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mdpenguin's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
I normally just review collections of short stories as a whole, but the first two stories in this anthology really touched me and I wanted to remember them a little better and maybe find more by the authors that wrote the ones that I liked most. So I'm breaking form and reviewing each story individually. Overall, I have to say that it wasn't so much uneven as such a variety that I think that reasonably people will disagree about which stories were and weren't enjoyable. For me, the first half of them were much better than the second half. Averaging my ratings for each of the stories individually, I come up with 3.65 and I feel pretty comfortable rounding that up since it was such a good mix and had so many stories that I liked a lot.
1. The Star (Elia Barceló) - A somewhat sad, somewhat hopeful story about the remnants of humanity after the Earth has been destroeyd. Those left behind (or their ghosts?) become something ethereal and happy despite the loss of their plant. Those who escaped can either embrace what the ones left behind have become or look to their own future away from the planet. It took a moment for me to get into it, but it was an enjoyable read and I liked how it used the perspective of two opposing characters to kind of discuss what had happened to humanity. 4.5 stars
2. The Flock (César Mallorquí) - A novelette, this was a gorgeous tale of what was left behind when the humans had all died out. Shepherd dogs continue to graze and guard a flock as an AI running a satellite in LEO tries to figure out what to do since it can no longer find any humans to communicate with. 5 stars
3. The Forest of Ice (Juan Miguel Aguilera) - The thoughts explored in this novella are really interesting. I love the idea of the trees that support the oort cloud communities and found the alien way of coping with the massive scope of the universe to be worth exploring further. In fact, despite the fact that there isn't much explicit world building, the story hints at a really interesting world that I'd like to learn more about. 5 stars
3. The Forest of Ice (Juan Miguel Aguilera) - The thoughts explored in this novella are really interesting. I love the idea of the trees that support the oort cloud communities and found the alien way of coping with the massive scope of the universe to be worth exploring further. In fact, despite the fact that there isn't much explicit world building, the story hints at a really interesting world that I'd like to learn more about. 5 stars
4. My Wife, My Daughter (Domingo Santos) - Content warning: description of violent rape. Well that was kind of gross but still a really interesting look into human cloning. A man clones his late wife to raise the clone to become as close to the source material as possible so that she'll take his wife's place. The story does address the morality of that but, more than that, it addresses potential human attitudes toward cloned humans. 4 stars
5. God's Messenger (Rodolfo Martínez) - This was a brief adventure in espionage from the perspective of a sentient AI. It was decently entertaining but not particularly interesting. It did, however, build a fairly interesting world that could be the setting of something a bit more fleshed out that I would find interesting. 3.5 stars
5. God's Messenger (Rodolfo Martínez) - This was a brief adventure in espionage from the perspective of a sentient AI. It was decently entertaining but not particularly interesting. It did, however, build a fairly interesting world that could be the setting of something a bit more fleshed out that I would find interesting. 3.5 stars
6. In the Martian Forges (León Arsenal) - This was more interesting than enjoyable for me. It really didn't get into enough detail about Martian culture and history to really engage me and the general story of the guide and the researcher didn't really develop into anything that I cared about. 3 stars
7. A Marble in the Palm (Rafael Marín) - This was a sweet story, if maybe a bit on the tedious side with all the run-on sentences from the perspective of a 7yo girl. 3.5 stars
7. A Marble in the Palm (Rafael Marín) - This was a sweet story, if maybe a bit on the tedious side with all the run-on sentences from the perspective of a 7yo girl. 3.5 stars
8. The Albatross Ship (Félix J. Palma) - This was a decent little campfire horror tale. It's a bit clunky, shifting perspectives from the daughter to the father midway through without any segue, and I felt it was a little obvious, but that's not to say that it wasn't clever. 3 stars
9. The Secret Hunting (Javier Negrete) - Content warning:violent murder and attempted rape of a juvenile. A high-fantasy about an outsider student at a martial arts academy who stands up for peasants against nobles and gets expelled. It's full of a whole lot of in-world jargon and I had a hard time caring about any of the characters, though I could get behind the sense of justice and outrage. It's not a bad read but it's very obviously the first chapter of a book and doesn't really have a solid conclusion. In the context of a full novel, I might have enjoyed it more, but by itself it wasn't my thing. 2.5 stars
10. Victim and Executioner (Eduardo Vaquerizo) - This was basically Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, only set in South America under a Spanish Empire that survived well into the 20th century. Aside from being a little grody and completely derivative, it wasn't bad for what it was. 2.5 stars
9. The Secret Hunting (Javier Negrete) - Content warning:
10. Victim and Executioner (Eduardo Vaquerizo) - This was basically Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, only set in South America under a Spanish Empire that survived well into the 20th century. Aside from being a little grody and completely derivative, it wasn't bad for what it was. 2.5 stars
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