Reviews

The House of Untold Stories: Pocket-Sized Fictions & Fables by Peter Chiykowski

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roboghostworld's review

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5.0

One of the best books I have ever read!

srivalli's review

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5.0

4.5 Stars
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Following a fellow reviewer's style. ;)

This book has been published.

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Oh, man! I love well-written micro fiction and flash fiction, and this book is just too good. The stories come in different sizes, each with a unique theme and style. The dark humor in many stories made me chuckle more than a handful of times. The pictures used for the stories were eerie and mystical. They set the mood and atmosphere so well! If only the cover picture was as good.
I wouldn’t have even given the book a second look if my friend and a fellow reviewer didn’t rate it 5 stars. Yeah, would have been my loss. But shows why the cover is so, so important. I really hope the author gets the cover redone and chooses something as mystical and dark as the stories inside.
The book takes hardly a couple of hours from start to finish. Still, I’d suggest taking small breaks in between to savor the stories.
I received an ARC from NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing and am voluntarily leaving a review.
#TheHouseofUntoldStories #NetGalley

jgwc54e5's review

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5.0

This is a book of microfiction, the longest stories are a full two pages, the shortest a couple of paragraphs. There’s wonderful photography before each story, a door, a gate, a window or corridor. It has a gothic feel, and the stories are dystopian, or fantasy, a bit of horror almost and they are all very clever. The first page of the story sets up the situation. The second page gives you an unexpected ending, that turns the story on its head. I loved this, it’s beautifully done.

1_and_owenly's review

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5.0

I have loved Peter Chiykowski's work since I meandered into The Shortest Story page on Facebook. His microfiction is superb, skipping across genres, laughing at expectations, and juggling desires with mad abandon.

This book is easily my favorite of his collections, and it might be my favorite thing that I read this year.

rbharath's review

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4.0

This is a very different book with very short stories (just about a page or two). While I regularly read and like short stories, these stories are so much shorter than what I usually read! They span a wide range of genres and many strike a chord. The limitation of stories of this length is the almost total absence of character building, but the book does make up for it largely with some imaginative themes.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and author for a free electronic review copy.

laiinny's review

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2.0

I want to start off by saying that I think micro-fiction is difficult to do well. I didn't dislike Chiykowski's ability to write these micro-fictions. I do, however, think they would have been better served in a smaller collection. On their own, these are fun stories packing a quick little punch. But read in a collection, the writing and the twists become a bit trite. The voice is very similar for many of them and it soon feels like watching a movie marathon of M. Night Shyamalan's films - the upcoming twist loses its wonder and excitement when you know it's always coming.