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A review by anjana
Five Minutes at Hotel Stormcove by
5.0
I usually do not read many short story collections of any sort, mostly because I am more accustomed to longer sagas spanning a longer period of time. It gives me time to sink in and familiarize myself with the people. That said, I think that writing a short story must be as difficult as writing an extremely large series because, within the span of a few pages, a lot of impact worthy events and people need to be depicted effectively.
This is a collection which sixty-one people came together in one book! If I had known the number before, I might have been put off from reading it but I did not know and did read it, which in turn turned out to be a whole new reading experience. The basis of each story is a hotel called Stormcove in the US (as of this time period but the status changes as do the years and 'worlds' surrounding the tales). The stories range from pre-historic to extreme futures, authors range from really young to much older. The author's descriptions by themselves were entertaining enough to be just read on their own. I enjoyed most of the stories, although with a collection as large as this there are bound to be a few that did not appeal to me personally. Even if I did not enjoy a story here or there, I did enjoy the intelligence required to put together such tales where the main theme is acceptance and helpfulness and peppered with a subtle sense of humour (for many stories). This entire collection is definitely worth the time invested in reading it.
It was sometimes surprising to see how people from different backgrounds and parts of the world could draw similar inspiration when provided with a framework to work within. This is a fact even with genres that do not remotely resemble each other.
I highly recommend this book (releasing on May7th 2019) to those who like anthologies of any form or like the idea of reading multiple genres (almost) simultaneously.
I received an advance copy of this book thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but that did not influence my review in any way.
This is a collection which sixty-one people came together in one book! If I had known the number before, I might have been put off from reading it but I did not know and did read it, which in turn turned out to be a whole new reading experience. The basis of each story is a hotel called Stormcove in the US (as of this time period but the status changes as do the years and 'worlds' surrounding the tales). The stories range from pre-historic to extreme futures, authors range from really young to much older. The author's descriptions by themselves were entertaining enough to be just read on their own. I enjoyed most of the stories, although with a collection as large as this there are bound to be a few that did not appeal to me personally. Even if I did not enjoy a story here or there, I did enjoy the intelligence required to put together such tales where the main theme is acceptance and helpfulness and peppered with a subtle sense of humour (for many stories). This entire collection is definitely worth the time invested in reading it.
It was sometimes surprising to see how people from different backgrounds and parts of the world could draw similar inspiration when provided with a framework to work within. This is a fact even with genres that do not remotely resemble each other.
I highly recommend this book (releasing on May7th 2019) to those who like anthologies of any form or like the idea of reading multiple genres (almost) simultaneously.
I received an advance copy of this book thanks to NetGalley and the publishers but that did not influence my review in any way.