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A review by babyleo
Beginnings: Australian Speculative Fiction Anthology Vol. 1 by A.A. Warne, Alanah Andrews, Matthew P. Copping, Marcus Turner, Sasha Hanton, Kel E. Fox, Stephen Herczeg, Rebecca Dale, Belinda Brady, Lachlan Walter, Carolyn Young, Maureen Flynn, Austin P. Sheehan, Jocelyn Spark, Maddie Jensen, Chris Foley
4.0
Note: I was asked to review this anthology by one of the editors
From an incredible first story I was excited by this anthology. I was amazed at the variety of styles and stories that each of the writers came up with for the same theme. “Beginnings” means a lot of things and it is evident that each of these writers has chosen their own interpretation of that.
The opening story Edge might be one of my favourites but a few other stand outs include The Inheritance Experiment, Next Journey, and Break the Spell. There is a mixture of settings and writing styles and you can clearly see the speculative nature woven through each tale. I loved discovering how each writer chose to interpret that and how it is explored in the setting of their stories.
With any anthology there will be those stories that appeal more to some people than others. Some of the stories blew me away while some actually managed to creep me out a bit. Within the speculative guidelines there is also some horror and some fantasy in these stories, as well as a range of contemporary settings. One thing I like about speculative stories is they are so broad that they can cover almost anything strange, unknown, magical, and mystical.
There are fantastic short stories that grab you from the start and amaze you as they finish, there are stories that read like a great prologue of a bigger story yet to come, but there are also a few that read like short chapters that didn’t seem to go anywhere. Thankfully those were the minority as many of the stories were truly captivating.
This review was published on my blog Lost in a Good Book
From an incredible first story I was excited by this anthology. I was amazed at the variety of styles and stories that each of the writers came up with for the same theme. “Beginnings” means a lot of things and it is evident that each of these writers has chosen their own interpretation of that.
The opening story Edge might be one of my favourites but a few other stand outs include The Inheritance Experiment, Next Journey, and Break the Spell. There is a mixture of settings and writing styles and you can clearly see the speculative nature woven through each tale. I loved discovering how each writer chose to interpret that and how it is explored in the setting of their stories.
With any anthology there will be those stories that appeal more to some people than others. Some of the stories blew me away while some actually managed to creep me out a bit. Within the speculative guidelines there is also some horror and some fantasy in these stories, as well as a range of contemporary settings. One thing I like about speculative stories is they are so broad that they can cover almost anything strange, unknown, magical, and mystical.
There are fantastic short stories that grab you from the start and amaze you as they finish, there are stories that read like a great prologue of a bigger story yet to come, but there are also a few that read like short chapters that didn’t seem to go anywhere. Thankfully those were the minority as many of the stories were truly captivating.
This review was published on my blog Lost in a Good Book