A review by somewheregirl7
Foretold: 14 Tales of Prophecy and Prediction by Carrie Ryan
3.0
I'd prefer to give the overall anthology a 2.5. Less than half the stories are actually worth reading (at least by my preferences).
Stories to definitely check out (4 stars): Improbable Futures, The Chosen One, Gentlemen Send Phantoms and Homecoming. One's to give a try(3 stars): Death for the Deathless, Misery, The Killing Garden. Detailed descriptions and reviews for each short story are below.
Reviews for each of the short stories in this anthology.
Gentleman Send Phantoms by Laini Taylor - (4 Stars)
Three girls bake a special cake that will reveal their true love and all hope to see the same boy.
an awesome, sweet little story. It's like a delicious bite of cotton candy that just makes you smile. I love Laini Taylor's writing style and this is classic Taylor - filled with vivid, beautiful descriptions and a fairytale, lilting tone. Plus, the title deserves five stars.
Burned Bright by Diana Peterfreund - ( 2 stars)
At a religious compound the faithful prepare for the rapture, but despite her fervent faith the prophet's daughter is not carried up to heaven.
I read an eBook version of this anthology. Had it been a physical book I'd have flung it across the room after reading this story. The scene description and imagery are vivid and well done, the characters are also vivid. There's no denying Peterfreund is a strong writer. However, the story itself is less than satisfying. It follows a cult-leader's daughter after she believes her family and most of her father's followers have been raptured up to heaven. There's no character progression at all for Bright or the other POV character, Sam, in this story. Both end the short exactly as they began it - Sam doubting Bright's father for the first time, and Bright utterly devout in her belief in her father's prophecy. More-over, the ending feels like a gimmicky trick and an easy out for Bright, whose faith is never really challenged at all. That lack of progression and growth made the story feel stagnant.
The Angriest Man by Lisa McMann - (2 stars)
On his eighteenth birthday a young man sets out to find the grave of the angriest man. All his life the young man's mother told him that he was born wrong, filled with anger, because of the angriest man.
The descriptions in this story are good and I like McMann's word use/choices. She has some very vivid imagery. However, the story is barely coherent and I have no idea what really happened. I can't pin down her main character or the other characters in the story. The entire story reads like a bad drug trip pretending to be a folk tale.
Out of the Blue by Meg Cabot (2.5 stars)
When twins KC & Kyle Conrad were six they had a close encounter with a flying saucer and the spaceman inside. He left them with identical blue dots on their skin to record data about the human race. No one believed them of course and the dots were chalked up as a rare type of mole. Ten years later, when KC makes an imprudent blog post about her close encounter all hell breaks loose and the spaceman returns.
This story started out with a lot of promise. The descriptions and characterization are great and the initial situation is an intriguing one. However, like many stories, that initial promise falls apart in the end and what might have been an intriguing character study turns into just another saturday morning monster special.
One True Love by Melinda Lo (2.5 stars)
Princess Essylt is destined to overthrow her father when she meets her true love, according to a prophecy at her birth. In reaction, the king locks Essylt in a tower and isolates from all contact with men. Seventeen years later the king is set to marry for the third time - a young girl from an island nation. His jealously leads him to isolate the future queen in the West Tower with his daughter where the two become close friends and something more.
This short story is pedantic in every way. Every section is predictable and the situation completely cliche. The story relies on shock value alone, which isn't much of a shock, as a gimmick. So the princess falls in love a girl, big deal. That role reversal in the standard damsel in distress/knight in shining armor story isn't enough to sustain this story and make it interesting. I'm all for LGBT literature, but not just for the sake of being LGBT - give me a good story with compelling characters.
This is a Mortal Wound by Michael Grant (2 stars)
In the year 2017, education has advanced by leaps and bounds and traditional schools and books are a thing of the past. Thirteen-year-old Tomaso disrespects his English teacher for clinging to her books and ignoring the Internet technology at everyone's fingertips. When Tomaso moves to San Francisco he thinks he's well away from Ms. Gill forever. Unfortunately for him she goes off the deep-end, kidnaps a bunch of kids and chains them to desks and forces them to learn their lessons from old books.
The premise of this story is ridiculous, the characters are cardboard cutouts without a spark of life and the twist in the story and resolution are so laughably thin that it's hard not to cringe.
Misery by Heather Brewer (3 stars)
Alek & Sara are teens in a weird town where there is no color, no one smiles and a weird melancholy hangs over everything. As the two queue up to receive 'gifts' from a psychic who seems to run the town Alek feels a nameless dread and soon finds that everything he knows about the town of Misery is wrong and his life is about to change in big ways.
