Sunday Shorts: The Shadows Gallery (The Track)

Sunday Shorts is a new feature that I am adding to The Little Reading Nook.  I have seen on several other blogs where reviewers feature short stories.

Sunday Shorts is my version. Where I review short stories that I have read.

For the next couple of Sunday's I will be featuring shorts from The Shadows Gallery by L.R. Giles (sorry no link I'm getting a security warning from Chrome about Goodreads).

I got this for free a long time ago from Amazon and never picked it up because 1) I didn't have a Kindle and 2) I hate reading on my phone (backlighting). Now that I have a Kindle I don't have to worry about backlighting and can read all the books that I have collected from Amazon.

The Track:  

The Track is about a former track star that is none to happy about the "Resolutionists" invading the track that he runs on.

I read this while on a plane from South Florida to The Bay Area while visiting my family for Christmas.  L.R. Giles is a new to me author so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.  That's the beauty of short stories. The give you a scene of the authors style without having to invest in a longer story.

I was surprised by Giles, in a good way.  The Track had a "Twilight Zone" feel to me.  This could be because I just found a great audio re-enactment of old "Twilight Zone" stories and had listened to one a couple of days ago.  But as I read the story, the "Twilight Zone" was the first thing that came to mind.

The main character Nash Blanding was not likable at all.  He was really condescending and less than halfway through the story I was praying that something bad happen to him.  I'm sure that was what Giles was going for when he created Nash, an unsympathetic character that the reader did not mind something unpleasant happening to.

That's where the twist come in.  I don't want to give away the story but I wasn't expecting that.  I had an idea in my mind where he was going with it, especially as The Track got closer to the end.  But Giles veered off slightly in a more creative manor instead going the usually route that readers are use too when encountering this type of story.

Verdict: I am looking forward to reading the other stories in this collection.