Unrest - Grace Seybold

This weeks Torque Control Short Story Club story is Unrest by Grace Seybold, published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

So, another Fantasy story, none of which have won me over yet.

The story is a chain of scenes, flash stories even, in a land in which war is coming. The shifting characters and story is unexpected at first, but then settles into a pattern. The chain is joined at the end, back to the start. Although predictable in it's full arc the story is quite clever and joining up each link. The sub-stories themselves vary in quality, but generally the writing is atmospheric and kept my interest.

What helped me get through this story is that the Fantasy trappings could easily be discarded and swapped for Science Fictional ones, as at the heart it's really just a story about people in war. Having said that I'd much rather read a story about a nameless monster than a Troll for some reason.

Each story is bleak and grim, and the overall tone is depressing. Presumably that's intentional to show the horrors of war, but the result is a rather dark read which I didn't really enjoy. The fragment of hope thrown out to the reader at the end of the story wasn't enough for me. I wanted more hope; from somewhere.