Title: Ghosts of Christmases Past
Author: Leigh Kimmel
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: December 25, 2024
Genres: Science Fiction, Holiday
Length: 34 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 4 Stars
Blurb:
These are troubled times. The Flannigan Administration’s hostility to clones has reached a boiling point, resulting in the Expulsions. All of NASA’s astronaut clones have been sent to lunar exile in Shepardsport. Christmas is approaching, and Brenda Redmond is helping put on a musical adaptation of A Christmas Carol. But the three ghosts who visit Scrooge in the classic Charles Dickens story aren’t the only ghosts haunting the corridors of Shepardsport. Even as Brenda is trying to get her young players ready, she must also track down the source of the strange visions that are coming unbidden to the settlement’s inhabitants. A novelette of the Grissom Timeline.
Content Warning: Pregnancy and military (Air Force). I will not discuss these topics in my review.
Review:
There’s nothing quite like celebrating the holidays far from home…especially when far from home means living on a distant moon!
I enjoyed the way this short story explored how the characters honored old family traditions while also creating new ones that took note of where they currently lived. Finding that balance is something immigrants and refugees must do during their adjustment phase, and it makes for some pretty interesting reading for those of us who have experience moving from one country to another one.
It would have been helpful to have stronger plot development in this piece, especially towards the end. As much as I enjoyed seeing how the conflicts were set up in the beginning and middle, they were resolved a little too quickly for my tastes later on. There was space here for additional scenes that explained each character’s point of view and how they came to a resolution, and I would have chosen a full five-star rating if this had been allowed to occur.
The science fiction elements of the storyline were well written and kept my interest levels high. Some aspects of them were explained in detail while others were left up to the reader’s imagination. This meant that while some of my questions were answered fairly early on there were still plenty of things to wonder about as I continued along. While I was satisfied with the number of answers I received, I do suspect that people who are already familiar with these characters will glean even more from this tale than I did.
This is part of a series but works perfectly well as a standalone work.
Ghosts of Christmases Past has piqued my curiosity.