Illuminations - Alan Moore - ★★

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AUTHOR: Alan Moore
GENRE: Short Story Collection.
PUBLICATION DATE: October 11, 2022
RATING: 2 stars

In a Nutshell: This anthology will find its niche audience. But it wasn’t for me. Too longwinded and slow-paced.


I grabbed this from NetGalley mainly for the author (‘Watchmen’ is almost like a master class for adult comic lovers), and partly for the concept. The first story, “A Hypothetical Lizard” mostly met my expectations. From there, it was a slide downhill. The stories were too meandering and verbose to present a submersive experience.

To add to the fact, I go in for anthologies with certain length expectations as I read the stories whenever I can squeeze a few minutes out of my schedule. With 9 stories spread over 464 pages, the tales were more novella length than short fiction. I especially wasn’t prepared for a 200+ page “novella” (‘What We Can Know About Thunderman’) to be included herein; that’s like reading a whole book by itself! It threw my reading schedule for a toss.

On the pro side, the vocabulary is outstanding! The bizarre creativity of the author shows up in glimpses.

This might have clicked differently with me had I picked it up in a different mindspace. But the current read did nothing for my spirit.

I did rate the stories individually as I always do, but except for the first story – a 4 star, none of the others reached satisfying ratings. These ratings ranged from 1 star to 3 stars.

2 stars, rounding up from my average rating for each of the stories.

My thanks to Bloomsbury USA and NetGalley for the DRC of “Illuminations: Stories”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

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