Scan barcode
pacardullo's review against another edition
5.0
This is an excellent collection of surreal and darkly fantastic short stories from Anna Tambour. The stories contained therein range from funny to disturbing - but they all are thought-provoking and each contains a unique beauty. Well worth a read. Oh, and you will find yourself wanting to try medlars by the end.
survivalisinsufficient's review against another edition
3.0
This was really SUCH a mixed bag. The stories often end very abruptly and some are just not very good, but there are some that are pretty great - the community of trees, the personality peeling, and a few others.
xterminal's review
3.0
Anna Tambour, Monterra's Deliciosa and Other Tales (Prime Books, 2003)
For reasons that would take far too long to go into here, it took me forever and a day to finish Monterra's Deliciosa and Other Tales, which is odd considering it's a book I quite enjoyed most of the time. It's taken me almost as long to get round to reviewing it, and I don't quite understand that, either. It's not like I have anything outrageous to say or what have you. It's a collection of good, solid-if-not-remarkable-most-of-the-time stories that vacillate between fantasy and sci-fi, usually with a dash (or more) of comedy to leaven things. I could have done without the poetry as a whole, and I could have done with a good deal more of the book reviewing (“Literary Titan, Asher E. (huh?) Treat” is my favorite piece in the collection). When Tambour is on her game, as in, for example, “Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cévennes” (a fantastical story of Stevenson's trip narrated by his pack donkey!), the prose skips off the page and sparkles in your eyes. “Crumpled Sheets and Death-Fluffies,” on the other hand, is a one-trick pony, a shaggy dog joke that goes on a bit too long. And I could sit here giving you balance all day with these stories (“Klokwerk's Heart” vs. “The Refloat of D'Urbe Isle”, “Monterra's Deliciosa” vs. “The Afterlife at Seahorse Drive”, and to be honest after all these months I still can't tell you which side “The Magic Lino” falls on...). In short, it's a story collection, and as with the majority of story collections, the quality is variable. But Tambour is a fine writer (fine enough that I augmented my print edition of this with an ebook edition—and I should caution you there are some formatting quirks to be found here—and then went off and grabbed an ebook edition of Spotted Lily when I was done with this), and she brings her A game to the table enough that this is a solid recommend. ***
For reasons that would take far too long to go into here, it took me forever and a day to finish Monterra's Deliciosa and Other Tales, which is odd considering it's a book I quite enjoyed most of the time. It's taken me almost as long to get round to reviewing it, and I don't quite understand that, either. It's not like I have anything outrageous to say or what have you. It's a collection of good, solid-if-not-remarkable-most-of-the-time stories that vacillate between fantasy and sci-fi, usually with a dash (or more) of comedy to leaven things. I could have done without the poetry as a whole, and I could have done with a good deal more of the book reviewing (“Literary Titan, Asher E. (huh?) Treat” is my favorite piece in the collection). When Tambour is on her game, as in, for example, “Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cévennes” (a fantastical story of Stevenson's trip narrated by his pack donkey!), the prose skips off the page and sparkles in your eyes. “Crumpled Sheets and Death-Fluffies,” on the other hand, is a one-trick pony, a shaggy dog joke that goes on a bit too long. And I could sit here giving you balance all day with these stories (“Klokwerk's Heart” vs. “The Refloat of D'Urbe Isle”, “Monterra's Deliciosa” vs. “The Afterlife at Seahorse Drive”, and to be honest after all these months I still can't tell you which side “The Magic Lino” falls on...). In short, it's a story collection, and as with the majority of story collections, the quality is variable. But Tambour is a fine writer (fine enough that I augmented my print edition of this with an ebook edition—and I should caution you there are some formatting quirks to be found here—and then went off and grabbed an ebook edition of Spotted Lily when I was done with this), and she brings her A game to the table enough that this is a solid recommend. ***
More...