Subject Verb Object - Edited by Dane Cobain - ★★★.½

EDITOR: Dane Cobain

GENRE: Anthology.

RATING: 3.55 stars.

In a Nutshell: An unusual anthology with an unusual theme, hinted by the title. Has hits and misses, but the hits are really good.

Multi-author anthologies are usually unified by some kind of a theme that ties the stories together. However, for this book, there is no common theme. On the contrary, you could consider this anthology the result of a creative writing exercise. Each contributing writer had to provide a writing prompt containing a subject-verb-object in a short sentence. These prompts were then randomised and distributed across the authors, who then wrote a story for the prompt they were allotted. Thus, this collection has eighteen stories by eighteen authors.

When I read this ‘backstory’ in the introductory note, I was quite impressed. But as I proceeded with the collection, I realised the pitfalls of the method. The prompt sentences are quite varied, and the writers’ core genres are also quite varied. This results in a collection with stories from multiple genres, ranging from humour to horror and a couple of stories in verse! If you are not too fond of a range of genres, this collection might not work too well.

I read a range of genres, so that aspect wasn’t a problem. But because the stories had no theme in common, each new story provided an abrupt change of topic and style. I never felt like I was reading a single anthology but as if I was reading disparate short stories somehow collected together under one title.

Another thing that didn’t suit me was the varying length of the stories. Some of the stories took just 2-3 minutes to read while others required about 30-40 minutes. This extreme disparity meant that I couldn’t really get into a reading rhythm.

Each story mentions the writing prompt at the start, just under the title, so we can see how the author took such a little sentence and created a whole story around it. Some of the authors took the easy way out, and simply titled their stories the same as the prompt itself. This is the first ever anthology where I have seen the introductory credits mentioning the author’s name first and then their story’s title. I liked this change; the creator is superior to the created, after all.

As always, I rated the stories individually and they turned out to be a fairly mixed bag. Seven stories reached 4 stars and above for me. My top favourites with 4.5 stars or more were:

Dane Cobain - When the Mirror Clouds - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 – A slow build-up leading to a creepy ending. Would have given it 5 full stars had it provided my curious mind some explanation.

Oli Jacobs - The Goat Ate the World - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 – A bittersweet story about a friendship that ended because of a mental health issue. Loved the writing style and the ending.

Chris Gower - The Wedding - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 – The only humorous story in the book. The fact that I gave it 4.5 stars despite its being a story-in-verse shows how much I enjoyed it. (I am not a poem person!)

Heba El-Husseini - Tom Ate the Cheese - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 –This story uses the first person to great effect. Loved the narrator and her attitude. The ending is hilarious.

Stevyn Colgan - Not Remotely Funny - 🌟🌟🌟🌟💫 – Had the ending of this been stronger, this would have been an easy five stars. It was one of the absolute best stories in the book in terms of writing, suspense, and overall impact. Not to mention that it made me go from laughing out loud to being stunned into silence within a couple of minutes.

Eileen Maksym - The Judgement of Little Bug - 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 – Such a creative idea! And using my favourite animal to provide human redemption automatically gives the tale a higher rating.

Overall, a pretty good anthology, though I wish there had been a unifying theme to the prompts or the genres so that it didn’t feel so ad hoc.

3.55 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each story.

My thanks to author Dane Cobain for providing me with a complimentary copy of “Subject Verb Object” at my request. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

All royalties from the online sales of this book will be donated to charity. The contributors have opted not to mention this on the cover and blurb, but only in the editor's introductory note, as they do not wish anyone to view it as a marketing trick. I, however, choose to declare their beautiful agenda here, just to highlight this group of good people who contribute to charity without tomtoming it everywhere.