And François realized, for the first time since he had been coming to this pond, that he was happy to be alive in this world with whatever little h
And François realized, for the first time since he had been coming to this pond, that he was happy to be alive in this world with whatever little he had.
Short stories are a uniquely challenging medium. They require fitting exposition, conflict and conclusion into much fewer words than would usually be allotted for all those plot elements, not to mention pesky details like character development and message without which a story feels lost. As a result, I'm highly impressed by what Indrajit Garai managed to do with three short stories in The Sacrifice, each with the depth to stand alone but together forming a coherent, heartfelt anthology on the lengths ordinary people go to protect what they love.
To its credit, this collection is remarkably professional for a self-published novel. The stories are clearly well-edited to be mechanically sound and boast an easily understood style. There are various Frenchisms in the prose which I gather follow from the author being a native French speaker, but they don't impede understanding--for example, Garai uses the word 'manifestation' for 'protest' and orders words into distinctly French sentence structures. This isn't a criticism so much as a quality I found fascinating, and regardless of language variations, the genuine storytelling shines through.
Everything goes wrong for the protagonists. The Sacrifice doesn't tell pretty stories but rewarding ones, full of authentic struggles pulled from contemporary France. Guillaume of 'The Move' barely keeps his family farm afloat against competition from much lower prices overseas. Primary student Mathew of 'The Listener' fights a Forest Office determined to chop down a plot that includes his beloved tree. François, once an acclaimed literary author, gives up everything he has to make ends meet for his grandson after readers spurn his books for genre fiction. In each case, Garai takes a wide-reaching issue (globalisation, deforestation etc) and humanises it with familiar everyman characters.
In fact, The Sacrifice's characters are a little too everyman. The protagonists are zealously self-abnegating, the antagonists utterly hateful bureaucrats of the broken system. To be fair, that the characters fit into moulds of time-tested tropes doesn't make them less powerful. More originality could have been spared for their personalities, but what exists is compelling.
I haven't yet mentioned the special factor that, in my opinion, makes short stories truly stand out: the twist. The curtain pulled back at the eleventh hour that first comes like a bucket of cold water over the head, then makes you reevaluate the story you just read. The three stories of The Sacrifice have that twist, which they incorporate to varying degrees of effectiveness. For example, The Move's twist is quite predictable albeit satisfying, and The Listener's is a much needed repose after 70 pages of incessant darkness. However, the fact that they're present at all and add to the nuance of the stories is worth appreciation to me.
The Sacrifice is a fine literary collection with an emphasis on the literary--it's hard not to get the sense that Garai's stories are the exact kind which would be lauded by the traditional, genre fiction-hating grandfather and grandson who serve as the eponymous story's protagonists. That said, I wouldn't warn away genre fiction readers at all: The Sacrifice is tied together with accessible, heartfelt writing, where the stories complement each other yet each tale weaves in the overarching theme in its own unique way.
*Thanks to Estelle Leboucher and the author for providing a review copy of this book! All opinions represented remain my own.*
Six of Crows, as my first taste of Leigh Bardugo, has forever ingrained in me the expectation that her stories will be bloody, amoral and h3.5/5 stars
Six of Crows, as my first taste of Leigh Bardugo, has forever ingrained in me the expectation that her stories will be bloody, amoral and half nihilistic. I was pleasantly surprised that The Language of Thorns turned out to be a far gentler rendition of trope subversion, producing essentially a rewrite of fairy tales and fables to capture the nuances in the morals they impart.
In her Author's Note, Bardugo writes that what's bothered her most in Hansel and Gretel has always been the father--"a man so weak-willed, so cowardly, that he let his wicked wife send his children into the woods to die twice." This book is a version of Hansel and Gretel where Gretel finds her own strength in the witch's cottage, a version of The Little Mermaid where there are things more important than princes, a version of the happily-ever-after that's Cinderella meets Theseus meets Beauty and the Beast meets Scheherazade. It reminded me at times of Because You Love to Hate Me, the other YA anthology this year retelling classic stories from the "villain's" point of view, but better. Contrarianism against tropes has led to the rise of new tropes itself (eg the evil witch was really an innocent woman spurned, the ugly monster is actually just unloved), so nothing in The Language of Thorns surprised me that much plotwise, but Bardugo's style maintains the spark to it that's served her well over four series and counting.
