter is the one that is far from instant, as the protagonists have known each other ALL their lives. It’s just never been the right time for them until it finally is on this particular night. In some ways, it feels the closest to realistic among these very quick holiday rom-coms.

Merriment and Mayhem is the opposite. It’s VERY instant, to the point where the story feels a bit like a fantasy holiday rom-com. I don’t mean fantasy in the foolish wand-waving sense. I mean fantasy in the sense that the daydream of being swept off one’s feet by a hot firefighter is not exactly uncommon. We ALL already know how we want this one to go. And, for that matter, come. (Ahem!).

It’s just that Everleigh Dangerfield gets to live that particular fantasy over this particular Christmas. Everleigh’s ‘real-life’ version of this particular romantic daydream is so damn hot that it’s a good thing that it’s set in a place that doesn’t get much in the way of snow – because they’d certainly melt any accumulated snowfall for MILES around.

This romance is probably the steamiest of the whole collection. To the point of actual steam rising off the pages and possibly even embarrassment if you listen to the story out loud instead of with headphones. It’s absolutely right for this couple, but not all readers want everyone around them to know exactly what they are reading based on the heat of their blushes.

I listened to Merriment and Mayhem (with headphones) and the story absolutely flew by. The reader, Amelie Griffin, did an excellent job BEING Everleigh, and read the scenes with just the right amounts of chagrin and breathlessness as the story required.

I still have time to finish up the Under the Mistletoe collection before my holidays are over, as Hanukkah doesn’t end until sunset on January 2, 2025 this year. Plenty of time for Merry Ever After and one last sweet and romantic holiday reading treat!

#AudioBookReview: Cruel Winter with You by Ali Hazelwood

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Cruel Winter with You by Ali HazelwoodCruel Winter with You (Under the Mistletoe Collection, #1) by Ali Hazelwood
Narrator: Vivienne LaRue
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audio
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, short stories
Series: Under the Mistletoe #1
Pages: 73
Length: 2 hours
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

For two former childhood friends, a blustery winter storm stirs some frosty—and scorching—memories in a delightful short story by #1 New York Times bestselling author Ali Hazelwood.
All newly minted pediatrician Jamie Malek wants is to borrow a roasting pan for Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, that requires her to interact with Marc—her best friend’s troublemaking brother, who’s now a tech billionaire. He’s the one who got away. She’s the one who broke his heart. Outside, a howling blizzard. Inside, a crackling fire. Suddenly, being snowbound with the man she never expected to see again might not be such a bad way to spend a winter’s night.
Ali Hazelwood’s Cruel Winter with You is part of Under the Mistletoe, a stirring collection of December romances that thrill and tingle all the way. They can be read or listened to in one swoony sitting.

My Review:

I was stuck in traffic at the end of Only Santas in the Building and found myself listening to the teasers for ALL the rest of the stories in the Under the Mistletoe collection and, well, I got hooked. So here we are back with another not too big, not too small, just right little holiday romance to sweeten – and heat up – the season.

This one is the longest entry in the collection, so it has just a bit more time and scope to get into the setup of the story and the backstory of the characters – and do they EVER have backstory. So this one gets just a bit deeper than the others – and it makes for a nice change of pace from the rest.

Jamie and Marc were not childhood sweethearts. Nor did they have a high school romance. Not that Marc didn’t want either of those things to happen. He was just very, very good at not letting Jamie know it.

Which was probably a good thing, as Jamie and his older sister Tabitha were childhood and high school besties. And even when this story takes place – ten whole years after Jamie and Tabitha’s high school graduation – Tabitha still hasn’t gotten past her childhood resentment of her parents’ bringing home their ‘Oops Baby’ just after her third birthday.

But Marc seems to have recognized that Jamie was his person the very first time she held him in her arms, when he was a newborn and she was all of two-and-a-half. In spite of decades of teasing and name-calling and everything that children can do to each other short of outright warfare, Jamie is still his person – a fact that Marc has built his entire life around even as he’s held it so close to his heart that Jamie doesn’t have a clue.

