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A review by dayseraph
And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe by Gwendolyn Kiste
2.0
The ideas for these stories are really good. Kiste is clearly very creative and imaginative, and this collection is full of the unexpected. However, overall, the execution felt unpolished.
It looks like all of the other reviewers here loved this collection, and I am happy for them even if it didn't quite work for me. I did really enjoy a few of the stories, but I never really got/bought into the atmosphere that I feel like Kiste was trying to create for the most part. For the most part, I was curious about where the stories would go, because they felt fresh. But personally, I was rarely satisfied by the experience.
Partly because the stories are nearly all told in the first person, there is a lot of "telling" vs "showing." It's like if someone waved their arms around a haunted house and said, "isn't this spooky? It's so spooooky!" It barely matters if the house is haunted at that point, because being told something is spooky is off-putting. It's not enough to be told the mood; you need to really feel it.
It's hard to rate short story collections, the whole experience was just okay for me.
It looks like all of the other reviewers here loved this collection, and I am happy for them even if it didn't quite work for me. I did really enjoy a few of the stories, but I never really got/bought into the atmosphere that I feel like Kiste was trying to create for the most part. For the most part, I was curious about where the stories would go, because they felt fresh. But personally, I was rarely satisfied by the experience.
Partly because the stories are nearly all told in the first person, there is a lot of "telling" vs "showing." It's like if someone waved their arms around a haunted house and said, "isn't this spooky? It's so spooooky!" It barely matters if the house is haunted at that point, because being told something is spooky is off-putting. It's not enough to be told the mood; you need to really feel it.
It's hard to rate short story collections, the whole experience was just okay for me.