Human Kind - Anton Eine

AUTHOR: Anton Eine

GENRE: Sci-fi Anthology

RATING: 3.9 stars.

In a Nutshell: As creative and thrilling as I had expected. Sci-fi fantasy fans, you cannot miss out on this anthology.

By now, you might be used to my showering praises on Ukrainian author Anton Eine’s works. Here I go, one more time! 😄

This indie sci-fi collection has seventeen stories and a novella. Almost all the stories are creative. Quite a few are funny while some are poignant. How Anton can take something ordinary and spin something extraordinary out of it, I'll never understand.

While you might assume that the sci-fi genre incorporates primarily technological advances and futuristic worlds, Anton manages to pump in a decent amount of philosophical content as well. You should know that philosophy and I work as wonderfully for each other as pineapples and pizzas. But this time, the writing style ensured that I didn’t zone out of the elements that provoked deep thought about “human kind.”

Speaking of the writing style, it is quite varied across the stories. Some of the stories are written entirely in the form of conversations between two characters. Some are a single character’s monologues, while some others are almost epistolary in style but with email as the communication mode.

If you are the kind who prefers a bamboozling twist at the end of a story, you will find them aplenty.

Do note that Anton’s stories are originally written in Russian and translated to English. A couple of the works show a gap in translation. But I won’t lower my rating based on this as I did love the stories.

As always, I rated the stories individually. Eleven of the eighteen stories reached/crossed the four star mark for me. Most of the rest were clustered around 3-3.5 stars, with just a couple of duds for me. This is thus a highly satisfying anthology and the reader in me is thrilled to have read this work. Here are my top favourites with 5 stars each:

😍 The Monster in the Closet – Read and reviewed HERE.

😍 The Plumber -"Out of this world" creativity. Simply wow!

😍 The Little Black Dress – Not what you would expect from a story named after a piece of clothing. Loved the role reversal.

(On an aside, I don’t remember when I last read an anthology with three 5-star rated stories! I haven’t included the 4.5 stars here but there are quite a few of those as well, including ‘Post-Molecular Comfort Food’.)

Strongly recommended to anyone who loves creative short stories with a generous dollop of sci-fi and emotions.

3.9 stars, based on the average of my ratings for the eighteen works.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author at my request and these are my honest thoughts about it. Thank you very much for this opportunity to read and review your work, Anton. 😊