Brian Rappatta: To Sift the Sacred and other Fantasy Stories

It's always a bit strange approaching a book written by an acquaintance in this manner.  On the one hand, I am inclined to cut a lot of slack to the book because it doesn't seem to be putting on any airs.  A professionally published, mainstream book has a certain obligation to the reader, to be well written, thoroughly edited, and in general not a waste of time. A book written by a friend just doesn't seem to make the same demands.

Nonetheless, as an English major one develops the habit of reading critically, in the quite literal sense of noticing things that are wrong.  In this case, I suppose I could sum up by saying that the author's ideas are quite astounding and creative, but I'm not quite taken in by the writing itself, which seems a bit pedestrian.

But the larger issue at stake here is that each of the stories contains a thoroughly thought out and engaging miniature world, and the short story format doesn't come close to doing any of them justice.  I feel like, with the exception of "Goddamned", every one of the stories could bear the weight of a longer narrative.  So much thought has gone into each of the stories that the world feels fully formed within only a few paragraphs.  It almost seems like a waste to let such a vision live for only 20 pages or so.