Reviews

This book was very Russian. The way the stories were told and their content was good but very different than anything else I've ever read.

Like with any short story collection, there were some that were great and others that kind of fell flat for me. Some of the stories were short and creepy, while others dragged on for a while without really making a point.

Definitely an interesting read, and I'm happy that I got to try something new with this book. I'm sure that if I'd read it in Russian I would have gotten more out of it, but the translated version was good and I'm glad that I read it.

smagdarine's review against another edition

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3.0

more like a 3.5, i will have to reread when i can pay better attention and read closer HOWEVER very haunting. very russian

bluenicorn's review against another edition

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3.0

I liked this- not all of the stories were great, but that's to be expected in any short story collection, right? What I liked is that there was a good mix of the grotesque and the scary, but also what I think is even more integral to good scary fairy tales: strange, dream-like, and other-worldly qualities. I don't know how much of the strangeness is because the original stories were in Russian, and perhaps they rely on some elements of traditional Russian fairy tales/tradition, or just due to the author's creativity. A nice departure though- good to read.

jasonfurman's review against another edition

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3.0

I wanted to like this more than I actually did like it. Some of the stories are quite striking, original and memorable. But there is something overly defiant of any internal logic or coherence that gets in the way of them being fully satisfying. And there was a certain repetitiveness to them. That said, some are about as imaginative as anything I've read -- from about as macabre and twisted mind as one could imagine.

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