This story has an intriguing premise and the descriptions are well done. It feels a bit rushed but overall not a bad story.
The Mind Is A Powerful Thing by Matt De La Pena (2 stars)
Joanna' s 16th birthday is marred by her unreasoning anxiety that she and her friends will be victims in a violent crime. Joanna's anxieties color every part of her world and staring her friendships, to the point that she considers running away from one of her closest friends because she's convinced herself he must a stalker.
This story is bleak and pointless. There is no ebb and flow, no rhythm, just fast forward crazy without hope. It's a personal preference but I can't stand stories that are all downhill with no ups, no hope and no chance for redemption. Moreover Joanna is an unsympathetic character and I was never able to connect with or care about her.
The Chosen One by Saundra Mitchell (4 stars)
Corvina is the king's illegitimate daughter and has served as hand-maiden to her half-sister, the crown princess of Vernal, all her life. When Corvina's sister falls deathly ill Corvina sets out on a quest to find a fabled cup that may save her sister.
This story is one of the shining gems in the anthology. The main characters are well fleshed out and likable and I love that Mitchell chose to make a main character who is NOT a classic beauty but a scarred and humble girl. Corvina's earnestness and good heart make her an appealing character and while the quest seems too easy in many ways and far from original, Corvina's character makes the story worth the read. I really enjoyed this one.
Improbable Futures by Kami Garcia (3.5-4 stars)
Stuck telling fortunes at a traveling carnival, a young girl hands out only bad news to her clients and discovers one day that her predictions are all coming true. The carnival is the only life Ilana has ever known and the one her mother wants but Ilana feels trapped and helpless, terrorized by the carnival's manager who has a preference for young girls.
Vivid descriptions and characterization bring this story to life. It's a not a fluffy tale but it has a raw honesty to it that feels right. One of the better stories in the anthology.
Death for the Deathless by Margaret Stohl (3 stars)
A pair of immortal vampires, Adi & Luc, must deliver the news to others of their kind that by the end of the evening they will all die. The immortal group has taken the name Nostradamus through the years, inventing the man, to deliver their prophecies and in their way the prophecies are never wrong. Faced with death the immortal community surrenders to chaos as Adi & Luc watch.
An intriguing premise with well thought out characters and a nice twist. One of the better stories in the anthology. Though I would say it's only loosely YA - the characters may look like teens but they're several hundred years old.
Fate by Simone Elkeles (2 stars)
When Carson moves into a trailer park he inherits more than the decrepit old trailer, he gets his irrepressible neighbor, Willow, as well.
This story is utterly maddening. I fail to see how it ties into the anthology theme and there is NO point to the story. No conflict, no up and down, just a steady monotonous drone. Willow comes across as twelve not sixteen and so unbelievably naive and sweet and disingenuous that she loses any chance at coming across as a real, believable character. This is a cotton candy story but one without any satisfaction in it because it isn't a story at all - it's a long drawn out ancedote. I didn't connect with either character.
The Killing Garden by Carrie Ryan (3 stars)
Tanci assumed the position of Gardner and executioner in the emperor's court when she was 15. Over the years she has chased numerous condemned prisoners through the elaborate gardens in a deadly footrace that always ends in her strangling the life out of the prisoners. Then one day Tanci meets a prisoner in the dungeons she doesn't want to kill - Rete a handsome man who refuses to tell her why he has been condemned to die.
It's hard to connect with Tanci as a character or feel sympathy with her. She willingly murders people, hundreds of people, without question. In one scene she even kills her best friend merely because the emperor ordered her too and even though she has no idea why her friend has been sentenced to die. Tanci is merely a tool, as she notes. But it's rather hard to sympathize with a gun or an axe and though Tanci ultimately begins to doubt her position it's too little too late for me to really like her or root for her. Rete's presence and affection for Tanci seems contrived, rather than a natural progression of the story. This isn't a bad story, but not one I especially liked either.
Homecoming by Richelle Mead - (4 Stars)
If you've read and enjoyed Richelle Meads Vampire Academy series you'll love this story. It's a little moment in time with Rose and Dimitri long after fans thought we wouldn't be getting any more significant time with two characters we've loved. For that reason alone, I love the story. It's also classic Rose and Dimitri and just a sweet, nice little peek into their lives. Filled with vivid characters, great dialogue and action it's a fast paced story. If you've never read Vampire Academy I'm not sure it will have as much charm, as the back story on the characters really makes this short come to life.
