yolandanicole

While traveling on business I finished my book. (The aforementioned Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman.) So I swung by the nearest bookstore, and walked away with this. And was immediately disappointed. I’d read some of the stories before, in another book. One of the stories, Fat Farm, was disturbing. Really disturbing. Well, in this compilation, he speaks about his writing style. This story was in a collection titled Tales of Dread. Card has this to say about dread. "…the most potent tool of storytellers. Fear. And not just fear, but dread. Dread is the first and the strongest of the three kids of fear. It is that tension, that waiting that comes when you know that there is something to fear but you have not yet identified what it is..." He’s right. What I didn’t like about that story was what he didn’t say- it left you wondering, which can be scary. It’s an interesting compilation. He’s got stories about dread, holiness, pure good old fashioned sci-fi, and even some of his old stories from the Ensign and such. He’s a great writer, and borrows liberally from existing stories- and makes them very personal. I started out disappointed because I’d read some of them before. But there was plenty there I hadn’t read- and I wound up liking a majority of it. My favorite part? The original story of Ender’s Game. One of my favorite books, it was fascinating to read the short story that it all came from. The novelization is much, much better. If you like Card, you’d like this book. Fair warning: He engages in a lot of twist endings. Off the top of my head, four or five stories have shocking twists right at the end. I’m not averse to these (in fact, done well, I love them, like in Ender’s Game, the novel, not the short story) but if you loathe O. Henry, you’ll loathe Card too.

2023-02-03 16:28