Shackles and More Gripping Tales - James Hanna

Author: James Hanna

Genre: Short Story Anthology

Rating: 2.25 stars.

This started with a bang but ended as a damp squib.

This is a collection of 21 stories across various genres. All the stories are dark. Most are snarky. Quite a few are cocky. At least half are filled with vulgarities. (If I had known this last point, I wouldn’t have gone for this at all.) A couple of them reveal strong political leanings, a factor that I never appreciate in fiction.

From the long list of credentials listed out at the start of the book, the author seems to be a prolific and acclaimed indie writer. So it might just be that I wasn’t the right audience for his collection.

As I said, the anthology began marvellously. The first five stories were so outstanding that I assumed this would be a 5 starrer. But from story 6, the dip began and I had to force myself to complete the book.

In several places, there are clear instances of ‘Men Writing Women’. Some people might enjoy dirty language but I get repelled by it. So the latter half of the collection was simply too crude for me to read without squirming uncomfortably.

There is also an overuse of one character named Tom Hemmings. In his first appearance, I loved the way he was sketched. But then it began getting repetitive and even contradictory. Many stories are set around prisons and correctional facilities, which again gets tedious after a few stories.

Basically, some might like this collection but it simply wasn’t for me.

2.25 stars based on the average of my ratings for the 21 stories. (The first five stories got 23 out of a possible 25 stars. The rest averaged at 1.7 stars.)

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author through ‘Voracious Readers Only’ and these are my honest thoughts about it.