But on this one blustery cold winter night, stuck together at his parents’ otherwise empty house because her self-absorbed father thought nothing of sending her two miles down the road, on foot, in an impending northern Illinois blizzard, to retrieve a copper baking pan from his parents’ kitchen – all the secrets are laid bare.

And finally, at last, so are they.

Escape Rating B: In a collection of mostly fluff, this story gets surprisingly deep. And sad. And just a bit heartbreaking. It’s told in a series of flashbacks, sandwiched between the events of the now, and those flashbacks are what give the story its depth. But not in the way one expects.

It’s never been quite the right time for Jamie and Marc. She’s not quite three years older – something that mattered a lot when they were children but doesn’t matter in their late 20s at all. When things have gotten hard between them – not like that – it’s been because Marc’s been keeping the secret of his true feelings for Jamie pretty much all of his life – and occasionally those feelings get impatient.

He’s always been ready, but Jamie hasn’t. Because she’s afraid, not of Marc, not of having Marc, but of losing him. And it’s in the past that we see why. And that’s where the heartbreaking bits come in, because it’s not about him. It’s about her dad. Not in any terrible way, but certainly in a terribly human way.

I have to admit that Marc’s behavior occasionally tip-toed up to the line into the song “Every Breath You Take” in that it seems like he’s always been watching Jamie, always looking at her and after her even if she doesn’t know it, always waiting for the right moment to tell her that he loves her, planning his whole, entire life around making that happen. It seems romantic – but it’s also just a bit squicky and could have easily gone VERY wrong.

If it had it wouldn’t have fit in this collection at all. But since it didn’t, it did. And it does, in the end, work out. They are both finally in the right place at the right time with all their cards on the table.

I’m still enjoying this collection, the audios have ALL been lovely including this story’s voicing by Vivienne LaRue, and it’s all still feeling “just right” for the season. I may finish them ALL before this holiday is done. After all, Hanukkah doesn’t end until January 2, 2025, so I have plenty of time to indulge my holiday spirit!

#AudioBookReview: Only Santas in the Building by Alexis Daria

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: Only Santas in the Building by Alexis DariaOnly Santas in the Building (Under the Mistletoe Collection, #5) by Alexis Daria
Narrator: Ruby Corazon
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, short stories
Series: Under the Mistletoe #5
Pages: 65
Length: 1 hour and 31 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, especially for a comic book illustrator whose late-night fantasies become real in a festive and flirty short story by bestselling author Alexis Daria.
All Evie Cruz wants for Christmas is a nap. And maybe some ornaments for her naked Christmas tree. And while she’s making a list, she wouldn’t mind unwrapping her sexy upstairs neighbor like a present. Luckily, the building’s Santa-themed party and a surprise sprig of mistletoe give her just the opening she needs to make all her wishes come true.
Alexis Daria’s Only Santas in the Building is part of Under the Mistletoe, a stirring collection of December romances that thrill and tingle all the way. They can be read or listened to in one swoony sitting.

My Review:

There are going to be more than a few readers/listeners to this one who are disappointed – not by the story itself but rather because the title sets up an expectation that the story will have a bit of a resemblance to the TV series, Only Murders in the Building. It doesn’t.

But I wasn’t looking for that. Instead, I got caught up in Evie’s freelance, gig-economy, deadline-driven life. Let’s just say that her cramming and scrambling to get her work in just minutes before the deadline sounded familiar. I understood the high she got from concentrating SO HARD and squeaking in JUST under the wire a bit too well.

That she was using the concentration and the pressure and the all-consuming nature of it to keep a whole lot of emotional stuff at bay was also something it was easy for this reader to identify with.

And then the story turned utterly delicious when her really sweet and deliciously hot neighbor turned up at her apartment door. It was pretty easy to see exactly why she had a crush on this guy – and to understand why she had no time to figure out whether that crush was returned – or not. Especially with her older sister naysaying in her ear at every turn.

The story, this deliciously sweet little holiday treat, comes to a delightful climax at the building’s annual holiday party, when everyone in the building comes to the penthouse apartment dressed as some variation of Santa – and a couple of meddling neighbors maneuver these two particular Santas under some strategically placed mistletoe to make their Christmas wishes come true.

