Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsThis was an excellent collection of sci-fi and fantasy short stories that all ...
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 8, 2016
This was an excellent collection of sci-fi and fantasy short stories that all fans of the genres are likely to enjoy. Of course, as with any anthology I enjoyed some stories more than others.
Now, as this is an Immerse or Die anthology the review does need to be written in IOD style.
WTF #1: "The First Man in the World": The first sentence of this first story was, to me, rather convoluted and long. It took me several reads of this sentence to fully understand it. I do not think there is anything technically wrong with it, it was simply a lot to digest and get my head around in one sentence.
Kudos #1: "The First Man in the World": The best use of intentional echoing headwords I have ever seen. Passages like the following and several other similar passages were incredibly effective and told the story perfectly.
"He was thirty-eight years old.
He was newborn.
He was one hundred and eighty-four years old."
WTF #2: Theriac, Location 3623. The word "throughthat" should have been 2 words, "through that".
WTF #3: The Rakam, Location 4866. The original sentence is: "He tells one of his crew, a women larger than me, to stop me." As this is referring to one person it should have read "a woman larger" rather than the plural "women".
Now, having just 3 WTFs (1 of them just my opinion, not a true error) in an entire anthology is a really well done and well edited book. Kudos to the authors and editors for such a well done book.
As to the stores my favorites were "The First Man in the World", "All the Way", and "Heft"
My least favorites (although by no means bad stories, just not my favorites" were "Scales Fall", "Theriac" and "The Ant Tower" (possibly because I had already read the novel and it was so much more filled out).
The stories "The Dowager's Largess" and "The Rakam" did not feel like short stories. Both of these felt more like the first section of a novel and both left me wanting to read more about these characters and these worlds.
So, once again, overall this is an excellent collection and I highly recommend it to all sci-fi and fantasy fans!
