Review: Some Real Gems...with quite a bit of chaff...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 16, 2014
This book had some great points...and some not so great points. Some of the stories were excellent, and lent themselves really well to the KickStarter format. "Flashed Forward" by Bradley Beaulieu, for example, was an excellent and very enjoyable read, about a time traveler. I also really enjoyed Jake Kerr's "A Memorial to the Patriots" about terrorists in a big brother-esque United States. Both stories (and a few others) did a great job leading the reader through the world of their KickStarter and delivered an emotional punch by the end.One of the weaker parts of the book, however, are that a lot of stories seem relatively cookie-cutter and have little to differentiate themselves one from the next.  A few of the themes got relatively boring the 4th or 5th time you've read it, and the similarity in format for these stories that were only mildly differentiated from one another led to them being relatively boring.There are enough 5 star stories in the book to balance out the 1-3 star stories to make this book worth picking up, but don't be shy about skipping ahead if a particular story isn't doing the trick for you. Had some trouble deciding between 3 and 4 stars for what to rate it as, and opted for rounding up.