Not a big fan of this one. It just felt very shallow to me.
The symbolism is very obvious, which is not in itself a bad thing. But, there didn't seem to be anything else to the story. It feels like the author just had a very simple image in mind: "bears crush fairies". Everything else in the story just felt like a thin pretense to get to that image. The whole fantasy world, the Russian guy with the portal to fairy just felt like a hastily concocted cover-story.
I think what really kills this story is that there is no attempt at denouement. We get to the arena, and with some never-before hinted at supernatural charisma, the protagonist turns his enemies into allies with a few words. And then what? We don't know. We can imagine that bloody mayhem ensues... that many fairies are torn apart by bears, that the bears win and all is well. But why are we left to imagine this stereotypical storyline? Why aren't we told? How does he come to grips with the death of his lover? What happens to the Russian dude? What kind of new bear-world order do they establish in fairy?
Clearly the author doesn't even care to contemplate these aspects of his own story. All that seemed to be important to him was the bears vs. fairies metaphor. Once he gets us there, he just drops the whole thing. And in taking us there, he's left the rest of the story "bare". So if he doesn't care about it, why should we? Ultimately it makes the whole thing feel very shallow and uninteresting. I can't bring myself to care about the lives and concerns of characters that the author doesn't even care about.
Its unfortunate really, because it has potential. Just a massive lack of follow-through.
