One Hundred: Words / Days / Stories - Ria Rees

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Author: Ria Rees

Genre: SFF Anthology, Drabbles
Rating: 3.75 stars.

An interesting collection of tales written in the microfiction variant called a ‘drabble’, which indicates stories that are precisely one hundred words long.

The title and the tagline give you a clear idea of what the book contains: One Hundred Words / One Hundred Days / One Hundred Stories. Thus, this is a collection of a hundred stories, each exactly a hundred words long, written over a period of a hundred days beginning from February 2022.

The stories are divided across four sections: Science Fiction, Dark Fiction, Fantasy and Contemporary. Each section is introduced with a personal note by the author, which is thankfully more than a hundred words long so I could enjoy reading her thought process behind the drabbles in that section.

The variety in the stories is amazing, even though most fit under the broad SFF spectrum. The author makes it clear that her writing preference lies in the SFF and horror genre, and this shows. The weakest section in the book is the “Contemporary” section, though many stories therein also contain shades of SFF. Somehow, they didn’t leave me satisfied.

I can’t even write my reviews in one hundred words, so imagine writing sensible stories within that word constraint… I am in awe of the author’s talent for brevity! 😂 How amazing that she could deliver a complete story experience within that teeny word limit! Some stories left me with a smile on my face. Some elicited a wide-eyed shock. Some others left me befuddled, thinking "I didn't get it." (I still am clueless about a few of the stories!) Many stories even include a twisty ending. (These were my favourite, but obviously.)

I usually rate individual stories in an anthology, but surely you don’t expect me to do so for one hundred stories! So what I have this time is my top three favourites from each section:

➤ Science Fiction

👽 Special Operations (Loved the pun in the title too!)

👽 Alien Soil

👽 Kit

➤ Dark Fiction

👻 Dogs Hate Yellow

👻 The House

👻 Malfunction

➤ Fantasy

✨ The Curse of Silence

✨ Just a Butterfly

✨ Hired Assassin

➤ Contemporary

🌹 Twisting pencils

🌹 Scream it out

🌹 Dandelion Seed

Based on the overall feel of the book and my satisfaction level with the individual stories, I’ll rate it 3.75 stars. It would have been even higher had the Contemporary section worked out better for me. Nevertheless, it is an unusual anthology and well worth the time. Just don’t read it in one go but savour it over a long time. You will relish it better.

The book is available on KU.

My thanks to author Ria Rees and BookSirens for the DRC of “One Hundred: Words / Days / Stories”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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