Syndrie
This is a collection of ten stories that I have to admit I did not fully appreciate until hitting the final three stories. The first seven stories were mostly all just okay for me — not bad by any means but nothing that really wowed me either. If anything, these first seven just felt like they only skimmed the surface of what they could offer and really left me wanting more. (However the fourth story, “What We Look Like Together,” was an outlier here because I did enjoy that one quite a lot.)
So as I was reading through the first chunk of stories I was fully prepared to settle on an average three star rating and call it a day, but then the final three stories came into play and they completely changed my mind about the entire collection. “No Future” and “Going Up” both had some interesting ideas that grabbed my attention quickly while being just long enough to pull off what felt like a proper full story arc. Although out of these two, I’d have to say “Going Up” manages to be a bit more of a standout and even though I was perfectly satisfied with the length and the ending of the story, I kind of want a full book in this particular universe as well. The idea of The Speaker, who is an unknown entity that randomly calls people and begs them to take ownership of a still beating heart, is perfectly creepy and mysterious and the world seems to have no idea why this phenomenon is actually happening.
But the final, and longest, story is the absolute standout of this collection. Spanning the final 35% of the book, “Heaven is Fine for Girls Who Miss Their Mothers” managed to be a moving and powerful story that also made me sit back and reflect on some of the earlier stories as well. It really re-framed the collection as a whole for me and I definitely gained a new appreciation for those stories that I had originally been writing off as just okay. I don’t want to give too much away here because I really think going into “Heaven…” blind will offer the best reading experience, so I’ll just say that reading it really made pushing through the beginning half of the book absolutely worth it for me.
I’d definitely recommend this to readers who are interested in speculative fiction and aren’t afraid to just sit back and trust the process. I may be rating this as a four overall due to some of the less interesting stories, but I’d argue that sitting through all of them is definitely worth it for those final three — which I would individually rate at a 4, 4.5 and 5 respectively.
(I received an advance review copy of this book from the publisher, William Morrow, via NetGalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily. All opinions are my own.)
This is a collection of ten stories that I have to admit I did not fully appreciate until hitting the final three stories. The first seven stories were mostly all just okay for me — not bad by any means but nothing that really wowed me either. If anything, these first seven just felt like they only skimmed the surface of what they could offer and really left me wanting more. (However the fourth story, “What We Look Like Together,” was an outlier here because I did enjoy that one quite a lot.)
So as I was reading through the first chunk of stories I was fully prepared to settle on an average three star rating and call it a day, but then the final three stories came into play and they completely changed my mind about the entire collection. “No Future” and “Going Up” both had some interesting ideas that grabbed my attention quickly while being just long enough to pull off what felt like a proper full story arc. Although out of these two, I’d have to say “Going Up” manages to be a bit more of a standout and even though I was perfectly satisfied with the length and the ending of the story, I kind of want a full book in this particular universe as well. The idea of The Speaker, who is an unknown entity that randomly calls people and begs them to take ownership of a still beating heart, is perfectly creepy and mysterious and the world seems to have no idea why this phenomenon is actually happening.
But the final, and longest, story is the absolute standout of this collection. Spanning the final 35% of the book, “Heaven is Fine for Girls Who Miss Their Mothers” managed to be a moving and powerful story that also made me sit back and reflect on some of the earlier stories as well. It really re-framed the collection as a whole for me and I definitely gained a new appreciation for those stories that I had originally been writing off as just okay. I don’t want to give too much away here because I really think going into “Heaven…” blind will offer the best reading experience, so I’ll just say that reading it really made pushing through the beginning half of the book absolutely worth it for me.
I’d definitely recommend this to readers who are interested in speculative fiction and aren’t afraid to just sit back and trust the process. I may be rating this as a four overall due to some of the less interesting stories, but I’d argue that sitting through all of them is definitely worth it for those final three — which I would individually rate at a 4, 4.5 and 5 respectively.
(I received an advance review copy of this book from the publisher, William Morrow, via NetGalley and I am leaving this review voluntarily. All opinions are my own.)