A review by infinispace
Central Station by Lavie Tidhar

3.0

That was underwhelming, not bad, just underwhelming...and just cements the fact I'm not a fan of short story collection, fix-up "novels." There are some interesting ideas here (many I've read before), but ultimately they go nowhere. Every story ends in a dead-end. The entire fix-up ends in a dead-end. There's no resolution to any thread. The author is fond of listing out a string of smells to describe a setting, and repeated it often. Honestly, kind of frustrating.

I also noticed most of these were published as short stories in magazines. I guess I don't understand the short fiction market anymore, because many of these (at least for me) wouldn't work as standalone short fiction. They kind of work in a fix-up, world-building effort, but ultimately don't because they lead nowhere.

Now, if he wrote an actual novel in this setting it might be pretty good.