Escape Rating B: I picked this second title from the Under the Mistletoe collection for the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon because I wanted something short and sweet – or in this case steamy – for a day when most of us will still be recovering from yesterday’s turkey-induced coma.

And that’s exactly what I found.

Two stories into the collection, though, I’m starting to think that the real theme of the whole thing isn’t so much mistletoe as it is misunderstanding. Or at least mixed signals. Particularly the kind of mixed signals that occur between two people who don’t know each other well enough to know what the person they’ve been dreaming of – or at least daydreaming of – might be thinking about them.

Because their own insecurities get in their way. Both of their ways.

As compared to All By My Elf, the disconnect between Evie and Theo doesn’t even come close to a misunderstandammit. They don’t KNOW each other – and if someone doesn’t help them straighten out their crossed wires, they won’t have a chance to.

Hence that well-placed mistletoe.

Only Santas in the Building turned out to be the perfect light and frothy little story to listen to at the end of a long week. I got precisely what I was expecting and even a little bit more as Evie’s work resonated more than this reader expected. Then again, it resonated more with Theo’s work than he expected, too.

If you’re looking for little pick-me-up stories, this collection has been great so far – and I’ve already finished a third. They’re not deep, because there’s no time for that in this short format. But they’ve all been lovely for what they are and a perfect read and/or listen to help fill out my personal 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon readings.

#AudioBookReview: All By My Elf by Olivia Dade

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews
#AudioBookReview: All By My Elf by Olivia DadeAll by My Elf (Under the Mistletoe Collection, #3) by Olivia Dade
Narrator: Andi Arndt
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: contemporary romance, holiday romance, short stories
Series: Under the Mistletoe #3
Pages: 55
Length: 1 hour and 28 minutes
Published by Amazon Original Stories on November 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

Secret crushes, spicy Christmas treats, heinous holiday traffic, and a fateful snowstorm bring good friends together in a funny, heartfelt short story by bestselling author Olivia Dade.
Nina and William are underpaid adjunct professors at the same university, where winter break is no break at all: ’tis the season to make extra money. When their holiday side hustle has them stranded by a blinding blizzard in the middle of nowhere, there’s nothing to do but cuddle up for warmth and play a game of Never Have I Ever to pass the time. But in the game of love, secrets never stay secret for long…
Olivia Dade’s All by My Elf is part of Under the Mistletoe, a stirring collection of December romances that thrill and tingle all the way. They can be read or listened to in one swoony sitting.

My Review:

What do you do with a used Weinermobile? Does what happens in the Weinermobile STAY in the Weinermobile? Have you ever wondered? Inquiring minds actually get to find out in All By My Elf.

The answers to those questions coincide with a few considerably less humorous and more down-to-earth questions about the lengths (pun definitely intended) that part-time college professors will go to in order to keep feeding their dreams of the ivory towers of academia while still managing to feed themselves on stipends that barely allow them to make ends wave at each other.

Most of all – and best of all – All By My Elf is a romance that satisfies the craving for a hot, steamy friends into lovers romance that toasts a nearly frozen night in a grey-market Weinermobile into a story that’s way bigger than even a 27 foot long hot dog in a bun – or equally long mincemeat-filled roll of phyllo dough in a Mincemobile – could ever manage to contain.

Escape Rating B: Believe it or not, the puns are part of the story – and they are groaners even when Adjunct Professors Nina Teems and William Dern aren’t moaning together in the back of the weiner.

(Speaking of groaners, if the title of this story is giving you an earworm that refuses to let itself be nailed down, that’s because the earworm is tripping over the slight difference between the book’s title and the song’s title, which is ‘All By Myself’, originally performed by Eric Carmen in 1975 but also covered by Sheryl Crow in 1993 and Céline Dion in 1996.)

So, even though there’s nothing either light or fluffy about a giant hot dog nestled in an even bigger bun – the story itself has plenty of both as well as being the perfect steamy antidote to all of Thanksgiving’s turkey and trimmings – not to mention the rock solid nature of some traditional holiday fruitcakes.