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The art is beautiful, and the emotional notes are all on point, but I couldn't shake the feeling that something was missing. Quite a few things happened behind which the "how" and the "why" were never explained. It felt like characters' actions were being written to fit the message intended for that story, rather than resulting organically from their motivations and development. It didn't stop me from reading and enjoying--after all, these are short stories at the end of the day--but it stopped the book from pushing into the next level for me.
I did notice how some of the later stories, namely The Witch of Duva and Little Knife, reflect or imitate the stories that Ayama tells in Ayama and the Thorn Wood. If intentional, it's a nice touch by Bardugo. If not, it just goes to show how the collection of stories aim at a similar set of morals: people may not be what they initially seem. Good people can be ugly, and bad people can have the kindest appearances. True strength must be found within yourself. And so on. They're good messages, for sure, the kind of thing that you'd consider giving to kids. It'd probably have a more positive effect ideologically than Hans Christian Andersen's versions (or, God forbid, classical mythology versions).
The marquee story of the collection is obviously When Water Sang Fire, which occupies the last slot and twice the length of the others. It deserves that distinction, weaving the Bardugo themes of friendship, ambition and betrayal into a heartbreaking and sympathetic tale. If you're not going to read any story in The Language of Thorns, read this one. It's pretty representative of everything good the author has to offer. In her words, when your chance comes, I hope you stir the pot.
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Oh, and is that the Darkling? Asking the important questions here. Seriously. I haven't properly read the Shadow and Bone Trilogy (I know, I know), but even I could tell the resemblance. Or the appearance, if it was him. I may actually go pick up Shadow and Bone now.
Like most anthologies, Because You Love to Hate Me was super hit-or-miss, and unfortunately, this one was mostly "miss." The2.5 stars, rounded up to 3
Like most anthologies, Because You Love to Hate Me was super hit-or-miss, and unfortunately, this one was mostly "miss." There were some good parts, for sure--with such a pool of talented authors, that's inevitable--but the quality control was just not there. A lot of poorly written content ended up alongside the good stuff.
To give credit where credit is due, BYLTHM is innovative. From the get-go, the concept of a villains' anthology is (as far as I'm aware) new to YA. The authors aren't afraid to get experimental with their individual short stories, either, to varying levels of effectiveness: We have an epistolary story, a story written in 2nd person POV, a story told entirely through text messages.
However, maybe because of that obsession with trying creative new styles, maybe because of the inclusion of the BookTubers, maybe simply because some of the contributors phoned it in--the whole thing felt more than a tad gimmicky. The stories were never polished to their full potential; some of them even felt like the author had written a first draft and just sent it off to be published. (Especially "You, You, it's All About You", where a not insignificant plot point directly contradicts itself over the course of a page, possibly due to the author changing his mind. That point being (view spoiler)[the type of drug the protagonist sells her client, which waffles between Trance and Daze (hide spoiler)].) Half of the time, it felt like I was reading upper-end fanfiction (high school AU's, anyone?), by which I mean several things: One, that the emotional notes were kind of cheap, akin to forking over money to watch an uplifting movie and instead getting two hours of puppy videos. Two, that almost every "twist" was telegraphed from a mile away. And three, that these short stories are simply not compelling enough to stand on their own.
The last part shouldn't be surprising, in retrospect. The short story might be the most deceptively simple medium in writing. It's insanely difficult to write a work that contains exposition, conflict, climax, and resolution all neatly within a few thousand words. It doesn't help that the narrative twist is pretty much a staple of short stories. Admittedly, it was with the twist that most of BYLTHM's stories fell short, 11 or 12 out of 13 times because the twist was obvious from the first pages. The only story that I felt actually nailed the twist, executed it the way a good short story does, was Adam Silvera's, "You, You, It's All About You"--which, as I mentioned earlier, also has the biggest oversight of editing.
Most of the characters are rather one-sided, despite the mandate of the anthology to make them relatable and nuanced. A few of the better-written villains are, in my opinion, Silvera's Slate (probably the most "evil" one of them), Dennard's Moriarty (Jeeeesus, there's an anarchist in training), and Chainani's Gwen (not quite bad, but no one rocks the mean girl like her).
The BookTubers' sections are largely extraneous and have little purpose other than padding the length of the book. They left so little impression on me that I can't remember a thing written in them. Just skip them, they're not worth the minute it takes to read each....more
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