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A review by meixiaotian
& This Is How to Stay Alive by Shingai Njeri Kagunda
4.0
The premise of this story is very good. And its execution, in the first half, was excellent. It was emotional, with lovely prose, and overall quite effective. I’d give it 5 stars.
But the second half felt messier, like the author fell in love with a different set of characters & wanted to make one of them a protagonist. It could have worked if it were presented differently, but it just felt like exposition about characters I barely knew. The expanded characters and themes presented in the second half also felt like a little too much to work in the length of the story.
I read the short story a while ago and really liked the premise, but it felt like the story only set up, but didn’t go very far with, the “sister time traveling to save her brother” concept. The novella gets further, but the conclusion is still open-ended enough that I didn’t find it satisfying.
But the second half felt messier, like the author fell in love with a different set of characters & wanted to make one of them a protagonist. It could have worked if it were presented differently, but it just felt like exposition about characters I barely knew. The expanded characters and themes presented in the second half also felt like a little too much to work in the length of the story.
I read the short story a while ago and really liked the premise, but it felt like the story only set up, but didn’t go very far with, the “sister time traveling to save her brother” concept. The novella gets further, but the conclusion is still open-ended enough that I didn’t find it satisfying.