Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Review: Oddities by Thurdy


 

Genre: Short Story Collection/Speculative Fiction

Description:

“A dystopian vampire teenager, severed finger salad topping, disgruntled Teddy bears, and an army of Percivals. What do these all have in common? They are all trapped within the pages of this collection of stories, like a genie waiting to be released from a bottle. Oh, forgot to say, there’s a genie in there too, but not one like you’re picturing. This one is actually … well, you’ll find out.

So, for those of you who spend your life in a state of perpetual distraction, who want to buy everything in the art supply shop, whose co-workers don’t know you write poetry…

no more staring into the mirror wondering how nice it would be to have horns.

It’s time to grow a pair.”

Author:

You can find out what there is to know about Thurdy, the author of this book, on their website. The brief about page I linked gives you a bit of an idea, but for the tl;dr version, Thurdy is a slightly off-kilter artistic type who writes songs and now a book of short stories, among other things. That off-kilter part is the key.

Appraisal:

If there has ever been a book title more perfect for the contents of the book than this one, I don’t know what it is. This collection of short stories largely seems to fall within the speculative fiction umbrella that includes science fiction, horror, and fantasy among other genres. But the thing that sets the stories apart is that they are odd, along with being entertaining and unique stories. In addition to being odd, some stories challenge accepted wisdom. Maybe vampires do like garlic and being a zombie could be fun for two examples. The explanation for crop circles we’ve always heard is partly right, but mostly wrong, for another example. I haven’t read a short story collection that was this much fun in a long time, if ever.

Buy now from:            Amazon US        Amazon UK

Format/Typo Issues:

No significant issues

Rating: ***** Five Stars

Reviewed by: BigAl

Approximate word count: 30-35,000 words

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