What crimes are committed in the name of peace, control, and harmony? Clarice and Sarah are about to find out.
The city of Corinth is beautiful, but a cancer eats at its soul. Sarah Jean White is that cancer. The tube city is a tranquil, clean paradise--exactly the wrong place for her. She steals words, swears, and indulges in forbidden vices. When someone finally notices her heresy, her status as a threat to peace of mind will be dealt with...
A strict Caste system rules dry, distant Indus. Clarice dares to break through the taboos the old-fashioned way: with sex. Finding herself at a moral rehabilitation facility once again, she doesn't expect things to be much worse than before. Soon, she figures, she'll be back outside, free to 'sin' privately once again. Then her classmates start to disappear...
When Sarah and Clarice reach for basic human rights and challenge the law, their playful indulgences are treated as dire crimes. The peace and harmony in their separate worlds comes at a horrifying price.
Excerpt
"Two lines were forming at the end of the hall, male and female; I sorted myself in behind the other ladies and concentrated on making myself smaller and more timid than I wanted to be. My first instinct has always been to come out swinging. I could see others in the same mindset, but they weren’t hiding it as well, and the guards were giving those sharp looks, and the occasional kick. I must have been doing too well, because a sallow-skinned one near me smiled too warmly and said, “It’s just breakfast, duck. No need to worry yet.”"
--The Fields
Professional Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling Narratives
I recently reviewed Ms Browne's novella `And the Stars Will Sing' on my Galericulate blog and was suitably impressed.
These dystopian short stories move her up another gear.
`Word Thieves', which owes something of its genesis to George Orwell's `1984' (and indeed there is a character in it named Julia) is a tightly-constructed piece where she moves her characters towards hubris with a claustrophobic intensity. As with her earlier work, Ms Browne's vision of the future is not one comprised solely of shiny technology, but serves rather as an appropriate backdrop for a nightmare vision of totalitarianism. I note that her latest work - `The Loved, The Lost, The Dreaming' - is in the horror genre, which in some ways is a logical extension of what she started here ...
`The Fields' is a much shorter and therefore less substantial piece, but the snarky heroine keeps you engaged, and Ms Browne has a surprise or two up her sleeve.
Five stars and no arguments!
5.0 out of 5 stars Big Themes - Big Questions
A couple of very interesting short stories I stumbled across. I don't usually read dystopian fiction; the amount of time I spend with my own dysfunctional characters and the situations they find themselves in is usually more than enough to keep me wondering about the future of our planet and the various species that inhabit it.
But I like Ms. Browne's voice a lot. Instead of placing an overemphasis on the technological and environmental changes and challenges, her stories remain human and about, first and foremost, people.
And she does a wonderful job of bringing big issues like displacement and censorshop to the forefront without resorting to the over-the-top moralizing that too often plagues otherwise good works of fiction. It would have been easy to do this, but Ms. Browne resists the temptation and lets her characters do the work for her.
If we are indeed destined for a dark dystopian future characterized by dehumanization and societal collapse, just remember to bring Ms. Browne's work along for the ride. You might just need a little something to brighten your day.
5.0 out of 5 stars DYSTOPIAN WORLD
When I read the first few words of this book, I knew I was in unchartered territory. I had no frame of reference for what I was reading and that is a very good thing. How much of our life is spent comparing? "Gee, you should have seen the sunset last night. He reminds me of... The beef daube is good, very similar to ..." After a certain point in our lives there is very little new. We live our lives in endless bland comparisons. Not so with this book.
I write contemporary fiction, and often there's a political element or a love story or even a thriller or suspense theme. There are always multitudinous things that have to be checked for authenticity - where does that highway end, is that restaurant there, what was the political climate at that time...? You get the picture. I stand in awe of someone who can create a world in their mind, a la George Orwell. Michelle has done that and brilliantly. When worlds are written about that are unidentifiable to us, we are forced to look at the writing itself, rather than on tired comparisons. Her writing is simply beautiful. Without the safety net of comparison, I found that I had totally bought into the worlds and I can certainly understand why people read and write in this genre form. The possibilities are endless. Thanks, Michelle, for allowing me to have a completely "new" experience. At this stage of the age game, wasn't sure that many existed!
Pieces of Eight, Part III is a collection of eight novellas to complement the eight in Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight, Part II and Pieces of Eight, Part IV.