After yesterday’s book, which turned out to be more Xmas and less Halloween than I expected, I found myself looking for a lighter and fluffier story to ease us all into the holiday season and especially the 2024 Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon that begins tomorrow. I chose this particular short story in the Under the Mistletoe collection because I loved the author’s Spoiler Alert series and was hoping for some of the same laughs amid the romance.

Which I definitely got even if I’m not all that fond of hot dogs and I’ve never had mincemeat in any form – let alone this particular version – that I can recall. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to even think of it again without giggling at least a bit.

All By My Elf takes a gigantic misunderstandammit and turns up the heat between two friends who have epic crushes on each other and are afraid to act on them. At least until the Mincemobile gets stuck in an epic blizzard and they need each other’s body heat to keep from freezing to death. (That’s not really a spoiler as this is a short story and the inevitable is so obvious it can be seen from outer space.) This scenario is one that gets used in romance and in fanfiction ALL THE TIME, and it’s a classic for a reason. It works. It really, really works – no matter how contrived the machinations for getting the couple into it.

If you’re looking for a quick read that combines warmth and heat and more than a few groaning laughs, All By My Elf is a fun, quick, read or listen to give you an excuse to put your feet up and your mind on coast for a few minutes during the busy holiday season.

 

#AudioBookReview: The President’s Brain is Missing by John Scalzi

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | audio reviews> audiobooks> B Reviews> book reviews> Short Story Review
#AudioBookReview: The President’s Brain is Missing by John ScalziThe President's Brain Is Missing by John Scalzi
Narrator: P.J. Ochlan
Format: audiobook, ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon, purchased from Audible
Formats available: ebook, audiobook
Genres: humorous science fiction, science fiction, short stories
Pages: 29
Length: 47 minutes
Published by Macmillan Audio, Tor Books on July 12, 2010
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Better World Books
Goodreads

The question is, how can you tell the President's brain is missing? And are we sure we need it back?

My Review:

My brain is toast today which is what caused me to pull this book and audio out of the virtually towering TBR pile. I was looking for a bit of a laugh, something lighthearted that wouldn’t tax my own poor missing brain too much – and this certainly delivered!

It starts out with a simple but confounding idea. What if the brain of the President of the United States went missing? I don’t mean surgically removed or shot out or anything even remotely logical. But what if the President woke up one morning, felt a bit lightheaded, and his doctor did all the obvious tests and a few less obvious tests and determined that there was a void in his cranium where his brain matter was supposed to be.

And that he was otherwise healthy and as operational as he ever was.

It’s a crisis – and it’s a conundrum. There are plenty of jokes about whether anyone will notice that this particular president no longer has a brain. Likewise, plenty of people would notice if the president dropped dead because his brain had gone walkabout. Just because he seems to be fine – at the moment – doesn’t mean he will continue to be fine under the circumstances.

The human body is not meant to function without something up there.

So one poor low-level staffer is assigned to figure out what happened before they have to tell the president what happened. Because he’s not going to take it well – AT ALL. Who would?

That assignment that leads from the White House to an old high school buddy to Area 51 to white panel vans to, well, back to the White House. After the dust has settled and the crisis hasn’t so much been resolved as expanded and made totally moot – at the same time.

Escape Rating B: This turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. It was light, short and fun. It also, surprisingly, is NOT a commentary on any of the parties in the recent election – or the one before that or the one before that. The President’s Brain is Missing was originally published in 2010. It took me a while to remember which president this particular lack of braininess would have been lampooning at THAT time – but once I did it worked even better than it had initially.

And it most certainly did work.

It did remind me more than a bit of the author’s When the Moon Hits Your Eye in the sense that the crisis is just so completely off the wall and comes out of absolute nowhere. Although this story about the President’s missing brain did a much better job at, at least, nodding towards causality than Moon did and I liked it more for that.

Part of what made this so much fun is that it took me back both to a more innocent time – as strange as that seems – and it reminded me of a whole lot of wonderfully strange and geeky science fiction into the fun bargain.

