Cover Image: Soulmates

Soulmates

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Member Reviews

Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn have been writing together for what seems like forever. I am so happy to have read new stories from them and see how their writing has evolved over the years.

I really enjoyed reading so many variations of the idea of soulmates. The short stories contained in this volume are so well written, you will wish they were longer. It is really easy to get completely absorbed by each story and they are a delight to read.

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One of my favorite tropes in romance is that of soulmates so when I read the synopsis of this story collection I was immediately sold. I realized after the third story that I had read most of these stories already so skipped to the original pieces. I never went back and finished rereading after that. It is a solid short story collection and I enjoyed the new pieces by each author. I would definitely recommend it to people who are not familiar with each of these authors' work.

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Mike Resnick was interesting in general, but particularly as regards collaboration, in the interview collection Conversations From The Edge. I'd not really read much of his stuff, despite him holding some kind of record for short fiction awards, and none of Lezli Robyn's, so given this was on Netgalley for the asking, I thought I might as well take a punt. And it's a curious beast. There are writers' notes, such as seem to be increasingly common in collections, and normally I welcome that trend, but here many are curiously uninformative – even at only a paragraph long, some feel padded (who bar the authors and their accountants cares that their first collaboration has "since sold to Italy and Greece"?). And really, alarm bells should maybe have started ringing when they admit with an equal lack of self-consciousness that the first story here is their best. Benchwarmer really is lovely, though – the tale of a niche imaginary friend, it's a tearjerker fit to stand alongside Inside Out or Happy!. Whereas something like Report From The Field, a Fermi Paradox explanation in the form of an alien's feedback on Earth, alternates blindingly obvious critiques of human foolishness with 'humorous' misunderstandings in a way which would be fine for a teenager's creative writing exercise, but really doesn't pass muster as professional work. Each also contributes one non-collaborative story; her solo effort, Anne Droid of Green Gables, is a delight, though I may have extratextual reasons for feeling this way. His, while also an homage, is both the longest and probably the most pointless story here, recasting Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark as an extrasolar big game hunt, which while it does have a good twist at the end, still feels a lot like missing the point. There are also a couple of stories about a barbershop for supernatural entities which are passably amusing, but this sort of stuff has been done better elsewhere plenty of times. For the most part, it's fine, but that blurb suggesting "one of the major collections of the decade" could hardly be further from the mark.

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Soulmates is a collaborative collection (is it an anthology if it's only 2 authors? Not quite sure) authored by Mike Resnick and Lezli Robyn. The 9 short stories were all previously published between 1999 and 2011 but are gathered here in one volume for the first time. 7 of them are collaborations, the two others are solo, one for each author.

Originally released in 2016, it's 210 pages and available in ebook and paperback formats.

I'm very fond of short fiction collections because there's almost always a story which fits whatever reading mood I'm in and if the story I'm reading doesn't satisfy, there's another one coming in a few pages. Happily all these stories appealed. They range from SF pulp formula story (Report From the Field), to sentimental fantasy (Benchwarmer), to homage (Anne-droid of Green Gables). All 9 are competently written and eminently readable, all are worth a look. I can't easily put it into words, but I realized after I finished reading that they left me with a distinctly nostalgic vibe.

Whenever I see collaborative fiction, especially when I'm familiar with one of the authors, I always wind up trying to see where/how they collaborated and find myself wondering about their writing process. Sometimes it's easy, this time it wasn't. I don't have a clue about their collaborative process, but the writing is seamless.

I enjoyed this collection very much. The stories ranged from about a 3-5 star range, and average 4 stars for the book.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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I like this collection of collaborated stories and am glad to have found that my Library already owns it. Will definitely mention at my next SF book club meeting.
I picked up this title because of Mike Resnick, but will now be looking for Lezli Robyn too.

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Nice stories, well written and entertaining. I look forward to reading other works by these authors.
Recommended!
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

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DNF at 34%.

What I expected was highly competent and compelling writing from much-lauded professionals.

What I got was lightweight sentimentality, which, in the pre-release version I got from Netgalley, badly needed very basic copy editing.

The stories are linear, the characters minimally developed, and the emotional beats, for me, lacked much punch, though I did enjoy their positivity.

I often read extremely well-written, but dark, fiction and wish it was kinder and happier. Reading this, which is kinder and happier but no more than barely competent, I wished for something that combined the best of both worlds. It must be out there somewhere, but I didn't find it here.

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These feel like old-fashioned short stories. Some are funny, some are like the Twilight Zone, and all are fairly predictable. Good clean fun with no real ups or downs.

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