2.5 stars. A very mixed bag, and the good not good enough to offset the bad

Each story was so so good, but for some reason they have all left me shortly after reading them. Maybe because they're all very different in setting and tone? At any rate, a beautiful collection, if fleeting.

Though I appreciate the diversity of topics and the versatility of the language, these stories simply didn't resonate with me (though the titular story is a stand out).

All The Names They Used For God is a motley of tales that has everything from tragedy to mythology to science to human despair tied together to discuss the known and the unknown in this world. It is a collection of short stories, quite eclectic in nature and not one bit preachy or sermon-like to be honest. I have to make this clarification because that is the impression the name would give you. But the stories are more human than religious and a nice mix of subjects and themes.
The titular story, "All The Names For God" is also my favourite story in the collection. It is raw, heartfelt, very much real even after all the magically realism woven into it. It is a story of 2 girls kidnapped by Boko Haram to serve ( or slave ) as wives for their soldiers. Suffering abuse, they grow through the years, all the while picking up skills of hypnotism and mind control to subdue their husbands, may be even a bit of witchcraft as hinted in the book, as a shard of relief in their perpetually doomed existence. To be brutally honest, it is that impossibility of blending back into their old lives more than the Boko Haram backdrop of the story that broke my heart. They sometimes sneak out to their old worlds for a night or two, and a couple of times even meet their parents and siblings. But in spite of the seemingly kind welcome they receive, and real welcome I mean, it is not as if their parents don't want want them, the inevitability of their return hangs low like a shroud, suffocating them and the reader alike. Heart wrenching but beautifully narrated story.
"Robert Greenman and The Mermaid" reminded me strongly and frequently of the short story called the "The Whale That Fell In Love With A Submarine" by Akiyuki Nosaka, more notably known for his "Grave of the Fireflies". Similar story telling styles and the haunting beauty of hypnotic, and eventually disappointing love stories that culminate in inevitable heartbreak, makes Robert Greenman's story my second favourite in the book. And even if I liked Nosaka's "The Whale That Fell In Love With A Submarine" much much more ( cannot recommend it to you enough!!! Please read it if you can find it ), Anjali Sachdeva has a wonderful job with this one.
My next favourite from the collection is "Pleiades", a tale of septuplets born to a geneticist couple whose firm belief in science is their religion. One fertilised egg split into seven pieces made seven sisters, all identical. While they did cause a massive sensation and string ripples of suspicion at birth, their life always had that tinge of sorrow hovering on them as they start dying one by on at various stages of life. Borrowed heavily from the Greek legend of Seven Daughters of the titan Artemis and the sea nymph Pleione, the story is intriguing and dark all at the same time. It makes us question if stretching the limits and breaking more barriers of science, one after the other without longer thought is even worth it.
"The World by Night" is the story of Sadie, orphaned at 16 and by all means, dealt a rough hand by fate at pretty much every turn of her life. She lives by herself in a house and suffers from sensitivity to light ( from the hints in the book, she seems to suffer from albinism ) because of which she spends almost all her day in the house and does her chores by night. Her husband is away a lot, so she is mostly by herself for days and on one such day, she discovers a cave and is mysteriously attracted to it. She comes back to it again and again and the time she spends there takes the reader through myriad emotions of how it feels to be isolated, discriminated on the basis of a condition that one can do nothing about and the crippling loneliness it brings. "The Glass Lung" is about a man how injures himself in a freak accident at the steel factory he works at. An experiment to fuse steel and glass to create a new ultra strong material goes horribly wrong and he ends up with shards and really fine powder of glass in his lungs, making breathing deeply and freely impossible for the rest of his life. Since this renders him unwell and unable to ever work again, he becomes home bound and ever more so dependent on his young daughter for survival and livelihood. But then fate takes him on an expedition to the desert land in Egypt and things take a surprising turn. "Logging Lake" feels so eerily familiar to the 'Tinder Dates gone horribly, horribly wrong' kind of tales we read in newspapers and on social media. Except that the man breaks up with his steady girlfriend who has a taste for adventure a bit too much for him to join in cheerfully and ends up in an even more toxic relationship with another woman who scars him for life. I really don't know what it was supposed to mean and while I found the story complete and not abruptly ending, I have no idea what takeaway the reader is supposed to come out with at the end. A bit weird for me, sorry.
"Killer of Kings" is a beautiful imagination ( I think ) of how the last days of renowned poet John Milton whose eyesight is known to have been steadily declining, rumoured to be so because of untreated glaucoma. The story is a series of conversations between Milton and and the angel who transcribes for him in his illness. It is peppered with, again imagined I assume, John's conversations with Galileo on his trip to Italy. I loved the story, it makes you feel that desperation that one feels when disability robs you of the chance to share with the world what you can contribute to a better tomorrow. Or may be, just contribute something, anything I guess. "Anything You Might Want" is about a young girl who runs away from her home with her boyfriend to escape her overbearing & controlling father, but the love doesn't turn out to be all bed of roses. Not blown away but it is lovely one about the young lady finding her footing again. "Manus" is about alien invasion where the aliens force humans to give up their hands to be replaced by mechanised implants that do the job of hands. The idea I am guessing is to take away that sense of feeling and touching things, that human trait of feeling, I guess and I almost enjoyed the story but I will admit it left be a bit bewildered at the end.
Overall, an eclectic mix of short stories, I rate it 3.5 stars out of 5. Recommended for a time when you are looking to break out of a genre you like but feel stuck in a rut.


