Bam! 172 Hellaciously Quick Stories
by Luc Reid
Bam, indeed. This is a collection of 172 fantasy and science fiction, flash stories. That's right -- 172. Each of them short enough to read in a few minutes, each of them rich, well crafted, meaningful. Dark chocolate stories that deserved to be savoured.
Luc Reid is a winner of the Writers of the Future award, and it shows. Most of these stories have been previously published in venues such as Abyss and Apex, Brain Harvest and The Daily Cabal. Reid has compiled this collection, added some interesting commentary and published them at the bargain price of $2.99.
I have a taste for flash, and with the explosion of e-publishing, it could be that flash is going to take off in a big way. You could read these stories to slip a little strangeness into your life, standing in line at the check-out, on the bus, waiting in the doctor's surgery.
There are two things I like in my flash. I love spec fiction, I love ideas. Bam has idea after idea, expressed succinctly. Glimpses into worlds, very much like own, but skewed in some interesting and wonderful way. I also like my flash to have an emotional resonance. I particularly like the three linked 'Outcasts on Earth' stories, written through the eyes of alien perception. Many of Reid's stories are moving, many of them are funny. There are too many stories to mention all my favorites. I enjoyed the Parthenia Rook series, a tongue-in-cheek pulp style science-fiction adventure series. Ever wondered what happened, after the 'happily ever after' -- read the Cinderella series.
Reid has published the collection in a number of formats. If you have a kindle you can sample or buy on Amazon. If you're like me, a person who is always trailing behind the latest trends, you can read the collection on your computer in pdf or html format. On Smashwords you can read a generous 20% sample of the book for free. I highly recommend this collection. Dark chocolate flash stories which deserve to be savoured, or, if you're greedy like me, you can gobble them all down at once.
No comments:
Post a Comment