Title: Pain Is So Close to Pleasure
Author: Jonathan Antony Strickland
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: October 5, 2012
Genres: Science Fiction, Horror
Length: 5 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 3 stars
Blurb:
This is the story “Pain Is So Close To Pleasure”, a short comedy story I wrote several years ago. The story looks at an alien race who has recently come into contact with our own. To learn more about each other, ourselves and the aliens decide to send an exchange student to the others world to spend time there so each race can learn more about the other.
Content Warning: Swearing and death.
Review:
Cultural misunderstandings don’t even begin to cover what happened here.
Mr. Kolmortis truly felt like an alien to me which is not always something that happens when I read science fiction about creatures from other planets. His thought processes were so different from how a human would interpret the same situation that I understood why he was bewildered by our species. We were not at all what he expected to find when he agreed to this exchange student program on behalf of his school.
With that being said, I struggled to believe that either side would agree to this program without getting to know a lot more about each other first. Just because two species can communicate in some way doesn’t mean that what works for one of them will be a good idea for the other one, too. Yes, I know I’m being vague here, but the twist is something best left up to other readers to be surprised by just like I was. If only the protagonist had given more hints about why this decision was made and why the adults in the situation assumed they had all of the information they needed for such a massive step in interspecies relations.
I did appreciate Mr. Kolmortis’ closing paragraphs in his confused letter to Mr. Francis, the human headmaster who had chosen Peter as the representative of humanity for this cultural exchange. He genuinely wanted to get to the bottom of what had recently happened, and he had no idea how readers were going to react to the information he included that didn’t make sense to him. It’s not always easy to write characters like him, so kudos to Mr. Strickland for diving so deeply into this world and imagining what it might really be like to meet a sentient alien species.
Pain Is So Close to Pleasure was a wild ride.
A Review of A Divine Tale
Author: Jonathan Antony Strickland
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: September 8, 2012
Genres: Fantasy, Humour
Length: 13 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 3 Stars
Blurb:
This is a story about Seglaman the Snow God, and how other God’s use his sorry tale as a reminder to younger less experienced God’s as a warning to never become too comfortable when ruling over mortals who worship them.
Review:
Kindness matters.
While religion was discussed in this tale, this was not at all what I’d consider the inspirational genre. For one thing, the protagonist was a Snow God who, to be frank, was not the nicest deity around. Mr. Strickland also wasn’t shy about pointing out some of the dangers of blindly following any sort of belief whether it’s religious, political, ideological, or otherwise. My hope is that other readers will be intrigued by this approach to what can be a sensitive topic for some and willing to listen with an open mind regardless of your personal beliefs.
This came across to me as more of the first draft of a story than the finished product. There wasn’t much time spent on character or plot development, and that made it more difficult for me to remain interested in what was happening than I hoped I would be. A lot was going on here with Seglaman’s relationship with the mortals he ruled over that I wished had been explained in greater detail. As much as I wanted to give this tale a higher rating, I had too many lingering questions to do so.
With that being said, the ending made me smile. It veered off into the direction I was hoping it would head, so I was able to see Seglaman’s reaction to something he never saw coming in advance. My apologies for keeping this vague, but other readers should be pleasantly surprised by those moments like I was. It went a long way in tying up loose ends for a Snow God and the mortals he ruled over alike.
A Divine Tale was thought provoking.
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Tagged as 2010s, Book Reviews, Fantasy, Humour, Jonathan Antony Strickland, Self-Published, Short Story, Social Commentary