My favorite book of 2023, so far

So. So. Good.

Dado a que este libro trae nueve cuentos, exige un ranking! -sonidito de Bo llamando demás la atención en Superstore-

9. MANUS

Este cuento me hizo recordar a Homero gritándole a los humanos que no fueran cobardes, que recordaran habían podido con otras especies, seguro también podrían con los delfines. En fin que, salvo el shocksss que intenta ocasionar con lo terribles que son los mocos, no sé cuál es su razón de ser. O sea sí, la mujer terminó en pedacitos, pero... ¿eso como va a inspirar a alguien? Y más en redes, en donde todos los días hay un video nuevo.

En fin, es como una mezcla entre Mars Attack y el Edward Manos de Tijera, y de cierta forma, logra insultar el legado de ambos. Además, es como, grosero con el Edward.



8. KILLER OF KINGS

Prefiero pensar que el autor tuvo algo que ver en la creación de su propia obra, gracias. Plus, ¿ángeles revolucionarios? Eso ya se ha visto, cof, cof, Lucifer, cof, Prometeo, cof.

En fin, otra historia que no supe muy bien a donde iba o por qué, tampoco ayuda que sea tan corta, es nada más como un rambling de un señor con mucho tiempo libre.

7. ALL THE NAMES FOR GOD

Pues... la historia bien, los personajes están bien, la escritura esta bien. Esto es más bien ya un asunto personal. Es un poco... fuera de lugar (a mis ojos), tomar historias verdaderas de mujeres que tienen que vivir con realidades tan terribles, y decir que sus personajes pudieron librarse de ello porque son jóvenes brujas~.

6. THE WORLD BY NIGHT

A partir de aquí ya inician las que me gustaron. Esta pobre chica, Sadie, estaba tan sola en el mundo que terminó inventando un lugar en donde fuera bien recibida y eso le costó bastante caro, al menos, para los demás, ¿de verdad para ella fue un precio terrible cuándo lo decidió por lo sola que estaba? Este es un cuento corto, pero está decente y bien escrito.

Además, onvres, Sadie merecía mejor.

5. GLASS LUNG

Terrible inicio, un poco desesperante. Pero la historia crece y va cambiando, y aunque tiene puntos por demás fantasiosos (inclusive dentro de la fantasía), lo cierto es que me entretuvo y agradecí que tuviera un final feliz.

4. PLEIADES

Un momento, ¡¿Troy es un chico?! Y todo este tiempo estuve pensando que era una chica, ¿Por qué nadie me lo dijo? Debo de haber quedado como un idiota.

Esta historia esta escrita de manera pre-cio-sa. Los sentimientos de la séptima hermana están a flor de piel, son palpables y todo es por demás melancolico. Estuvo peleada con el tercer lugar, pero, mal para ella,

Spoiler

¡se terminó tan de repente! Estaba lista para algo más, un epilogo de la historia, ¿Qué pasó con Troy? O sea, simplemente ¿la dejará ir al agua o qué? Siento que el final esta incompleto. Sí, tal vez ella fue en ese momento, pero yo merecía otro POV de Troy para saber algo más de él luego de que ella se fue. O sea, el tipo bien pudo ir a la cárcel. Se le muere ahí la chica, llama a la ambulancia, y luego podrían decir él la ahogó por el dinero o algo parecido, un robo mal hecho, a saber. El caso es, a esta historia le falta.

3. LOGGING LAKE

Me dio risa, este ser todo tontoide pensando todo el tiempo en si mismo y en si era o no un impostor. Por favor, muchacho, una mujer murió, ten un poco de respeto... oh no, espera, ya entendí el chiste ja ja -ríe como Marge Simpson-

2. ROBERT GREENMAN AND THE MERMAID

Lo dije antes y lo digo ahora: todo estaba bien en el mundo de la Sirena y el Tiburón, hasta que la nación del onvre atacó.

1. ANYTHING YOU MIGHT WANT

¡La favorita!

Spoiler

En mi mente, ese pendejo arruinó todo al final, siendo él quién dijo toda la sopa de lo que había ocurrido al ver a la novia llorando y ella tan campante. Y fue muy satisfactorio, porque lo siento por la novia, pero yo si soy vengativa y necesito saber que ese infeliz no tuvo ni un día de felicidad conyugal. No lo merece. No la merece.

Ay, seguro que me gustó tanto porque no podía evitar pensar en Taylor Swift al final de Out of The Woods.

Aunque, obvi, me quedé con ganas de un poco de destrucción.



EN CONCLUSIÓN,
No soy mucho de cuentos cortos. Me desespera que, debido a que son pequeños, los autores sientan que tienen que hacer algo ¡increíble! en esas diez páginas, que generalmente incluye muerte y destrucción, para crear shock al espectador pero que, precisamente por ser tan pocas páginas, no causan un efecto importante, salvo decir: meh, más de lo mismo. Tampoco me gusta picarme con una historia y que se quede incompleta. Y aunque este libro tiene algo de ambos, también tuvo historias que llamaron mi atención, otras que tuvieron un giro que no esperaba y unas cuantas que me gustaron, eso sí, la escritura en el libro es preciosa.