Today features eight stories from Tales From the North Road, every one of which was warty! This was one of those compendia of short stories designed to showcase the work of several writers who, judged from their names, are Scandal-navians! It so happened that this particular volume had eight stories, every one of which was warty, so it's perfect for today!
This was one of those volumes where a contents list made at least some sort of sense because there were eight different writers and no sequential path through the stories. They could be read in any order. The problem as usual was that once you got to a story, there was no way to get back to the contents by, say, tapping on the chapter heading to return. On the e-reader I was using, you have to tap the screen, then slide the bar back to the left to go to the start, and there's no way to gauge where you are exactly. It's clunky and pathetic in today's world.
Here are the stories:
- Eden by Andreas Christensen is a story of a generation ship that has been zooming through space for two centuries at least. He talks of a "starry nigh sky" - something a spell-checker will not catch, but the thing is, he also says no one alive on the ship had been born when it left on this journey, so the character's 'reminiscences' of blue sky, trees and that starry "nigh" sky were bullshit since he's never seen them himself. But he also talks of being a prisoner of war who was brought aboard more dead than alive, which is utterly ridiculous and flatly contradictory. I gave up on this garbage.
- The Curse of the Elf Prince by Linn Tesli begins with barely intelligible flowery language and opens with this elf who is spying on female elves who are swimming nude, and his only interest is in their bodies. That's not the image you want to present of your main character. I quit reading this one in the second paragraph.
- The Fugitives by Theresa Marie Sanne was first person, so I never even began reading it. First person most often sucks and not in a good way.
- From His Taste in Wine by an author with the stupendous name of Ole Åsli had the word 'hobbling' in the first sentence and 'halfling' in the second which told me exactly what this story would be like. I quit it right there.
- Point of Return by Paul S Land is about the eponymous location being invaded by what sounded like a Viking hoard. As soon as I read "We must send for help from Deephold..." I quit reading this because it was clear right then how uninventive and trope-ly boring it would be.
- Angel in the Snow by Laila Sandvold Macdonald made such a big deal of the 'it' in italics, that was pursuing this guy escaping through a snow-laded pine forest that it became quickly tedious. I know it's a short story, but this farcical laboring of it pissed me off so much that I quit reading after the fourth or fifth mention. It had become a joke - like this was a parody rather than an actual story. Is it hardly surprising then that Macdonald is the one author of these eight whose name is omitted from the contents list?! LOL! The story was also one continuous paragraph because of poor formatting. Even the bolded header for part two was right there inline with the rest of the text. Somebody screwed up royally.
- 2100 by Matts Vederhus was a story I quit reading in the second paragraph when I read: "Suddenly Anne Cathrine [sic] appeared in his side view. She had blonde hair that stretched to her shoulders. Her breasts were the size of small watermelons." Note that this isn't some character saying this, which would be fine because there are guys who reduce women to purely skin-deep. No, this was in the author's own hand in a descriptive passage, so clearly women in this author's world are nothing more than fuck-dolls. That was the end of that story for me. I must confess to some intrigue however, by the employment of the phrase "small watermelons." Why not large grapefruit? Or even just 'grapefruit'? Is it the idea that melons is a sad euphemism for breasts that drove this? That, too, is as informative as it is condemning.
- The Revelation by Alex Tovsen was first person so I didn't even start on that.
One collection, eight stories, all warty to the max. Here endeth the eighth lesson.
