Alright, first things first, I just love the cover, so unique and eye-grabbing, and the title too, very creative and just perfect for this short story collection. This is the kind of book I would love to have on my bookshelf.

It’s a collection of 20 short stories, on a wide array of subjects, all unique, and out of the box in their ideas. What’s special about this collection is the writing style, so lyrical, poetic, and kind of abstract. It’s not something that I often like to read, I like my stories, especially the short ones, very clear in what they want to convey. These stories really made me turn the gears of my mind and read between the lines to fully understand what was happening, but it did not take away the beauty of the prose, at times it was the only thing that kept me going, just to see how these words would carry the story that's so out there, and this lyrical prose only added more feel to it.

I’m not a big fan of abstract stories but for those of us who are, this is a must-read, one after another, this is a treasure trove of mind-boggling, strange, yet captivating stories, and even though I wasn’t able to fully appreciate them I can tell there’s something really beautiful about both the writing style and these ideas. I’m rating this 3.5 stars rounded off to 4.

I received an eARC of this book via Netgalley, authors, and publishers. All opinions are my own. Pub date Dec 1st, 2020.

I read 24% of this collection of stories and I'm afraid I was not overly impressed. The writing is mostly fine but there are often slightly clunky phrases that sound like they were translated poorly. I also struggled to find a narrative through-line in the stories I did read, and reached the end of them feeling underwhelmed and dissatisfied. They mainly felt like vignettes or 'slice-of-life' stories which is fine, but not what I personally enjoy in a short story. Sorry, this one just isn't for me.

I received an e-copy of this book via Netgalley and I’m so glad I did. I had no idea what to expect when I started reading this. I knew it was a short, fantasy stories collection and I jumped headfirst into it, but I got so much more than I anticipated. The myth, the legends, the folklore of every piece are AMAZING and I feel like I was missing out in a very large and very rich part of folk tales.
The imagery is so resonant! The colors and the voices these pages portray made me lost completely, surrender myself into its impossible stories.
Some I liked better, some I felt deeper, but every piece in this collection is quite unique. I feared I was going to dislike some of them because a few are written in second person and that’s something I really don’t enjoy, but the length of the stories allowed me to just roll with it, and I was completely captivated by the third tale. The prose is powerful, and it has a pull that makes you pierce through the scenery and basically observe front row everything. It was kinda magical.
Some I want to re read because I liked them too much; some I want to re read because I feel I didn’t get them totally right. But I want to reread this book. And I hope it gets translated to Spanish so my mom can read it.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book. These stories were a bit hard for me to get into. While the writing wasn't bad, it was written in a way that was a frustrating for me to try and follow. Poetic and wordsy. Just not for me.

Woop Woop means nowhere in Australian slang. Besides a great titles and an equally great cover, what attracted me to this book was mainly the diversity perspective. I’ve read lots of African fiction and Black fiction from US and Britain, but never from Australia and I was interested to find out how to author blended her flavors as it were. Some of it, it seems much in the same way as some other things I’ve read, going for something like magical realism or just magic, infusing African mythology into everyday lives. But other stories went in all kinds of directions, stylistically and thematically. Actually, that’s my favorite thing about this publisher, they put out such genuinely different books. I don’t always love them, but they are always interesting. This was more along the lines of interesting, because I didn’t quite connect with the author’s writing on an emotional level. But intellectually I certainly appreciated her style and talent and versatility. She definitely has a knack of putting her word sandwiches together in new and exciting ways. In the foreword an author I’ve read and enjoyed before compares her writing to a sort of jazz. I’m not sure it was jazz for me, it was more like a sort of freestyle poetry. Poetry, to be fair, isn’t really for me, much like most jazz, but there’s enough foundation to appreciate it without going wild for it. Or maybe it is like jazz in some of the nonlinear approach to storytelling, because I was thinking while reading it about how I’m probably more of a conventionally straightforward narration fan. At any rate, didn’t quite sing for me, but was good enough and different enough to warrant and maintain interest mostly and was short enough to pass for a fresh sampler instead of turning into an entire trying production. Definitely an acquired taste sort of thing. Unlike saying Woop Woop, which is always fun, for anyone. Thanks Netgalley.