Today we see that less can be more when it comes to the speculative elements.
What I gleaned about the stories: The most unusual of worlds are only one small change away from this one.
Find this book on Amazon.
Note: This is a short story collection, so the rules are slightly different from standard Immerse or Die: instead of reading on every time I lose immersion, I stop reading that story and move on to the next one. As usual, I stop reading after the third WTF.
Analysis: While there are moments where the narrators explain meanings or state facts, most of each story is presented as the narrator’s perceptions and reactions. This enhanced the illusion that I was experiencing events rather than being lectured about them from a distance. The absence of objective narration added especially to those stories where the plot contained mystery or confusion.
Analysis: Each narrator was both distinct and consistent, without drifting into pastiche or affectation. Due to this, I both felt no confusion or blurring between stories from reading them back to back, and moved smoothly through each story.
Analysis: Each of the stories grows from a single change to the “real” world, a what-if allowed to unfold logically. This focus on the consequences of one difference, rather than entire new worlds created from whole cloth, grounded my experience firmly in the familiar – making the issues instantly relevant – and created a firmer contrast for the significant differences.
Take the Pepsi Challenge: Want to know if my own writing measures up? Download one of these free short stories, in the format of your choice, and decide for yourself.
Thank you very much, Dave. I am honored by your gracious commentary. Readers can also get the collection free if they subscribe to my occasional newsletter. http://www.ljcohen.net/contact.html)
The pleasure was, in a very real sense, mine.
Impressive! It’s unusual to see a clean IoD report. Thank you for the freebie, I’m looking forward to reading it :)
Thanks, Robin. I hope you enjoy it.
Hey, 40 out of 40, that’s pretty awesome. So I went to look for this book. The link goes to the UK web site, where the sum total of description was this:
The Amazon US site, where I’d be buying, doesn’t even have that.
It’s amazing the book is doing as well as it is (ranking 600K and change on the US site), with an ambiguous cover and essentially no description of what kinds of stories it contains, aside from bare genre. If the book is good enough to completely absorb you, then the book is good enough to deserve an active and evocative description that might actually lure some more folks in.
Great reviews (or analyses or whatever you want to call them) like this one are wonderful, but realistically, most readers won’t ever see them. The book’s page on a vendor site needs to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to attracting the customer’s attention, and this book’s pages aren’t doing it. I hope the writer sees this and does some revamping there; I’ll bet it’d reward her with increased sales.
Thank you for that feedback, Angie. I will see what I can come up with for the collection.
Got the book for free in exchange for getting on author’s mailing list. Read it in one gulp. Liked it so much, I bought it.
Oh, and I really, really, really do not like short stories.
Thank you so much, Remy! You have made my day.
Well done, LJ. It’s been a long time since anyone scored a 40!
Congratulations, LJ! I can see why your stories hit full marks – I’ve downloaded and just finished the first one. Just popping in here to say thanks before getting back to the rest.
I stubled across this site, and was a bit taken aback at the idea of reading and running on a treadmill at the same time – I mean, how do you manage that? :) – but glad I came by.