Review: Stories or Essays... take your pick.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 8, 2014
I won this novel as part of a giveaway through Booklikes, and I was really looking forward to it.  I enjoy flash fiction and even write it myself, unfortunately I'd say that a good 2/3 of the stories did not read as actual "stories" to me.  Richard Bunning is nice enough to label the stories so that we know if it's supposed to be science fiction, romantic suspense, historical fiction, journalistic nonfiction, etc. However, many of the categories that have "fiction" as part of the name (such as historical fiction or fact-based fiction) come across as essays that someone may have had to write for a school project. Perhaps this is just Richard's style of writing, but unfortunately it wasn't a style I enjoyed.  Now, I did enjoy several of his stories, and from all different "categories" (so it's not just an issue of me preferring certain types of genre and not others) and some of them really stood out and excellent:Story 10: What's in those coloured smudges? (Paranormal Fiction) - this was a great story showing how someone with synaesthesia sees the world.  It also snows the depth of emotion that people can put in their artwork and writing that may not be visible to someone with standard senses.Story 11: Disassociated Consciousness and Hope (Speculative Fiction) - Consciousness after death has always been an interesting subject, and the author deals with it well in this story.Story 17: Hostages, Combinations for Survival (Suspense Fiction) - I love the way that the author tells the entire story in a way that you don't know exactly what the protagonist is going to do, and lets us all understand the ending even though the story doesn't follow through to the end.Story 24: First my complicity dies, then I (Warning - Sexual Slavery) (Real Life Fiction) - This story leaves the ending open, so that you only hope that the protagonist is successful with her plans.And finally, Story 49: Pinks Reflection (Psychological Fiction) - Inside the mind of a madman.Out of 50 stories, I only really connected with 5 of them.  Now, there were some others that were also "stories" but the majority of this book seemed as if the author was padding the book with research and facts for random things rather than actual telling a story.  Even with flash fiction, there should still be some conflict and either a resolution or hope that it's leading up to a resolution.  It's supposed to be a story, not something that you would read out of a textbook. I gave this 3 stars on amazon (3 1/2 stars on booklikes) because I see promise in this author.  However, I feel like he has set himself a goal with this project and he wasn't able to conclude it successfully.