There’s the obvious take off on the Star Trek: The Original Series episode Spock’s Brain – which was a terrible episode. At least Spock’s missing brain was considerably more apparent, as, after all, Spock USES his.

In addition to the multiple nods to Trek, and the beautifully played reference to the extremely applicable Clarke’s Law (Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,) I also got some whiffs of nostalgia about the X-Files and even a touch of Stargate. The X-Files were specifically mentioned, but so was Area 51 where Stargate Command had a base that dealt with alien technology.

The President’s brain may, or may not, have been missing – or maybe it’s Schrodinger’s Brain after all – but the author’s deft touch with science fiction humor was certainly present. And this story turned out to be the perfect listen for my own missing brain to wrap up the week.

Grade A #BookReview: Chasing New Suns by Lance Robinson

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Grade A #BookReview: Chasing New Suns by Lance RobinsonChasing New Suns: Collected Stories by Lance Robinson
Format: ebook
Source: author
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, short stories
Pages: 202
Published by Lance Robinson on September 12, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Seven tales of mind, heart, and spirit from award winning science fiction author Lance Robinson.
From Apartheid era South Africa to humanity's first foray beyond the solar system, from precarious ecosystems in northern Alberta to the shiny glam of time-adept neocolonialists between the stars, these are stories of possibility.
This thought-provoking collection includes: the Writers of the Future Award first place winning story "Five Days Until Sunset"; "Communion", a haunting story of guilt, empathy, and human connection; "Money, Wealth, and Soil", which explores the relationship between greed and nobler human motivations, as a collective humanity attempts to incentivize the restoration of the world's ecosystems; "Problem Solving", a witty satire on neocolonialism and post-modern blahs; "The Thursday Plan", a story of an alternate history in which Apartheid never ended in South Africa; "The Gig of the Magi", a satirical take on finding love while grinding it out day to day in the gig economy; and "Chasing the Sun", which continues the spiritual quest begun in "Five Days Until Sunset".
Chasing New Suns is science fiction with heart.

My Review: 

I first read this author’s short story, “Five Days Until Sunset”, in Writers of the Future, Volume 40, and as you will see from my review of that story below, I loved it. It turned out to be one of my favorites in a collection of mostly excellent stories.

So when the author contacted me about reviewing this new collection of stories, a collection that included a sorta/kinda followup to “Five Days”, I was all in. And as you will also see from my reviews of the rest of the stories in the book, I’m very glad I said “YES!” to the whole thing.

“Five Days Until Sunset” (originally published in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 40)
In spite of what a whole lot of SF would have one believe, the likelihood is that early colony ships will be a fairly iffy proposition. Which means that this reminds me a bit of Mickey7 but definitely without the humorous bits. Although in this case, it’s not that the planet is barely habitable, but rather that it’s not habitable in the way that the colonists dreamed of. It’s a story about adapting your dreams to your circumstances instead of attempting to force the circumstances to match your dreams. Grade A because the story is good and so complete in its very short length and it even manages to deal well with religion in the future which is really, really hard even in the present.

“The Thursday Plan”
What if? What if history went down a different leg of the trousers of time? What if you could see what is, what was, what might be, and what might have been, all at the same time? What if you could jump between them? That is the dilemma and the opportunity faced by James Mfaxa in a timeline where Apartheid did not end in 1994, but instead continued and became even more repressive with the help of invasive technology that bears a much too sharp resemblance to slave collars – or to an enforcement mechanism of thought police. But that technology – and the jammers used to combat it – give Mfaxa a chance to envision a different world. Not a perfect one – in fact far from it – but a world better than the one he has. If he is willing to take a chance of making his world, perhaps not right but at least right-ER.

I found this to be an A- story in ways that I think are a “me” problem rather than an actual issue with the story. I just didn’t know enough about the history involved for the story to have as big of an impact as it would have for someone who did. And even then it still landed with a thought-provoking bang.

