A Bottle of Storm Clouds

by Eliza Victoria

Award-winning author Eliza Victoria mixes magic with the mundane in this special concoction of 16 short stories. A girl meets a young man with the legs of a chicken. A boy is employed by a goddess running a pawnshop. A group of teenagers are trapped in an enchanted forest for 900 days. A man finds himself in an MRT station beyond Taft, a station that was not supposed to exist. A student claims to have seen the last few digits of pi. Someone’s sister gets abducted by mermaids.

Includes stories that have appeared in the critically acclaimed anthologies Philippine Speculative Fiction and Alternative Alamat, and stories that have won prizes in the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards and the Amelia Lapeña-Bonifacio Literary Contest.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Horror, Mythology

ebook

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Eliza Victoria is the author of several books including the Philippine National Book Award-winning Dwellers, the novel Wounded Little Gods, the graphic novel After Lambana (a collaboration with Mervin Malonzo), and the science fiction novel-in-stories, Nightfall. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in several publications, most recently in LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction, The Best Asian Speculative Fiction, The Dark Magazine, The Apex Book of World SF Volume 5, Fireside Fiction, and Future SF. She has won prizes in the Philippines’ top literary awards, including the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. Her one-act plays (written in Filipino) have been staged at the Virgin LabFest at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Reviews

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 3 out of 5]

My other Halloween read this year. My first one is The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings (4 stars) by Edgar Allan Poe. I picked this one up because I'd like to try a newer and a local book. Also, a friend really liked this.

For a new author, Eliza Victoria, this is already a great output. The cover is really nice. The stories are mostly worth reading especially for fans of horror, supernatural and fantasy. They are just not my cups of tea. Some of the narratives are confusing (maybe because I was not really interested?) and there are those with excess words, i.e., verbose or too long to tell quite slim plots.

My reactions to each of the stories typed right after reading a story or a chunk of stories:

1) Salot. 3 STARS
The story about dead souls knocking on the window outside your home and calling you in voices that are familiar to you. Then the second half is about a supposed-to-be a dead man who is referred to as salot (cursed) but later turns out otherwise. Engaging start yet the ending is blurry.

2) Ana's Little Pawnshop on Makiling St. 4 STARS
I liked this story better than the first one because it is clearer. I also liked the modern version of Mariang Makiling. I recently read Macario Pineda's beautiful classic The Gold in Makiling: A Translation of Ang Ginto sa Makiling and I feel in love with his take on Mariang Makiling. This one even went further: Mariang Makiling in business suit! BTW, the title of the collection seems to have been taken from this story. The man should exchange his bottle of storm clouds with a cool pair of sunglasses from another ancient local fairy.

3) Intersections. 1 STAR
Too unbelievable yet not an original. The idea of having a portal and having duplicates of yourself in another "dimension" has been used and popularized by the Matrix trilogy. So, I did not enjoy this story plus the unclear narration is disengaging.

4) The Man on the Train. 3 STARS
Started quite confusing. I only got a hint (that made me understand what's going on) when the boy said that he is the city. Then it got engaging and interesting and I like it in the end. There is something in Eliza Victoria's writing that alienates or annoys me. Not sure yet what is it. Sometimes it is her train of thoughts and the use of phrases or incomplete sentences. I am not sure why I find it annoying.

5) Night Out. 2 STARS
It's about some kind of new strain of AIDS and people, including gays, in the future world. There are terms that I do not understand, e.g., caller, zoner, WD, etc. The story is half-interesting, half-boring. I am just trying to finish this book now.

6) An Abduction by Mermaids. 2 STARS
I'm seeing a trend or a formula now. These are fantasy stories peppered with human emotions. In the first half of the story, the fantasy is built and towards the end there are events that can grip on your heart and can make you sympathetic for the characters. In this story is the death of the daughter and both the parents and the brother, who ignores the sister's loan, feel guilty. The mother thinks the mermaids in the river took away her daughter. Take away the emotion and this deserves a single star.

