★★★☆☆ Honorable Mention
(Portal Fantasy) A middle-aged man settling his dead mother’s estate discovers he can still slip through the wardrobe into a different world. (2,017 words; Time: 06m)
"This Is Not My Adventure," by Karlo Yeager Rodríguez [bio] (edited by Katharine Duckett), appeared in Uncanny Magazine issue 30, published on September 3, 2019.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2019.529 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: There are lots of allusions to “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,” by C.S. Lewis.
Turfed out of not-Narnia, Kevin succumbs to depression. He misses his mom. He misses his kids. He knows what he needs to do to wrap up here, but he can’t make himself do it.
Well, just because Kevin can’t have an adventure, doesn’t mean nobody can. It’s heartwarming that his friends from the other world come back to help him, treating his to-do list as instructions for a quest against the darkness.
And it is a quest against the darkness.
Con: Kevin himself isn’t a very sympathetic character, and he doesn’t do anything do earn the help he gets. Arguably that’s part and parcel of having a depressed main character, but that just points to how difficult it is to write a compelling story about someone who’s depressed.
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Karlo Yeager Rodríguez Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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Pro: There are lots of allusions to “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe,” by C.S. Lewis.
Turfed out of not-Narnia, Kevin succumbs to depression. He misses his mom. He misses his kids. He knows what he needs to do to wrap up here, but he can’t make himself do it.
Well, just because Kevin can’t have an adventure, doesn’t mean nobody can. It’s heartwarming that his friends from the other world come back to help him, treating his to-do list as instructions for a quest against the darkness.
And it is a quest against the darkness.
Con: Kevin himself isn’t a very sympathetic character, and he doesn’t do anything do earn the help he gets. Arguably that’s part and parcel of having a depressed main character, but that just points to how difficult it is to write a compelling story about someone who’s depressed.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Karlo Yeager Rodríguez Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
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