Name - Five Views of the Planet Tartarus
Written by - Rachael K. Jones review
Published on - Lightspeed Magazine January 2024 (issue 164)
Flash fiction is a relatively new kind of short stories, where it is often quite hard to express any remarkable message due to the constraints of space. The reader is often left imagining consequences and things are left without any resolution.
But sometimes authors can provide a satisfactory performance even despite such meagre room for maneuver. Rachael K. Jones tells a story without any viewpoint character, using crisp prose and blending science fiction with horror in only 549 words.
Special mention is to be given to the shocking twist at the end, which also kind of comes full circle by ties with the beginning. And like any good short story this one keeps a lingering presence in the mind of the reader for a while.
Despite everything, I would have liked the story to be a bit more divulging, especially about the setting.
This is certainly a worthy Hugo/Nebula nominee and gets 4 out of 5 stars from me.
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