Title: Their Other Selves
Author: Benjamin Parsons
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: September 28, 2024
Genres: Fantasy, Historical
Length: 24 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 3 stars
Blurb:
Caletha isn’t ready to settle down until she meets someone who loves her as much as she loves herself. It’s a joke, but she half-believes it. Then one evening she and her father take a walk along the riverbank and meet themselves— their exact doubles coming towards them. Sudden tragedies follow this ominous encounter, which drive Caletha to doubt everything she used to believe. Are the misfortunes merely coincidental, or caused by the supernatural? And who was the mysterious figure lurking in the shadows behind the uncanny doppelgängers? Evenking, or Their Other Selves is a short folktale-inspired story, part of the collection Blaquoby: Country Town Tales.
Content Warning: Grief and death.
Review:
The mind is a powerful weapon.
Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that explored Caletha’s guilt and grief. She was an ordinarily bubbly and cheerful young woman who didn’t always put deep thought into how other people saw the world. While it was never done out of malice, she did have a blind spot when it came to how her actions affected others, and I believe she would have happily tried to change those interactions if given a second chance. I appreciate it when authors create characters who are likeable but whose flaws are issues that genuinely make life more difficult for them sometimes. In this particular case, that was precisely what the plot needed to move forward.
I found the doppelgänger storyline confusing, especially given the folklore surrounding why someone might have this experience and what they may have done to bring it on. Caletha was not a perfect person by any means, and she had made a hurtful decision early on in the storyline that I agree should not have happened. Still, the explanation of why she saw her double didn’t quite match up with what I learned about her as a person. If the decisions she made earlier were enough to trigger it, I’d argue that everyone deserves that same fate because none of us get through life without occasionally doing things, whether intentionally or unintentionally, that we later come to regret.
With that being said, I did enjoy the fairy tale qualities of this piece. It felt like the sort of story people might have told to their children generations ago in order to explain why it’s important to keep promises and what sad fates might await those who break them too easily. There was nothing at all gory or gross here, but there were themes that included stricter rules for etiquette and interpersonal relationships than many modern people are held to today. This gave the plot a timeless feeling in the sense that it could have occurred 80 years ago or 800 years ago with few if any changes to the fates of the characters.
This is the fifth book in a series that does not need to be read in any particular order.
Their Other Selves was thought provoking.
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