Author Topic: PC498: Chasing Flowers  (Read 2383 times)

Ocicat

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on: November 28, 2017, 07:51:49 PM
PodCastle 498: Chasing Flowers

Author : L. Chan
Narrator : Julia Patt
Host: Setsu Uzume

Rated PG-13.

Lian’s world is flat. Not just the landscape, which extends as far as the eye can see, horizon to horizon under the rolling twilight flux. Not just the houses, dotting the slate grey earth and the thunder cloud sky. Not just her folded servants, who used to pad around silently with their painted smiles and their unblinking eyes, unfurling from their hiding places to bring her the same dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a hundred years.



L. Chan hails from Singapore, where he alternates being walked by his dog and writing speculative fiction after work. His work has appeared in places like Liminal Stories, Metaphorosis Magazine, and Arsenika. He tweets occasionally @lchanwrites.





Julia Patt is an associate editor here at PodCastle, as well as a writer and teacher from Maryland. Her fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Escape Pod, Luna Station Quarterly, and other places. When she isn’t working on stories or terrorizing her composition students, she gardens, does yoga, games, reads as much as she can, and, in the summer, attends an inordinate number of baseball games. Visit juliakpatt.com or follow her on Twitter (@chidorme) for more.

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cwthree

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Reply #1 on: December 07, 2017, 10:15:25 PM
I enjoyed the story, but I thought the reading was a bit flat and rushed.



Katzentatzen

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Reply #2 on: December 12, 2017, 10:35:28 PM
The flat narration did detract from the story for me, I'm sorry to say. I found reading it on the website more rewarding. I empathized with Mei's depression and self-harming, and the girl she met who took the express route. I loved all of the references to cut and wounded things, the mingling of the living and the dead. I find stories of reincarnated lovers so morbidly romantic. I'm not sure what happened at the end, I think Lian saved Mei's life and condemned herself to the land of the living as a hungry ghost?

"To understand a cat you must realize that he has his own gifts, his own viewpoint, even his own morality."
--LILIAN JACKSON BRAUN


irishlazz

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Reply #3 on: December 16, 2017, 10:17:38 PM
Agreed - the nearly monotone narration was painful and I had to come read it here before I could give a review.  It would be much better read in 2 voices, one for each character. 

The story is sad and beautiful, painting lovely yet painful pictures.  "With another flourish, she flays the personality from the rose.....So much easier to love a rose without thorns, but what’s the point in that?"

"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." A.Einstein