Flowers by Scott Nicholson contains ten short stories that are labeled as “dark fiction”.
I liked the first story, “The Vampire Shortstop” the best. The characters were good and the plot was excellent. Short stories must make their point quickly and move on and “Vampire Shortstop” touches on acceptance, toleration, importance of winning vs. fair play and sportsmanship. We don’t learn much about the kid vampire who plays shortstop on a Little League team except that baseball matters and he’s really good at it. The story is narrated through the eyes of the team coach.
“Scarecrow Boy” is the only story that is truly horror. A young teen is living with his grandfather on a small farm and is terrified of the scarecrow that stalks him. We learn he was wise to fear the scarecrow, too bad he wasn’t wise enough to latch the gate!
“Invisible Friend” and “In the Heart of November” feature best friends Margaret and Ellen. Ellen lives in a trailer park with her mom and Margaret lives in her graveyard. Both stories are good but neither made a deep impression on me.
“Thirst”, “The Night the Wind Died”, “Luminosity” and “The Boy Who Saw Fire” all use the same magic theme, that it is by human (human like anyway) efforts that the rains fall, the wind blows, the moon rises and the sun sets. These all were reasonably good, enjoyable reads.
I was intrigued that Flowers features young characters – except the baseball coach everyone is in their early teens – yet is not classified as “Young Adult”. All too often excellent books with themes and ideas that appeal to adults are misclassified as “YA Fiction” because the characters are young.
I will look for more by Scott Nicholson.
3 Stars
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