Actions and Reactions

A selection of short stories by Kipling, along with a poem loosely related to each story.

I am looking for the positives in this book, but coming up short of a way to talk it up. Most of it was terrible. As I detest poetry, there was, in fairness, never any hope for that, but of the stories, only one stood out.

That story was Garm - a Hostage. A story about a dog, set in India. I enjoyed that story a lot. It was a four star read. Of all the other stories they felt incredibly dated, and despite no small effort, I failed to enjoy any of them enough to persist with reading them. That says a lot, as I will generally carry on with even a mediocre story to the end, even though I often regret it.

Some I simply couldn't understand (With the Night Mail, The Puzzler) others just didn't go anywhere fast enough (Little Foxes, The House Surgeon, A Deal in Cotton).

I can't go beyond two stars.