A review by secre
Fireside Magazine Issue 60, October 2018 by Julia Rios, Danilo Campos
4.0
Review: STET
This is unbelievably difficult to rate as whilst it is one of the most unique and interesting shorts I have read on the Hugo nominations, it is also incredibly difficult to read due to the format. I ended up with it open on both kindle and phone - using the free online version - to really make sense of it. The kindle text is tiny and the jumping about required online is aggravating.
That said this is certainly worth looking at; it is a story told solely in the footnotes of an academic piece of writing. The content warning was unnecessary mind; it meant that before you'd even begun to work through the notes, you knew a child had died. This definitely impinged on the emotional response later on. A better 'warning'would have been an explanation of what STET means as I certainly had to look this up. Turns out it's a nice way of telling a publisher that your editor is an idiot and to ignore their comments.
Either way, 5 stars for a novel and innovative way of telling a story, without losing the emotional resonance through academic jargon. 2 stars for actual lay out and 4 stars for content... a bit of a mixed bag, but probably rounds up to 4 stars. I'm impressed by how well the relationships are exposed in so very few words, and how Gailey presents the grief, loss, love and anger in such a frustrated form.
This is unbelievably difficult to rate as whilst it is one of the most unique and interesting shorts I have read on the Hugo nominations, it is also incredibly difficult to read due to the format. I ended up with it open on both kindle and phone - using the free online version - to really make sense of it. The kindle text is tiny and the jumping about required online is aggravating.
That said this is certainly worth looking at; it is a story told solely in the footnotes of an academic piece of writing. The content warning was unnecessary mind; it meant that before you'd even begun to work through the notes, you knew a child had died. This definitely impinged on the emotional response later on. A better 'warning'would have been an explanation of what STET means as I certainly had to look this up. Turns out it's a nice way of telling a publisher that your editor is an idiot and to ignore their comments.
Either way, 5 stars for a novel and innovative way of telling a story, without losing the emotional resonance through academic jargon. 2 stars for actual lay out and 4 stars for content... a bit of a mixed bag, but probably rounds up to 4 stars. I'm impressed by how well the relationships are exposed in so very few words, and how Gailey presents the grief, loss, love and anger in such a frustrated form.