Gill Shutt

This is a sci fi/fantasy novella in the spirit of Planet of the Apes, telling of an advanced, highly organized civilization comprised of monkey-type primates with prejudices running deep between different factions (species); and further divided into segments determined by age: the young, the mids and the olds.

The mids of the group that is the subject of the story come into great peril at the hands of a band of strangers who lure them off. They are met with great evils that threaten their lives, the lives of their families and their home (Home Trees). There is plenty of suspense as brother and sister, Tia and Ngi, try to outwit the evil pack leaders of the enemy pack.

The primates and their environment and culture are amazingly well fleshed out for a short book and we come to know the characters well. I found it to be an interesting and imaginative read and enjoyed this novella.… (más)

If you enjoy reading super depressing and fairly disturbing stories...then this is the book for you. It certainly was NOT for me. I'm not sure what I really expected after reading the synopsis, but this wasn't it... I think it was the last sentence of the synopsis that hooked me - "But, as is always the case after a storm passes, you will also find life beginning anew." Yeah...maybe a couple of the stories have a victorious ending, but the vast majority of them just left me feeling extremely uncomfortable. Also, even though the synopsis makes it seem as if at least half of the stories are storm related, most of them are about abusive spouses and horrible human beings. I guess having gone through the big tornado on April 27th of last year, I was looking for an anthology that focused on the sunshine after the storm and how the human spirit and "Mother Nature" have an incredible ability to bounce back from adversity. If that's what you're looking for too, then don't look here...

Note: I received this in a member giveaway on LibraryThing. All of the above is 100% honest.… (más)

A fairly well done anthology with storms of some kind as the running thread. Short stories, poetry and imagery made for an interesting combination but my overall enjoyment was slight. I thought some of the short stories wordy and obvious, my favorite being "The Wait" by Farah Ghuznavi.
I'm also discovering I like the idea of poetry with it's sparsity of words and it's imagery more appealing than the reality. Though I quite enjoy Haiku. My favorite of the poems was "Tornado Brewing" by Carol Alexander, I think due to childrens viewpoint.
The included imagery was, sadly, hard to enjoy on my first generation nook.… (más)