Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1156113 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 350 pages

Customer Reviews

Impossible Stories
`Impossible Stories' collects together twenty-nine short stories, all but one of which are segments of five linked `story cycles': In `Time Gifts' a mysterious stranger offers the gift of time travel to four separate people; `Impossible Encounters' tells of a sequence of bizarre meetings that thrust normal people into the realms of the fantastic; `Seven Touches of Music' feature stories where music is the catalyst for the bizarre; `The Library' is a sequence of tales concerning books; and `Steps Through the Mist' details the dreamed adventures of five women.
Zivkovic's stories generally focus on the intrusion of the bizarre or fantastic into otherwise normal lives, often with characters facing moral dilemmas, with the results often reading like bizarre modern fairy tales or fables. Dreamlike, occasionally nightmarish, and loaded with symbolism, Zivkovic's characters find themselves sliding through time, encountering God, the Devil, and even the author himself in several post-modern moments.
Not all the stories here are entirely successful, with some feeling like half-finished or lacking a knockout ending, and taken en mass some of them can feel rather samey, but when Zivkovic is on form these tales hit home hard, and this collection certainly has enough gems contained within to make this a worthwhile read.
A unique and distinctive voice in fantasy science fiction. Recommended.