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Rainbow Lights
A deep-sea robot tells stories in every colour, but no shade can describe meeting a giant squid.
Rainbow Lights is the first collection by science fiction and fantasy author Polenth Blake. Alien scorpions, vampire ice cream sellers and clockwork flies, try to find their place in worlds where being human is optional. These thirty-five stories and poems are a mixture of new pieces and work published in venues like Nature, Strange Horizons and ChiZine.
Rainbow Lights is the first collection by science fiction and fantasy author Polenth Blake. Alien scorpions, vampire ice cream sellers and clockwork flies, try to find their place in worlds where being human is optional. These thirty-five stories and poems are a mixture of new pieces and work published in venues like Nature, Strange Horizons and ChiZine.
243 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 23, 2013
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About the author
Polenth Blake
24 books53 followersI'm a fantasy and science fiction writer. When I'm not writing, I enjoy walking and art. I live in England with my pet cockroaches.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 3, 2017
I'm glad I dashed out of my usual novel-reading grounds for RAINBOW LIGHTS. This is an enthrancing collection of short stories, all presented under a colour theme (*cough* like a rainbow). Although wildly different, they all share a certain.. weird feeling? As in, I found these stories to be deeply immersive in a bizarre but enjoyable fashion. Not all of them worked for me--I am a more concrete kind of person--but I appreciate being uprooted by wildly imaginative stories, even when I'm left confused about some of their aspects by the end.
I think one of the main reasons this worked so well is that you are deeply engaged with all the narrators, and share their perspective of a world they rarely completely understand. The narrative voices here are most often not human, either, or humans modified in one way or another (vampires, genetic mods, etc.) I'm not usually drawn to that kind of narrators, but I think that's a consequence of too many bad experiences--cheap trappings that don't add depth to the story--which was never a problem here. On the contrary, I love how the non-human voices are both incredibly relatable and subtly (or not) question a number of social constructs.
If you want to read about robots obsessed with seeing a giant squid, aro-ace vampires who sell ice cream or a suburban lady writing passive-aggressive letters to their fungi invasion, if you like your sci-fi to paint immensely different worlds, if you enjoy stories about characters who dare to jump into the unknown, this is definitely an anthology for you. Polenth Blake is a writer who knows their craft and lets the imagination fly unlike anything I've read before, and I'll be coming back whenever I need some stimulating, fascinating tales.
I think one of the main reasons this worked so well is that you are deeply engaged with all the narrators, and share their perspective of a world they rarely completely understand. The narrative voices here are most often not human, either, or humans modified in one way or another (vampires, genetic mods, etc.) I'm not usually drawn to that kind of narrators, but I think that's a consequence of too many bad experiences--cheap trappings that don't add depth to the story--which was never a problem here. On the contrary, I love how the non-human voices are both incredibly relatable and subtly (or not) question a number of social constructs.
If you want to read about robots obsessed with seeing a giant squid, aro-ace vampires who sell ice cream or a suburban lady writing passive-aggressive letters to their fungi invasion, if you like your sci-fi to paint immensely different worlds, if you enjoy stories about characters who dare to jump into the unknown, this is definitely an anthology for you. Polenth Blake is a writer who knows their craft and lets the imagination fly unlike anything I've read before, and I'll be coming back whenever I need some stimulating, fascinating tales.
October 8, 2015
Really wonderful breadth of worldbuilding and protagonists. Recommended if you enjoy oddities and curios.
April 12, 2020
I liked a few of the stories but most of them were just confusing as hell
August 10, 2013
Both fantasy and science fiction are contained in this book of short stories. It's a perfect book to read on your daily commute. With titles ranging from Midnight ice cream, the tale of a reluctant zombie to The Recipe for Eternal Youth with its self explanatory title. Each story stands on its own and each is entertaining.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews