Title: Accidental Death of an Anarchist
Author: Dario Fo
Category: Fiction
Page Count: 92
Rating: 4.5/5
This Italian play was a hell of a lot of fun, in part because it’s also dark and depressing. It reminded me of Camus in that it takes an absurdist look at life while simultaneously basing itself on a “true” story of when an anarchist “fell” from the window of a police station. Except obviously, it wasn’t really an accident.
Yeah, go read or see this one.
Title: The Station 17 Chronicles
Author: Oli Jacobs
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 228
Rating 2.5/5
This is basically three short stories in one collection, all of which are about the mysterious Station 17, a research station with a dark past. The premise was pretty good and it’s always good to support indies, and I’ve been a fan of Oli’s work in the past, but this one just didn’t hit the mark for me.
I think the main problem for me was that it was riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes, which isn’t necessarily unusual for an indie book but which was particularly pronounced here. And while there were some pretty cool concepts behind the stories, I couldn’t help feeling as though they were dragging on a little too much.
On the plus side, I think this book has the potential to be a decent movie, and I particularly liked the idea of the Rot and its ultimate explanation. Because of that, the second story was by far my favourite of the three, although the third made for a pretty satisfying ending. I just don’t think that this was quite on the level of Oli’s other books, which is a shame. I’ll still keep reading him, though. And you should probably give him a read sometime, too. Go ahead.
