Written in Light ARC review

#1: Written in Light
Half obscured sci-fi about a sabotaged competition and half weird maternal thing.

Some of the elements were interesting, and the POV from a tree species was interesting, but the introduction to the setting and circumstance was awkward. The writing was average, but frequently graceless.

A bit disappointing as the titular story, particularly because in these circumstances there's the reader's expectation for it to be a bit special.

Story: C+
Prose: C+
Characters: C-
World: B
Theme(s): C-
Enjoyment: C+

I'm sorry to say I didn't write any further reviews for the stories. I've struggled to get into them for a long time, and after the titular (and supposed best) story disappointed me so poorly, I found myself with a distinct lack of motivation to do so. I apologize to the publisher and author.

Each story was more absorbing than the previous. I was extrememly sad when the last page loomed and I realozed the journey was over. For now.

I liked this overall. I like short stories and this collection isn't as good as others, but still has merit. Young has writing chops and has written quite a bit, so he know his craft. A couple of stories stood out, and the collection is fairly diverse.

Thanks for the free review copy!!

I love sci-fi. Especially creative takes on the future. (Black Mirror) But this one never really got me. It’s really empty character wise, and the writing is impossible to read. Though the world building is good and it’s really original, I’ll have to give you that.

2 stars at best. Full review on Goodreads.

Written in Light

[Blurb goes here]

I, unfortunately coincide with some of the reviews posted here, while a few of the stories where intriguing and fun, others felt like filler stories, stories that where simply put there to make this a bigger anthology. Bigger in some instances, doesn't mean better. The good stories: worth reading. The bad ones: clutter.

After finishing the book I kept on wondering, could it be a good idea to have a proper editor to have a go through the bad material to make it better? I leave that to smarter people than me.

Thank you for the advanced copy!

Because writing in the dark wouldn’t be advisable, unless you have one of those handy light up keyboards.
But seriously, science fiction. I like it, but as with most genres, not in its entirety. I’m choosy, but willing to try new things. This was very new to me, never heard of the author before. It was also wildly uneven as far as short story collections go. And those are really difficult to review and even more difficult to rate.
The first story did nothing for me, but the second one intrigued. From there on it was a gamut of ups and downs. Some downs, then an up, an excellent up, a very clever story about the dangers of having perfect memory. And the next few stories were solid ups too. Then back down and mostly down with occasional sparks here and there.
That may not be very descriptive, so let’s say this…I like science fiction that’s very far from fantasy, far from space opera things, far from things like Star Wars and close to things like Black Mirror. People driven stories with wild twists, psychological implications of technology as opposed to convoluted alien politics of distant space worlds. The stories I liked in the book matched my preferences. The rest (too dense, too geeked out, overbuilt and overechnoloaded in the wrong way) weren’t for me.
But, having that been said, overall, this was a pretty decent read and there was a lot here to please and entertain all sorts of genre fans. The main thing here is that these stories were smart. In my books, a lot gets forgiven for smart. The author genuinely had some good ideas, some interesting and exciting things to say about the world (well, worlds, really).
So…not in love, not a total waste of time, somewhere in between, having tried something new. I’ll be uncharacteristically generous here, because, like I said…the potential’s there and smart goes a long way. It may speak differently to different readers. In any case, it’s a fairly quick read. Thanks Netgalley.

I went into this book really excited because I love sci-fi and I love short stories and the cover is absolutely stunning. Unfortunately, the majority of the stories in this were a major let-down. When it comes to sci-fi, it can be really easy to get sucked into the science and the world-building, but most of these were just overkill. This was bogged down by scientific lingo and made-up creatures and civilizations. And the stories generally had good sentiment, it was really hard to get invested in the stories and to actually care about the characters/worlds involved, given the lack of emotion in every line of dialogue. There were a few stories that I genuinely liked, but the ones that I slowly dragged through dominated the page count. If you are a sci-fi lover that actually enjoys the science behind everything and you don't need a lot of action, this might be the book for you. It just wasn't my cup of tea.