Anthology Review: Echoes of the Soul by Daniela Alibrandi

ECHOES OF THE SOUL: Short Novels, Poems and Thoughts by Daniela Alibrandi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This collection of poems, thoughts, modern fables and vignettes is translated to English from the original Italian. It felt translated in its stilted prose verging on romanticized abstract cliche. The fables, too, felt un-nuanced and heavy-handed with a goal in mind but stunted development. One could wonder what has been lost in the translation process.

No particular poem or tale stood out as better or worse than the rest. One did heavily push into speculative fiction territory with its bleak image of a future society completely divorced from its past and elderly citizens. Another, veered toward folktale centering on an Italian equivalent of Santa Claus, the Befana. This diversity of genres adds flavor to the mix.

My favorite moments were mere couple-line descriptions that had something new to offer:

[from “The Kiss of Old People”]
Those two were still seeking something from each other, worth waiting for. Perhaps there is always something that lovers can receive, even if it is the tacit and intimate promise of dying together.

[from “The Reunion”]
. . . memories were bursting from the fog in which they seemed to have dissolved.

[from “Those Four Minutes”]
He opened the bathroom, as bare as the rest of the house, with only a razor and a toothbrush left on the edge of the sink. It was an environment without a story.

I received my copy of this novel directly from the author through bookreviewdirectory.wordpress.com.
 
 
 
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Novel Review: Fool Moon by Jim Butcher

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This second installment to the Dresden Files series is but a small step from the first in timeline, plot and character development. It’s highly enjoyable in a guilty pleasure sort of way, but I hold out hope that the series will develop more richly than well-written guilty pleasure.

Harry Dresden is a modern wizard-for-hire in Chicago that gets called in by the Chi-town police for all sorts of unexplained and possibly supernatural crimes. His relationship with special agent Karrin Murphy is just as tenuous as it was in the series opener despite them having worked together for years. The distrust and misunderstandings will get old if not ironed out soon. Meanwhile, on the homefront, Harry is still getting help from his spirit-trapped-in-a-skull, Bob, whose story has yet to emerge. And Harry is still casually hooking up with Susan, reporter for Chicago’s supernatural tabloid, The Arcane, and actively avoiding recruitment by mobster boss, Johnny Marcone.

In this installment, a series of brutal murders surrounding subsequent full moons has the police spooked. The hits seem random and then there is the bloody wolf prints at the scenes . . .
Leave it to Bob to be overly thorough with his werewolf report in which he details 4-5 different varieties, all with different modes of operation and Achilles’ heels. And suddenly, wolves of varying types are seemingly everywhere . . .

I’ve previously reviewed the first in the series, Storm Front, which I also enjoyed. This sequel was more tightly plotted.
 
 
 
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Short Story Review: “His Carnivorous Regard” by John C. Foster

3 of 5 stars.

This psychologically compromised tale jerks between three different timelines to round out its implied horror, while skirting any revelations. By Lovecraftian necessity, the secrets of the universe are ultimately incomprehensible and likewise indescribable. This doesn’t stop the characters in their search to understand the medium of the messages transmitting through the universe.

Timeline 1 shows Chalmers trying to recruit a viable candidate to become trillionaire Etan Machen’s personal SETI experiment. Machen believes that cosmic frequencies are transmitting higher truths through the universe and wants a necronaut [someone willing to die in open space] to sacrifice himself for the cause. Chalmers runs the unnamed, and thereby dehumanized, candidate through brainwave reading machines as he experiences every conceivable extreme sensation imaginable.

Timeline 2 shows Maxwell, captain of Etan Machen’s ship, dealing with the crew going insane and the candidate preparing to launch himself unprotected into space.

Timeline 3 follows Chalmers alone on the same dead ship after everyone else is mysteriously gone. The crazy clues in their wake rattle him. The computers on the ship crashed with the surge of input from the necronaut’s last moments . . .

This tale appears in Whispers of the Abyss 2: The Horrors That Were and Shall Be edited by Kat Rocha. I received this new anthology directly from 01 Publishing through bookreviewdirectory.wordpress.com.
 
 
 
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Short Story Review: “We Are Not These Bodies, Strung Between the Stars” by A. C. Wise

3 of 5 stars.

Drawing heavily from Lovecraft’s universe, this tale makes greater use of the unknown and outre than clear timeline and plot. The universe is/has fractured for all time: past, present, and future. And, all places. For better or for worse, hundreds of thousands of sentient cultures from across the aeons and universe have melded. Earth is a wasteland of lost cities, strange creatures, and truly alien weather phenomena. The humans[?] seen are of morphing gender and body type, distorted facial features, webbed extremities . . .

John narrates this confused, circular tale. Despite all the weirdness that he’s experienced, he worries about Zee who’s riddled with cancer from one cause or another. He loves Zee:

Would it be so bad, just once, to say “I love you” out loud? Fuck embarrassment. Fuck not hearing it in return. What could it hurt for Zee to know one person cares about them more than anything in the world? The knowledge could be like a smooth stone to take out of their pocket and look at and think, “well there’s that: I am loved”.

But every time I open my mouth, my tongue trips on the image of Zee looking at me like I’ve put an incredible burden on their shoulders. It’s a look of pity, and one that says “Why would you tell me this thing when you know you can’t possibly hear it in return? Why would you make me feel like a guilty sack of shit for hurting my best friend?”

I’ve previously reviewed Wise’s “And the Carnival Leaves Town” and “Letters to a Body on the Cusp of Drowning”. This tale appears in Whispers of the Abyss 2: The Horrors That Were and Shall Be edited by Kat Rocha. I received this new anthology directly from 01 Publishing through bookreviewdirectory.wordpress.com.
 
 
 
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Poem Review: “Odin on the Tree” by Jo Walton

2 of 5 stars.

“Heroic poetry is largely of a bygone era. Attempts to resurrect the genre as recently as the 1800’s in England largely failed. So, other than in fantasy books that draw upon medieval imagery (and songs and poem forms) in the construction of their worlds, one rarely sees a new heroic poem. But then there is this, an anachronism if there ever was one. . .” I wrote this about Paul Park’s “Ragnarok”, but here Norse epic poetry rears its head yet again, albeit less successfully.

The exploration of the style is noble however. Most of the lines employ the heavy mid-line pause known as the caesura, but the line lengths are not consistent, with the shorter lines being particularly unhelpful in telling the story. A couple lines consist of merely four elemental nouns and pronouns. Perhaps they serve as a sort of chorus as a variant to standard epic verse with 2 strong beats both before and after the break. The longer lines reflect this tradition:

. . . Light fails, blood price
Death, war, fire, ice.

Here is memory’s price, that I killed and I lied
And I pondered death’s price as I lived, I denied
The dominion of death for the races I shaped
And gave my breath to draw them through the dark.

Throne, price, hang tree,
Fire, ice, you, me . . .

This poem appears in Abbreviated Epics, a Third Flatiron Anthology, edited by Juliana Rew. However, the page formatting is dreadful and compromises the poem. All lines are indented–unnecessarily–which forces nine lines to spill their final word onto the line. This was never as the poet intended as seen with a quick online search for a different format. The broken lines disrupt the poem’s goal of exploring the Old Norse heroic poetic verse with a heavy caesura. The editors of this anthology owe Walton an apology in this regard. One can see the poem as it’s meant to be seen: “Odin on the Tree”. I’ve previously reviewed this author’s wonderful speculative fiction short story, “Sleeper”.
 
 
 
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