Strange Weather

This is a decent collection of novellas, two of which were excellent and will stay with me for a long time.

“Snapshot” was good up to a point, with its subtle emotional resonance about dealing with aging loved ones afflicted with Altzeimers. It should have ended about 20 pages sooner than it did. Hill dragged out various epilogues, for what?

“Loaded” was more of an agenda than entertaining story, made obvious by portraying the protagonist, Kellaway, as an absurd caricature. (The secondary definition of “loaded” is “weighted or biased toward a particular outcome.”)

“Aloft” was excellent and convinced me that Hill can indeed be a good storyteller. A little cosmic horror, a little personal growth. Fantastic imagination and imagery. Rock solid for a story about a cloud.

“Rain” was my favorite, bizarre apocalyptic road story with an oddball cast of characters. The answer to where the rain originated was far-fetched, yet, since the story is flavored with tongue-in-cheek humor and outrageous incidents, the resolution suits the tone.

I nearly gave up on this after the second novella but the last two saved the collection for me.