Luca Rossi (2)

Sono piuttosto digiuna di fantascienza e di solito le storie brevi non mi entusiasmano: troppo brevi per lasciare il segno. Tuttavia, ho letto così tante belle parole spese su questa raccolta che ho voluto fare un tentativo.

In generale, ho trovato i racconti ben strutturati e armoniosi nel loro sviluppo. I temi trattati sono molti e interessanti. L'autore si limitata a mostrarci la situazione e a far riflettere il lettore su quanto accade.

Tuttavia pecca un po' di ingenuità e i racconti non sono così incisivi come mi sarei aspettata: avrei voluto trovarci più coraggio, più passione. Leggere questi racconti dà l'impressione di essere in un laboratorio asettico dove scienziati in camice bianco - i lettori - osservano le reazioni delle cavie - i protagonisti dei racconti. Il che rende questa raccolta una lettura piacevole, ma non indimenticabile.… (mer)

This book has been languishing in my TBR list for almost 3 years! There is one book that has been sitting there longer, so it should not feel too bad about the long wait.

Now, I would like to clarify that I read the English translation instead of the original version in Italian. Therefore, I cannot determine if the somewhat wooden sounding prose is a fault of the translation.

That said, the book had an interesting storyline that begins with a huge bang: a wedding in a remote northern island has been commenced between a man and his apparently arranged fiancée. Bashinoir is no fool. He knows his wife Lils has the hots for the guy and feels a mixture of hatred/resentment/triumph that Lils will no longer feel tempted to run away with him. Not that these marital issues will matter all that much. A strange magical spell appears from the sky and stone shards pellet the wedding reception, killing pretty much everyone in the village except for Lils, Bashinoir, and the mysterious female priestess Miril.

Meanwhile, in a mainland northern country named Isk, a second story develops. Their ruthless and very sexually addicted king Beanor is thrilled that the court wizard Aldin performed some kind of magical ritual that has apparently eliminated a magical barrier that kept their people trapped in their current lands for over 2000 years. He has it all figured out. Once the first ships filled with highly trained soldiers embark in southern lands for their first contact, he will conquer them, enslave people, and perhaps... wait, a new maid is now working in the palace and she has a curvylicious body with perfect buttocks... I think he wants to take her as his newest collection of royal wives, and he can't wait for the girl's father to be located to forcefully "greenlight" the happy betrothal. Maybe his plans to conquer foreign lands would go much faster if Aldrin could be found. Where could that loser be anyways? Oh well, Beanor will have to liberate former head wizard Obolil after locking and torturing him relentlessly for the past 20 years because Isk doesn't have any fully trained wizards.

The Branches of Time develops into three separate stories: the isolation of the sole 3 survivors of the island, scenes involving several characters in Isk, and a third somewhat oddball timeline where two child gods are creating a world in front of their very eyes with an uncertain purpose within the story.

I personally enjoyed all of the scenes involving the treachery of the mostly scheming and immoral array of characters in Isk, scratched my head during the brief god child chapters, and felt somewhat bored with the island chapters. Unfortunately, the island chapters encompass at least 60% of the book. And I found them to be SO DAMN SLOW! I liked the conflict from selfish Bashinoir when he discovers Lils doesn't want to continue being his wife (Friend zoned! Ouch!), and his slow descent into his self-destruction. The story revolving Lils and Miril is supposed to be some sort of steamy lesbian romance, but I found each and every one of their scenes to feel forceful and their acting wooden. I didn't care too much about either character and felt compelled to cheer for the Iskians just for the sake of making the story more interesting.

That aside, The Branches of Time felt a good heap of the time like the filler steamy scenes in Games of Thrones. Beanor was either banging a wife or stripping a woman naked right in front of his court to satiate his buttock fetish. While I didn't personally detest the erotica scenes, I think they were abused a bit too much. The reader only needed to get some glimpses of Beanor's awful personality and leave it there. Furthermore, the scene where his son Beanor Junior getting himself a blowjob by his maid seemed like a pointless filler that should have never been included into the actual book.

I thoroughly enjoyed the scenes starred by the rightfully bitter wizard Obolil and still feel unsure why a wizard of his capabilities didn't simply use magic to escape the prison. Sure, he would have been eventually found and murdered because the country is in permanent magical lockdown, but an unexplained plot hole is still one nonetheless. I found the scheming scenes between Beanor's privileged wives to be entertaining. The book would have indeed been a whole lot better if there were more scenes focusing on the Iskians over the islanders.

The prose at times felt stilted, I do not know if this was due to the translation. I felt the world building was not enough. We don't understand why the islanders decided to inhabit a teeny tiny island and continue to enclose Isk after the events 2000 years ago. Beanor is a detestable scumbag of a king, but his father was apparently decent and hardworking. It is obvious not every citizen of Isk was malignant, so why is an ancient curse harming everyone after so long?

Sadly the book will not answer all of these questions. The ending should have been building, but it was left rushed and half way. Ills's betrayal could have been developing over a longer span of the book, whereas Miril's plan to make a sort of magical voyage and discover the truth behind some of the strange events on the island during the aftermath of the massacre could have been slowly building. Oh, and there is another error late in the book. Obolil gets angry at Illis and "grates his teeth". The issue is that his tormentors in prison yanked all of his teeth off.… (mer)

3.5 because predicaments and tensions in these stories related to high tech & contemporary what-ifs sparked conversations.

Yet, in these stories which i would describe as dark fantasy speculative fiction I sometimes felt like a literary tourist who ended up being on the wrong side of town with the wrong people at the wrong parties.

I realize it's not every author who can take readers on a trip like that and that talent is something in and of itself. There's a dark side of the psyche explored in these stories that is reminiscent of Clive Barker of whom it is written that he is "best known for his ability to imagine that which ought not be".

There will be scenes in Rossi that you can't un-see or un-remember.… (mer)