“Problem Solving”
This turned out to be a surprisingly funny story with more than a bit of a sting in its tail. From one perspective, it’s all a bit of a farce, as D.K. discovers that his lifelong run of bad luck isn’t so much bad luck as terrible timing. D.K.’s discovery of this, accompanied as it is by the presence of alien representatives of an intergalactic alliance that give off the whiff of being serious scam artists adds to the fun of the whole thing. The way that D.K. finally manages to take advantage of his combination gift and curse pays off the whole story beautifully. This one isn’t deep – unlike the rest of the collection, and offers a nice change of pace.  Grade B

“Communion”
As I read this one, it reminded me of another story, which I eventually figured out was the story “Nonzero” by Tom Vandermolen in that same Writers of the Future collection that included “Five Days Until Sunset”. Both are stories about humans who have become ‘lost in space’, untethered from whatever ship or habitat they were originally living in. The difference between the two stories is the difference between hope – however tiny – and resignation. Personally, I enjoyed “Nonzero” a bit more because it had that hint of hope – and because the protagonist’s relationship with her AI was considerably more supportive than the one between Matt, Barb, Ismail and Liem in “Communion” as the four honestly don’t like each other much and they are each more alone at their end than the unnamed protagonist of “Nonzero” is with her AI companion.

Pessimists – or perhaps realists – will probably enjoy “Communion” more than “Nonzero”. Readers who do not believe in no-win scenarios will prefer “Nonzero”. This one is a Grade B for me because I prefer that glimmer of hope.

“The Gig of the Magi”
This story is an homage to the O.Henry classic, “The Gift of the Magi”. A story which, in spite of being over a century old at this point, still lands with a beautiful punch – especially during the holiday season. (If you have never had the pleasure of reading the original work, it is still worth a read, and is out of copyright and available free in ebook from multiple sources, while public libraries are certain to have it in their collections.) The story here, “The Gig of the Magi”, updates all of the settings and circumstances, while still delivering the same lovely message as the original. Grade A-.

“Money, Wealth, and Soil”
This is a terrific climate fiction story that manages to both showcase the pervasiveness of human greed and make it the engine of a possibly better tomorrow – even as agents of that greek do their damndest to game a very complicated system. Because that’s what people do. It’s also a story about payback without that payback actually being a bloody revenge, but rather something righteously delivered that hurts absolutely no one who doesn’t deserve it.

This was my favorite in the collection. I loved the way that it made the forces that normally break a system become part of the system, that it counted on human greed rather than pretending it doesn’t exist, and that it created something good out of it instead. And that the right people finally got what they deserved for all the different ways that can be parsed. Grade A+

“Chasing the Sun”
This story is a bit of a quasi-sequel to “Five Days Until Sunset”, and it’s the story I originally picked up this collection FOR. And I was not disappointed. You don’t have to read the earlier story first – although if you read the collection in the order in which it’s presented, of course you will anyway.

By the nature of the worldbuilding, while the people of this world seem to be the descendants of the surprised colonists in “Five Days”, they don’t have much in the way of even ancestral memory of those long ago – by their standards – events. And as a result of the ways their planet interacts with its sun, they can’t put down permanent roots and maintain archives. They MUST carry all their possessions on their backs nearly every single day.

But one of the things that made that original story interesting, and that continue into this later one, is that the original did an excellent job of presenting the multiplicity of possibilities of human religious beliefs in a way that actually worked – and its the descendants of those belief systems that fuel the interaction in this later story – even if some of those beliefs work less well for them in their present circumstances.

At the same time, it’s also a story about pride going before a very big fall, and of the way that clinging to the beliefs and methods of the past prevents people, even an entire people, from adapting to a changed present. And that even the stubbornest of people can learn with the right incentive.

As with the original story, this was also a Grade A story – even though, or perhaps especially because – it is a vastly different kind of story than the one that came before.

Escape Rating A: Overall, as should be obvious from my ratings of the individual stories, I really enjoyed this collection. I will be looking forward to whatever this author comes up with next AND I’ll be looking forward to next year’s Writers of the Future collection in the hope that it will be as good as the one this sprang from.