LitPick Review
Can you imagine the future? What is it like? Is it a world not very unlike our own, or is it vastly different, with new forms of energy powering it? In this collection of stories, eleven authors take turns answering these questions. Some of these stories take place in an American atmosphere, while others take place in China or even Japan. There's a wide range of stories, as well as authors.
Opinion:
There were a few stories I really enjoyed, while others I'd hesitate to recommend to anyone anytime soon. "The Last Day," by Ellen Oh, opens the collection and was a standout as well. It's filled with action, and has got a fascinating world, a likeable protagonist, and an ending that you won't forget anytime soon. Meanwhile, the story that follows it, "Freshee's Frogurt," by Daniel H. Wilson, didn't really do it for me. Generally, I dislike it when novels are excerpted as short stories, and this one was no exception. The other few stories I really liked were "Uncertainty Principle", by K. Tempest Bradford, "Good Girl", by Malinda Lo, and "A Pocket Full of Dharma" by one of the best known writers in the collection, Paolo Bacigalupi. Overall, Diverse Energies is indeed, a diverse collection of stories with quite a lot of lesser known authors that readers will enjoy discovering!