Stories to definitely check out (4 stars): Improbable Futures, The Chosen One, Gentlemen Send Phantoms and Homecoming. One's to give a try(3 stars): Death for the Deathless, Misery, The Killing Garden. Detailed descriptions and reviews for each short story are below.
Reviews for each of the short stories in this anthology.
Gentleman Send Phantoms by Laini Taylor - (4 Stars)
Three girls bake a special cake that will reveal their true love and all hope to see the same boy.
an awesome, sweet little story. It's like a delicious bite of cotton candy that just makes you smile. I love Laini Taylor's writing style and this is classic Taylor - filled with vivid, beautiful descriptions and a fairytale, lilting tone. Plus, the title deserves five stars.
Burned Bright by Diana Peterfreund - ( 2 stars)
At a religious compound the faithful prepare for the rapture, but despite her fervent faith the prophet's daughter is not carried up to heaven.
I read an eBook version of this anthology. Had it been a physical book I'd have flung it across the room after reading this story. The scene description and imagery are vivid and well done, the characters are also vivid. There's no denying Peterfreund is a strong writer. However, the story itself is less than satisfying. It follows a cult-leader's daughter after she believes her family and most of her father's followers have been raptured up to heaven. There's no character progression at all for Bright or the other POV character, Sam, in this story. Both end the short exactly as they began it - Sam doubting Bright's father for the first time, and Bright utterly devout in her belief in her father's prophecy. More-over, the ending feels like a gimmicky trick and an easy out for Bright, whose faith is never really challenged at all. That lack of progression and growth made the story feel stagnant.
The Angriest Man by Lisa McMann - (2 stars)
On his eighteenth birthday a young man sets out to find the grave of the angriest man. All his life the young man's mother told him that he was born wrong, filled with anger, because of the angriest man.
The descriptions in this story are good and I like McMann's word use/choices. She has some very vivid imagery. However, the story is barely coherent and I have no idea what really happened. I can't pin down her main character or the other characters in the story. The entire story reads like a bad drug trip pretending to be a folk tale.
Out of the Blue by Meg Cabot (2.5 stars)
When twins KC & Kyle Conrad were six they had a close encounter with a flying saucer and the spaceman inside. He left them with identical blue dots on their skin to record data about the human race. No one believed them of course and the dots were chalked up as a rare type of mole. Ten years later, when KC makes an imprudent blog post about her close encounter all hell breaks loose and the spaceman returns.
This story started out with a lot of promise. The descriptions and characterization are great and the initial situation is an intriguing one. However, like many stories, that initial promise falls apart in the end and what might have been an intriguing character study turns into just another saturday morning monster special.
One True Love by Melinda Lo (2.5 stars)
Princess Essylt is destined to overthrow her father when she meets her true love, according to a prophecy at her birth. In reaction, the king locks Essylt in a tower and isolates from all contact with men. Seventeen years later the king is set to marry for the third time - a young girl from an island nation. His jealously leads him to isolate the future queen in the West Tower with his daughter where the two become close friends and something more.
This short story is pedantic in every way. Every section is predictable and the situation completely cliche. The story relies on shock value alone, which isn't much of a shock, as a gimmick. So the princess falls in love a girl, big deal. That role reversal in the standard damsel in distress/knight in shining armor story isn't enough to sustain this story and make it interesting. I'm all for LGBT literature, but not just for the sake of being LGBT - give me a good story with compelling characters.
This is a Mortal Wound by Michael Grant (2 stars)
In the year 2017, education has advanced by leaps and bounds and traditional schools and books are a thing of the past. Thirteen-year-old Tomaso disrespects his English teacher for clinging to her books and ignoring the Internet technology at everyone's fingertips. When Tomaso moves to San Francisco he thinks he's well away from Ms. Gill forever. Unfortunately for him she goes off the deep-end, kidnaps a bunch of kids and chains them to desks and forces them to learn their lessons from old books.
The premise of this story is ridiculous, the characters are cardboard cutouts without a spark of life and the twist in the story and resolution are so laughably thin that it's hard not to cringe.
Misery by Heather Brewer (3 stars)
Alek & Sara are teens in a weird town where there is no color, no one smiles and a weird melancholy hangs over everything. As the two queue up to receive 'gifts' from a psychic who seems to run the town Alek feels a nameless dread and soon finds that everything he knows about the town of Misery is wrong and his life is about to change in big ways.
