All posts tagged short stories

Ark

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment
Ark cover

If you’ve read my blog for a while, then you might know that Veronica Roth is one of my auto-buy authors. Chosen Ones, her adult debut that’s coming out next April, has been on my TBR for over a year now (and I’ve already pre-ordered it). So how the heck did I not know that she released a short story on Amazon nearly a month ago? You would have thought I would have heard about it before its release date. Nevertheless, I saw an ad for it on Goodreads today and I immediately had to start reading it.

Samantha is one of the last people living on Earth. An asteroid is set to hit our planet in only a few weeks. She’s a plant scientist working to save as many plant species as possible before the final ship leaves Earth for good. It’s all sort of a depressing premise, especially since they won’t reach the planet they’re headed for within their lifetimes.

I really liked the character of Samantha, as well as the older plant scientist, Hagen. Samantha’s friends weren’t as fleshed-out as they could have been, however. They weren’t the main focus of this story, but the story might have been a little better if we would have gotten to know them a little bit more.

“Ark” is a quiet story. There isn’t a lot of action like you might find in Divergent or Carve the Mark, but I liked it nevertheless. It’s not my favorite Veronica Roth short story (that honor would go to “Inertia”) but Samantha and her history grew on me. I like the twist she threw in at the end, which did give me a few “Inertia”-like vibes.

“Ark” is part of an anthology called the Forward collection. I may or may not read the others in the series. It can be borrowed for free if you have Kindle Unlimited, or you can buy it currently for $1.99.

One More October 1st Release to Get Excited About!

By Brookelorren on Leave a Comment

As if we didn’t already have enough to look forward to on October 1st, Veronica Roth is releasing a book that day too! The End and Other Beginnings is a book of short stories, which contains stories from the Carve the Mark Universe, “Inertia” (which was my favorite story from Summer Days and Summer Nights), and some other stories.

I thought we were going to have to wait until 2020 to read something else from her, but nope! I’m excited for this one too.

It’s already available for pre-order, although I just spent the remainder of my Amazon money on Rebel, so I have to wait a couple of days to buy this one. I’m so excited for this one though! I know what I’ll be doing October 1st and 2nd now (unless I happen to score a couple of ARCs on these).

Roth and Lu are my two auto-buy authors, so I’m really psyched!

Slasher Girls and Monster Boys… Oh My!

By Brookelorren on 4 Comments

slasher girls and monster boys coverThe end of October is upon us.  I’m not into scary stories or spooky things, but I figured that I’d read Slasher Girls & Monster Boys for the season anyway.  I’m not really big into short stories, but thanks to a Top Ten Tuesday topic from earlier this year, I’ve discovered that some of them are pretty cool.

This anthology has stories from several authors that I wasn’t familiar with, as well as some that I’ve heard of but haven’t read yet (like Kendare Blake) and some that I’ve read before (including my favorite author, Marie Lu).  They all have their own styles that they bring to this genre, and some of the stories I liked much better than the others.

Each of the short stories in Slasher Girls & Monster Boys was based on a classic movie or story.  I don’t really think that knowing the original story really gave away anything in the ending.  For example, “In the Forest Dark and Deep” was based on Alice in Wonderland.  Knowing the Alice story didn’t really give away what was going to happen in the story.

I didn’t really find these stories to be scary.  They did seem to have a lot of stories of the supernatural and of revenge, however.  I did like that about these stories.

Some of these stories I was just okay with.  There were a couple with bizarre endings that I would have liked to have been explained more.  I think that it’s normal in an anthology that you won’t like all the stories equally well though.

Here were some of my favorites:

“The Girl Without a Face” ~ Marie Lu.  Well, duh!  I’ve never read anything in the “horror” genre by Marie Lu before, but this story definitely has a lot of Lu-like elements to it.  The voice is familiar, as is the overall message of this story.  Sorry, I can’t give away what that message is, because then I’d pretty much spoil it!

“On the I-5” ~ Kendare Blake.  I bought Three Dark Crowns earlier this year but I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.  “On the I-5” is a story of a girl who meets someone at a truck stop on the I-5 (which runs from Washington State to Southern California).  Again, I can’t really tell you much more than that without spoiling the story, but it was pretty good.

“The Birds of Azalea Street” ~ Nova Ren Suma.  I’ve seen the Hitchcock movie The Birds more than once in my lifetime, and although I did have a guess as to what was happening in this one, I thought it was a sweet story about justice.  If sweetness can be a little dark and creepy and involve death.

“In the Forest Dark and Deep” ~ Carrie Ryan.  This was another tale of jerks seeing justice.  I think there’s a theme to my favorite stories here, because all the stories that I’ve pointed out here include some form of justice for somebody.  This story has a tea party/Alice in Wonderland influence to it.

If you’re looking for something to read this year with just a little bit of the creep factor, but you don’t want to commit to a full length novel or two, you might want to check out Slasher Girls & Monster Boys.  Chances are you’ll recognize a few of the authors, and you might find a new author you want to read more of!

Don’t Let Summer Days and Summer Nights Pass You By!

By Brookelorren on 6 Comments

Summer Days and Summer Nights CoverLast week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was on short stories, and I was drawn by Summer Days and Summer Nights.  It was recommended by more than one reader.  Fortunately, they had a copy at the library that I just happened to be going to that evening.  So I picked up the book and decided to read all of the wonderful stories inside.

One of the things that I found interesting about this book is that it had books by authors that I was already familiar with, like Veronica Roth and Cassandra Clare.  The book also has several stories written by authors that I had heard about, but hadn’t had the chance to read before.

I was originally planning on reviewing Throne of Glass today, but since we’re in the middle of summer now and the season is flying by, I postponed that review until September.  Maybe by that time the library will have some of the other books in that series available for me to read.

Summer Days and Summer Nights has a wide variety of genres of stories to choose from, written by authors that tend to write in a variety of different styles.  Some you might like more than others.

In addition to different genres, there are different kinds of relationships represented here.  Some end up happy, some sad; some stories involve same-sex couples, others involve people of color.  Representation seems to be a big deal today in the bookish world; while you can’t represent everybody in twelve stories, it’s not a completely white, straight collection of stories.

Here are some of my favorites:

  • “Inertia” by Veronica Roth:  I don’t think there’s anything that she’s written that I didn’t like, including this short story (okay, I didn’t like chapter 50 of Allegiant, but I try to pretend that never happened).  I was crying at the top of page 202 (I read the 2016 hardback edition).  I actually had to stop reading for a minute to just cry.  It was just so lovely.  And sad.

     

    “It was a good story, right?” he said.  “Our story, I mean.”
    “The best.”

    I’m tearing up just reading and writing those lines.  Oh, and there were a few more pages after this one.  The ending was wonderful too.

  • “A Thousand Ways This Could Go Wrong” by Jennifer E. Smith:  This was a lovely story about a girl who had a crush on a boy with Asperger’s all year at school, and then finally runs into him during the summer and plays basketball with him.  Will things change when she finds out that he has Asperger’s?  You’ll just have to read this story.  It’s really sweet.

  • “The Map of Tiny Perfect Things” by Lev Grossman:  This is another sweet story.  In this story, our POV character is reliving the same day, August 4th, over and over again, like in Groundhog Day.  At the end of the story, we find out why he had been living the same day over and over and over again, and it’s just perfect.

Summer Days and Summer Nights was a wonderful collection of stories, written by a lot of authors that you are probably familiar with.  I hope you get the chance to check this one out before summer slips away.  I enjoyed these stories so much that I already hope to review its companion book, My True Love Gave to Me, on December 6th.