The Gift Of Joy by Ian Whates

This book was part of the EdgeLit 2016 goodie bag.I thought it was an interesting choice. I’d heard of Whates but never read one of his books. This was is a collection of unrelated short stories. Whilst all science fiction these stories embodied the wealth of different ways that the genre has provided a diverse variety of settings and ways to tell a story.

Whilst I enjoyed all the stories in this book the most enjoyable bit of the book for me wasn’t in the stories, it was between the stories. No that wasn’t wasn’t me attempting to be clever I actually meant the spaces between the stories. After each story the author talks about the story. Whether it be that he wanted to write something based on that part of London or whether it was a particular type of dystopia that he’d always wanted to try there was something different after each story. This could have been a disaster but wasn’t. Partly from the endearing honesty and passion that comes across but mainly because every time I read the anecdote after a story I knew exactly why Whates had written the story. For me this added a new layer of interaction and feeling of being involved in the story. I loved that and would love to see this done again.

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would and only part of that is due to the anecdotes. I’d recommend buying this book just for them but the stories are well worth a read too.