Sarah Chorn

ARC received in exchange for an honest review.

This is a great collection of short stories. There weren't any that I didn't enjoy. On the contrary, I found many of them exceptional.

All the stories deal with some kind of negative emotions. We meet the characters at their lowest in life. They feel lost, alone and desperate. This book is not negative, though. Where there is sadness, there is also a hope.

I like the idea of using fantasy medium for this kind of stories. It really shows that fantasy genre can be more than just a magic adventure. It can offer not only escape but also reflection. The situations the characters face might be foreign and unreal, but their emotions are very familiar.

I feel like talking about each short story might give away too much. I personally enjoyed going in blind and discovering what each story is going to be about.

Lullaby by K.S. Villoso - 3,5

Skies on Fire by Sonya M. Black - 4

A Matter of Trust by Angela Boord - 4

A Recurrence of Jasmine by Levi Jacobs - 4

Twice Domesticated Dragons by Intisar Khanani - 4,5

The Witch in the Woods by Quenby Olson - 4

Thief by Virginia McClain - 3,5

Thicker Than Water by Carol A. Park - 5

Death in the Uncanny Valley by M.L. Wang - 4,5

Summer Souls by Clayton Snyder - 3

Reliquary of the Damned by Rachel Emma Shaw - 4

The Quiet by Madolyn Rogers - 4,5

The Paperweight Watch by Krystle Matar - 4… (más)

I picked up 'A Sorrow Named Joy' because it has a gorgeous cover, an intriguing title and was only seventy-nine pages long. I'm recommending it to people because it was the kind of story that lingers in the imagination. It was original and surprising and yet also felt truthful.

It's the kind of story that I'd normally label as Speculative Fiction but, although it does speculate on things that might emerge in the future, those speculations are there to provide a framework for thinking about what it means to be alive and what we should do with the lives we have.

At the start of the story, when Joy was entirely focused on her husband's happiness, I thought I might be heading into 'Stepford Wives' territory and wondered if there'd be enough that was new about that set of ideas to keep my attention. It turned out that 'A Sorrow Named Joy' twisted that trope so hard that it became something new and different. Where 'The Stepford Wives' is an incarnation of misogyny and is filled with aggression and threat, 'A Sorrow Named Joy' is an exploration of what happiness is, how it is achieved and the complex emotions that it evokes.

I loved being inside Joy's head as she started to build her identity, expand her understanding of the world and began to make her own choices. What pulled me in was that her initial worldview wasn't some drab colourless thing. Joy's ability to lose herself in the possibilities offered by the food on the supermarket shelves or to impose order in her house or nurture her garden into a shape that matches her will, resonated with me. Then, as her perception started to shift, I was carried along by her emotional reaction to what she discovered.

Joy's husband was a surprise. His reactions to the changes in Joy, anger, fear, sadness, guilt, felt real to me and opened up possibilities that the simple Predator / Victim dynamic of 'The Stepford Wives' didn't allow for.

By the end of the story, I felt I'd met two people who had supported each other through some difficult times and managed to find a path that fieed both of them to be as happy as the circumstances would allow. I loved that they began to find their way by admitting that they were unhappy.

Sarah Chorn packed a lot into those seventy-nine pages, ideas, emotions, paths to hope and all of it worked for me. I've added her novel 'Of Honey And Wildfires' to my TBR pile.… (más)

A part of me was hesitant to read this book, mostly because I don't read Grimdark that much due to personal preferences. However, I heard really good comments regarding this book and decided to give it a shot. And I was glad that I did.

Sarah Chorn has set aside her book reviewing hobby in order to delve into the murky and uncertain waters of indie publishing to bring her work to the masses and bite her nails as the reviews come. As a freelance editor herself, you can see that she has tried to avoid a lot of the pitfalls of first time book writers by carefully crafting the words, and I must admit I was bemused by the poetic beauty of her descriptions, the feelings each character and mostly dreary scenery of the collapsing society of the Sunset Lands.

It is well known among the writing community that Sarah has several health issues and you can indeed see her bringing a lot of her personal life experiences into the pain of the crippled protagonist Seraphina as she holds onto the walls of the Premier Eyad's palace and claws her way while he tugs at her silken neck leash like she were a whipped dog.

Fantasy books starring handicapped protagonists are still rather uncommon, and I always enjoy reading them because they not only have to do great things (usually involving magic), all of their hurdles are further tampered due to reduced mobility or other assorted issues and different characters emotionally react to them very differently. Seraphina was brutally punished by her owner Eyad when she helped her twin brother Neyren escape, and while she hates feeling pain and humiliation when she walks, she doesn't regret her decision. It shapes her contrasting character very well.

Another thing I liked about this story was that several important characters are homosexual. It makes things even more interesting, and how homosexuality is not shunned in this society. Sarah got a lot of the book's inspiration from her research from early Russian Communism, and her efforts show during the in depth world building.

Magic is still a bit elusive and we don't learn about all of the differing types. We never knew if the farmer Taub was blessed with a talent. I think I liked all of the leading characters to a different degree, and enjoyed how Mouse and Taub are changing into something different and mysterious from the very start of the book. We are given enough time to know their struggles and worries, but not too much time to feel fully devastated that they are ill and turning into something more sinister. Taub and Eyad were probably my favorite characters in the book. Amiti and Kabir were also very enjoyable as the city's favorite innkeepers.

While the prose was indeed beautiful, I do think that once I suspected where the story was heading, it bogged the story a bit. When Seraphina was starting her inner struggle between being the obedient slave/scared of her own magical transformation and wanting to kill her former master/transform at all costs, I did frown a lot because one minute, she was all gung-ho in her choice, and then she backs down and cowers in the next minute. Eyad wasn't even using his mental control ability on her during those scenes. Those scenes reminded me of the scenes in Dragon Ball Z where Goku is starting to awaken his super saiyajin form, but he keeps on landing some weak punches at Freiza for another episode. You already know he is about to change so... just do it!

All in all, I was surprised that the book has several grammatical errors, which is surprising since it was professionally edited and proofread which is a luxury that not that many indie book authors can afford. Its and it's was confused once, too was placed instead of to, and two instances of the book were supposed to have a sentence ending in a period that was left forgotten. These are little details that could be easily revised, and they don't deter the enjoyment of the story all that much.

All in all, Sarah has a great knack for writing and I really hope she publishes the sequel to this story. I am very curious to know where the plot is heading. 4 1/2 stars from me!… (más)