Short Story Podcast Reviews: Feb-May 2012

Time for another installment of mini-reviews of short stories podcasts! Previous installments: 1, 2, 3

As I’ve said before, I’m doing these mini-reviews partly because I just think it is so neat that there is all of this fiction available for free, online, and that people will read it to you! For free!

…and also because I am apparently incapable of consuming fiction of any kind without blathering my opinion about it all over the internet.

All of my mini-reviews today are for fantasy short story podcasts from Podcastle.

The Yeti Behind You by Jeremiah Tolbert. A young couple prepares for the birth of their first child, but the man begins seeing fantastical creatures trailing behind everyone he meets, menacing but seemingly invisible. This story had an interesting premise, and it wasn’t bad, but it also didn’t really speak to me… perhaps because I’m not a parent?
Listen to it | Read it

Magnificent Pigs by Cat Rambo. A farmer’s son dreams of moving away to become a tattoo artist, but he stays at home to take care of his ill younger sister. This story was perfect: sweet, and sad, and taking its inspiration from one of my favorite childhood novels Charlotte’s Web. It’s not very long, but it made me cry and smile, at the same time.
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Goblin Lullaby by Jim C. Hines. This is a story of a young man out on a quest who runs afoul of a goblin… except it’s told from the point of view of the goblin, who wants nothing more than to get her infant charge to go to sleep so that she can have a rest. Very funny, and I appreciate any fantasy that can turn the conventions of the genre on their head. There were a few elements that cropped up out of nowhere part way through the story, but overall very enjoyable.
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Illuminated Dragon by Sarah Prineas. This is a great story about a man with a special talent of bringing painted images to life, a dangerous talent to have in a city where art and imagination are slowly being outlawed. I enjoyed this story a lot; it’s maybe a tad heavy-handed with its message about the importance of art and imagination and the dangers of censorship, but it captured the rhythm of a fairy tale well, and I was left really wanting to hear what happened next.
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Galatea by Vylar Kaftan. A young woman moves from a small town to the city, where everyone is dying from the inside, and losing pieces of themselves… in the most literal way. Not my favorite. Well written, but too gross, and leaning too hard on what I thought was a too-obvious metaphor.
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Cup and Table by Tim Pratt. A story of the Knights of the Round Table, and the search for the Grail, except the Knights are no storybook knights but possessed of strange abilities, and the grail grants a power beyond imagining. This is a story you have to pay attention to – the main character lives in a fractured timeline, so things are never straightforward. It took me a few tries to get into it, and I think it would benefit from re-reading when I was less distractable, but even though I didn’t entirely get it, I could sense that there was a nugget of something very interesting at its core.
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Hallah Iron-Thighs and the Change of Life by K. D. Wentworth. Similarly to “Goblin Lullaby” (above), this story takes the typical fantasy conventions and tweaks them – in this case, the chain-mail wearing mercenary barbarians, and a pack of bandits and thieves they come across. Except in this case, the mercenaries are female, older, and not in the prime of their fighting ability, and the bandits want nothing more to confess – at length – to the travelling monk that the mercenaries are supposed to be protecting. This story was entirely silly, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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Dead Girl’s Wedding March by Cat Rambo. A girl in the city of the dead receives a wedding proposal from a rat. I didn’t really get into it, maybe because it was so short, and maybe because zombies aren’t really my thing, even when they’re not gross and shambling.
Listen to it | Read it

What about you, readers? Listened to (or read) any good short stories lately?

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