This story has an intriguing premise and the descriptions are well done. It feels a bit rushed but overall not a bad story.
The Mind Is A Powerful Thing by Matt De La Pena (2 stars)
Joanna' s 16th birthday is marred by her unreasoning anxiety that she and her friends will be victims in a violent crime. Joanna's anxieties color every part of her world and staring her friendships, to the point that she considers running away from one of her closest friends because she's convinced herself he must a stalker.
This story is bleak and pointless. There is no ebb and flow, no rhythm, just fast forward crazy without hope. It's a personal preference but I can't stand stories that are all downhill with no ups, no hope and no chance for redemption. Moreover Joanna is an unsympathetic character and I was never able to connect with or care about her.
The Chosen One by Saundra Mitchell (4 stars)
Corvina is the king's illegitimate daughter and has served as hand-maiden to her half-sister, the crown princess of Vernal, all her life. When Corvina's sister falls deathly ill Corvina sets out on a quest to find a fabled cup that may save her sister.
This story is one of the shining gems in the anthology. The main characters are well fleshed out and likable and I love that Mitchell chose to make a main character who is NOT a classic beauty but a scarred and humble girl. Corvina's earnestness and good heart make her an appealing character and while the quest seems too easy in many ways and far from original, Corvina's character makes the story worth the read. I really enjoyed this one.
Improbable Futures by Kami Garcia (3.5-4 stars)
Stuck telling fortunes at a traveling carnival, a young girl hands out only bad news to her clients and discovers one day that her predictions are all coming true. The carnival is the only life Ilana has ever known and the one her mother wants but Ilana feels trapped and helpless, terrorized by the carnival's manager who has a preference for young girls.
Vivid descriptions and characterization bring this story to life. It's a not a fluffy tale but it has a raw honesty to it that feels right. One of the better stories in the anthology.
Death for the Deathless by Margaret Stohl (3 stars)
A pair of immortal vampires, Adi & Luc, must deliver the news to others of their kind that by the end of the evening they will all die. The immortal group has taken the name Nostradamus through the years, inventing the man, to deliver their prophecies and in their way the prophecies are never wrong. Faced with death the immortal community surrenders to chaos as Adi & Luc watch.
An intriguing premise with well thought out characters and a nice twist. One of the better stories in the anthology. Though I would say it's only loosely YA - the characters may look like teens but they're several hundred years old.
Fate by Simone Elkeles (2 stars)
When Carson moves into a trailer park he inherits more than the decrepit old trailer, he gets his irrepressible neighbor, Willow, as well.
This story is utterly maddening. I fail to see how it ties into the anthology theme and there is NO point to the story. No conflict, no up and down, just a steady monotonous drone. Willow comes across as twelve not sixteen and so unbelievably naive and sweet and disingenuous that she loses any chance at coming across as a real, believable character. This is a cotton candy story but one without any satisfaction in it because it isn't a story at all - it's a long drawn out ancedote. I didn't connect with either character.
The Killing Garden by Carrie Ryan (3 stars)
Tanci assumed the position of Gardner and executioner in the emperor's court when she was 15. Over the years she has chased numerous condemned prisoners through the elaborate gardens in a deadly footrace that always ends in her strangling the life out of the prisoners. Then one day Tanci meets a prisoner in the dungeons she doesn't want to kill - Rete a handsome man who refuses to tell her why he has been condemned to die.
It's hard to connect with Tanci as a character or feel sympathy with her. She willingly murders people, hundreds of people, without question. In one scene she even kills her best friend merely because the emperor ordered her too and even though she has no idea why her friend has been sentenced to die. Tanci is merely a tool, as she notes. But it's rather hard to sympathize with a gun or an axe and though Tanci ultimately begins to doubt her position it's too little too late for me to really like her or root for her. Rete's presence and affection for Tanci seems contrived, rather than a natural progression of the story. This isn't a bad story, but not one I especially liked either.
Homecoming by Richelle Mead - (4 Stars)
If you've read and enjoyed Richelle Meads Vampire Academy series you'll love this story. It's a little moment in time with Rose and Dimitri long after fans thought we wouldn't be getting any more significant time with two characters we've loved. For that reason alone, I love the story. It's also classic Rose and Dimitri and just a sweet, nice little peek into their lives. Filled with vivid characters, great dialogue and action it's a fast paced story. If you've never read Vampire Academy I'm not sure it will have as much charm, as the back story on the characters really makes this short come to life.