A strong Australian anthology with a climate change message. The stories are mostly post-change and how communities have reacted. I'd actually like to read more of some of the stories; some appear to be linked. Recommended.

Collection of short stories. Nearly didn't finish it after the first 2, both of which were ... odd. Sparks does weave a mean word rug though and the stories set in her post-climate apocalypse world are quite good. She does have a tenency towards ambiguous, abrupt endings. ( )

This is a collection of the author's postapocalyptic short stories. She has neat ideas and an eye for culture. Also, her characters are often middle-aged or elderly women, who typically don't get the spotlight in other tales. But she rarely ends her stories properly, preferring to just leave an impression or even a postscript explaining her intended message. The occasional non-ending can be cool, but most stories shouldn't leave the reader asking "that's it?"

Below are my thoughts on each story.

1. Hot Rods: I like the Elvis-impersonating preacher who, if you pay him enough, will fly a crop duster and persuade God to make it rain. But Ms. Sparks describes the action too haphazardly. Her sentences often lack clear subjects and are overloaded with strained analogies. It's hard to follow what's going on. One of my favorite authors, William Gibson, sometimes writes like this. But he always puts something grounded in every sentence, something I can latch onto even when things seem alien. With Mr. Gibson, I always have the gist of what's going on. Not so with Sparks.

2. Cassini Falling: An assassin on a cruise ship looks forward to retirement after this one last job. Has a good ending, but the same unclear writing problem as the first story.

3. Hacking Santorini: An 88-minute war fragmented the world's electronic records, making all written records, even postcards, ultra-valuable. That's a cool lore detail for an otherwise flabbergasting story.

4. Dragon Girl: the first story that I could understand, and which has strong characters. But this tale about a girl who falls in with a desert-wandering tribe doesn't have an ending. It turns out to be a side story for the author's novel, Lotus Blue. I might actually check that out someday.

5. You Will Remember Who You Were: I really liked the main character: an elderly self-centered art snob who lives in an arcology and is obsessed with finding out whether the graffiti attack that ruined her performance was a posthumous prank by Bansky. She's preciously annoying and ignorant, but also curious about the artistic implications of everything around her. No ending except for the author's explanation that it's a message about climate change.

6. Fate Morgana: an elderly woman rides the desert in a talking mech. I found it fascinating that sufficiently sophisticated AIs would learn to be just as passive-aggressive as humans. It's an alright story, though I'm puzzled and dissatisfied by the ending. And I don't like being asked to believe that a mech twice the height of a human can transform into something the size and shape of a human.

7. Before Dominica: finally, a story with a reasonable ending. A decent, if not memorable, tale about an impoverished middle-aged waitress who pines for her friend who had disappeared while trying to move up in the oppressive new government.

8. The Seventh Relic: I had to re-read the first part as the writing style had the same problem as the first three stories. But one re-read made the premise clear, and it's a good one despite being horror instead of postapocalyptic. A Buddhist monk has, for 1,300 years, kept the soul of her lover alive by feeding spiritual energy to a monster. But she sees a chance to break the curse when a vapid white American girl visits the monastery. Unfortunately, the story ends just when things are getting really good.

9. And the Ship Sails On: the longest and best story, full of adventure and terror. A luxury cruise ship has roamed the plastic-filled seas for years in search of habitable land. The rich people on board try to maintain their privilege and exclusivity, even though a good part of the ship is so overgrown with weeds that you can have a legitimate safari in it. The author includes some interesting details on how the ship can stay in operation for so long and what society is like on board. The ending, though ... I guess it's meant to be allegorical instead of literal. Like the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Speaking of movies, I'd like to see the Fellini film that inspired the title.

10. Jericho Blush: scavengers loot a hastily abandoned town and get more than they bargained for. A decent story with a proper ending.

11. No Fat Chicks: fat-shaming douchebros cope in a world where a viral infection has made most women obese. Good dialogue, introspective look into the stunted psychology of many men. Ends abruptly and ambiguously when things are getting good.

12. Veterans Day: street urchin finds out firsthand the truth about the city's virgin sacrifice ritual. Too brief and insubstantial.

13. Dark Harvest: mercenaries try to evacuate a planet they plundered, contending with the mysterious natives. Pretty cool revelation at the end.

14. Prayers to Broken Stone: a series of loosely connected stories about tradecraft. I like the first and last ones. ( )

Odd. Not quite my sort of thing, but nearly. A themed collection of the author's short stories, featuring pieces written for other anthologies, fragments that didn't fit anywhere else, and backstory from the novels. Although all the settings are quite different the general feeling is very similar: the world's gone to shit and the rich will try to save themselves from the desperate struggling of the rabble. Sometimes your empathy is directed more one way than the other, but there's always support for the underdog, the military get especially short shrift. More than one story features arcs - persevered habitats be they ageing cruise liners or space ships, but even these break down in time.

All of the stories lacked the punch and twist that I particularly enjoy in the format, but the worldbuilding and characters were always interesting if not always nice. Too few authors manage to create short stories that aren't just cut down novels. But there is sufficient promise that I may be tempted by the novels if I come across them. ( )

Story collection of an Australian author new to me. Many of them are eco-doom science fiction, but not all. Interesting, well written, often sad, but usually a bit trippy. I liked most of them, "Before Dominica" most of all. A few have endings too ambiguous for me, but YMMV. ( )