Reviews and Comments

It's been a while since I read some decent flash fiction. The last of this author's collection I read, I called something along on the lines of, "Some of the best flash fiction I've ever read." Well, this collection lives up to that expectation, and exceeds it.

The blurb says, "Let your imagination soar with this captivating collection of bite-sized tales." And that's exactly what happens. Each story gives you just enough to set your mind racing at the possibilities... and then it ends. No complicated subplots or intricate character development or anything like that. All of that is up to YOUR imagination. The story gives you a thread to pull, it inspires you with its possibilities, and then you close that box for the moment and open the next one.

Le Roux is right: flash fiction is an underappreciated genre. Reading it is different to reading a novel, or even a short story. Reading flash fiction requires a different mindset. One which can be very, very rewarding.

I loved these stories. If you've never tried flash fiction before, give this collection a try.

I really enjoyed this book. I picked it up when I saw the author mentioning on Mastodon about how it's been selected as a High School English set work, and I'm glad I did.

I love authenticly South African stories. The cultural references, the language, the names and places... it's just all so SATISFYING, man! I guess this is how other people feel when they read stories set in the places where they live, but I think it's stronger for us because there's relatively few of them. I suppose the people who identify with that sentiment the strongest might be those from places in the Global South, and I'm particularly thinking of people from Australia and New Zealand here, because I've read a few stories set in those places too, and their culture is also quite unique compared to, say, the Americans or the Brits.

Anyway, I digress. I don't live in Cape Town, which is specifically where this story is set, but I've been there, and I'm familiar with the places, and I know the sorts of people. And it... well, once again, it just gave me such a warm feeling.

The story is set in South Africa, shortly after the advent of democracy. I'm not sure how recent that was, but it seems fairly recent because there are references to how, "a short while ago", you wouldn't find white people and black people sitting next to each other in the same school assembly, for example. The protagonist is a teenage girl, the product of a mixed-race relationship. But she was actually born in Italy, also because her parents' relationship would've been taboo in South Africa.

But while our racial issues seem to mostly be a thing of the past, in this story, we're now faced with a similar thing, in terms of magicals and non-magicals. See, magical beings exist in this world. Some sentient, some not, some malicious, and some not. And in the world, we're on the cusp of a referendum to decide what to do about them, very much akin to our real-world referendum where we decided whether non-white people should be allowed to vote.

It's fascinating, and to me it reminds me of books like Dr Seuss' "The Sneetches", which show us that human beings will always find things to hate in other people, reasons to oppress them, and reasons to view them as "Other".

It's not heavy, though. It's lighthearted and fun, easily digestible for teenagers, but there's deep meaning in there if you'd care to look for it.

I've been wanting to start this series for a long time, but I'd been working my way through ARKANE first.

Anyway... wow, that was amazing! It's dark. Oh, so dark. Much, much darker than ARKANE. But it's sort of along the same lines. Instead of the McGuffin being some supernatural artefact, it's a murder mystery, but otherwise the formula is quite similar. Which isn't a bad thing; you know what to expect. But while ARKANE would probably be suitable for teenagers to read, I wouldn't give this book to anyone under the age of, say, 15 or 16. It's gory, it's gruesome, it's (can't stress this enough) very dark, and it deals with some pretty heavy topics around the nature of life, and disability and such.

Plus, I'd never heard of John Hunter before I read this book, but now I'm determined to find out more about him. If you love the weird and macabre, and you have a strong stomach, you'll probably enjoy Desecration.

This is some of the best flash fiction I’ve ever read.

As a subscriber to Suneé’s newsletter, I’ve read many of these stories before, but you know how it is with emails: they appear in your inbox when you’re busy with something else, or thinking of something else, or otherwise have your attention on something else, so you end up reading them with half an eye...

That’s not the way to enjoy flash fiction. I think the reason why so many people don’t “get” short-form fiction in general is the fact that, BECAUSE it’s so short, the stories require your full attention. When you’ve only got 500 words to tell your story, every turn of phrase, every word, every article, has to be carefully and deliberately chosen, and if the reader “zones out” for even a moment, they could lose the meaning of the entire story.

This also means that the occasional typo (like “draught” instead of “drought” or “queue” instead of “cue”), or a missing “a” or “an”, turns into a big deal. They don’t happen often in this collection, but they are there, and I think if this book had been one continuous story, you might not even notice.

I’m not a fan of the latter, but I suppose flash fiction has that in common with poetry, where every SYLLABLE has meaning.

But never mind that. Those things can be fixed, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were fixed by the time you read this review. Allow me to repeat myself: this is some of the best flash fiction I’ve ever read. Every story grabs you by the collar and demands your full, undivided attention, not letting go until the very end.

If you enjoy flash fiction, you’ll love these stories. If you’ve never experienced it before, then this collection is the place to start.

Ladies and gentlemen, I believe we’ve found our new queen of the flash fiction format.

I've been reading ARKANE since the very beginning. I read the first three books when they still had their old, Biblical titles and covers, before J.F. Penn redid them. Back when I was still posting to that other social reading site (go there if you want to read my reviews for all the previous books).

I have mad respect for this author, and mad respect for the series. I've been following her journey since before she left her day job to pursue writing full time, and I feel like she and I have a lot of common... okay, now I sound like this creepy stalker dude, but I promise I'm not. I just think many of her experiences mirror my own, is all.

Something I really enjoy about the series is the fact that one of the main characters is South African, and even though the author isn't South African, this character's experiences are so authentic. He emigrated to the UK to escape the crime here, after experiencing a deeply traumatic event. And honestly, that it such a common story; I think every South African knows at least one other person who can relate. I know I can. So yeah, I like Jake.

I like Morgan too. Morgan's a scholar. She doesn't necessarily believe in any particular god, but she's witnessed enough of the supernatural to know that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.

This story's been a long time coming, but like all ARKANE thrillers, it's worth the wait because it's exquisitely researched. All (well, most) of the places the characters visit are real places which the author herself has visited, and it shows. Likewise, most of the backstory is real too, and resarched in great depth (there's even a full bibliography in the back matter), and then the author takes inspiration from that and runs with it to create the fiction.

Honestly, if you like this sort of thing, you'll love this series. Fair warning, though: although most of these books can probably be read as standalones, I would say you probably need to have at least read Book 12 before enjoying this one. But, I mean, they're not going anywhere, so why not start all the way from the beginning, at Book One?

I went into this knowing practically nothing about the story. I've never seen the movie (ANY movie), had never read the book, and only knew what I'd been able to glean from memes and other pop-culture references.

It was pretty good. I enjoyed the forward too, which made multiple references to how the book differs from the movie, and although I'd not seen the movie, I was familiar enough with things like the red slippers and the "there's no place like home" quote. Neither of which appear in the book.

It's a fine story and I enjoyed it. One thing that I'm sure the author didn't expect to stick with me, but it did because of current sensibilities, is how the singular genderless pronoun ("they" today) used to be "he". Even when explicitly referencing a hypothetical female, the author uses "he" -- It was something along the lines of, "If a boy or girl wanted to do xyz, then he would have to...."

Clearly, there used to be nothing strange about using "he" to refer to a singular person of any gender. I find that... interesting, because even I have adopted "they" for that purpose in my everyday speech.

One negative is that the edition I read, which I got from Everand, had some bad editing in it. I don't know if some of those issues were in the original printing, but at least some of them were clearly issues caused by bad OCR. Why can't people just proofread?

But don't let that detract from your enjoyment of the story. Once again, it's really good. It feels like a piece of history, a really nostalgic walk down memory lane, that puts me in mind of many of the children's stories I read as a child. It gave me the warm fuzzies!