7) Sand, Crushed Shells, Chicken Feathers. 2 STARS
The story is nice but it seems fragmented. Not sure if that is the intent but it is again confusing. I enjoyed some of the parts though. So, this is still okay.

8) Sugar Pi. 4 STARS
Second story in this collection that I really liked. Proof that I am not trying to discredit this book. What I really liked about this story: the information about Pi (yes, that mysterious number). A must read if you are not informed. Well appreciated, Eliza Victoria!

9) Earthset. 2 STARS
Feels pointless and ordinary. However, I like the use of the actual events that happened in Manila several years back. It made the setting easy to imagine while reading.

10) Parallel. 3 STARS
I liked this one because it makes you think. Who is who? Who is dead and who is alive? Is that what the story wants to tell me? The use of Stephen Hawking's The History of Time is very appropriate. Too bad, I did not buy that thick book when I saw that several months ago at NBS Podium. Hmmm, maybe next time.

11) Monsters. 3 STARS
A number of stories in this collection is about brother-younger sister so I am sure many female readers with protective kuya can relate to them. However, this 11th story is about a father-daughter relationship so I liked this one.

12) The Just World of Helena Jimenez. 2 STARS
I did not get this. It seemed a well-crafted long short story. However, I read this close to midnight last night and I was very sleepy. When I tried rereading just now, I just did not interest me anymore. I know 2 stars is quite unfair but I could not make me like this.

13) The Storyteller's Curse. 3 STARS
I liked the interspersing parallel stories and the use of Mapulong references. It is again quite confusing but the level of confusion is enough for a worthwhile read.

14) Reunion. 3 STARS
The only story with historical backdrop. Nicely written. However, like most of the stories in the collection, I don't think I will take time for me to forget these stories. They are good to stay in my mind for only few days.

15) Siren Song. 3 STARS
This is the creepiest story in the collection especially the use of old Tagalog: aco na nacaligtaan ng Diyos. Opps, this also has a historical backdrop (like #14).

16) Once, in a Small Town. 2 STARS
What will you do when all the dead people raise from the dead? Especially including your departed loved ones? The people in the town love it!

Overall, I liked this book. It's just that I don't think this is my genre and so I will definitely forget most of the stories in a year or two.

[Neil Franz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unique, imaginative and totally intriguing, A Bottle of Storm Clouds will take you to a familiar and bizarre world at the same time. Every short story has it's own dash of fantasy, magic, sci-fi and magical realism. Eliza Victoria did a good job in blending and balancing the reality and fantasy in this book.

Anyway, I didn't like every short story in this collection. Some are just okay. Some are just so confusing. Maybe because of the wordy? and long narrative. Some didn't make sense or should I say, I just don't get it. Probably. Nonetheless, I still liked the majority of it. Because some stories shocked me (or frustrated me) with the reveals; some stirred emotions within me and some are just totally fascinating, I am in tears lol. And even they are open-ended and brought a lot of questions after.

I won't review every short story. I will just give my rating with each of them. Here they are:

Salot - 3.5 stars
Ana's Little Pawnshop on Makiling St. - 3 stars
Intersections - 3.5 stars
The Man on the Train - 4 stars
Night Out - 4 stars
An Abduction of Mermaids - 3 stars
Sand, Crushed Shells, Chicken Feathers - 2 stars
Sugar Pi - 5 stars
Earthset - 4 stars
Parallel - 3 stars
Monsters - 3.5 stars
The Just World of Helena Jimenez - 2 stars
The Storyteller's Curse - 2 stars
Reunion - 2 stars
Siren Song - DNF
Once, In A Small Town - 2 stars

[Dianna ☾midnight reads☽ · Rating 3 out of 5]

"There were times, however, when she would wonder why any hint of power and control was always attributed to the Diablo, while silence and weakness were considered a godly trait."

I had high expectations for this collection and I'm sad to say they weren't met. The blurb was so promising and I guess I just expected the collection to be exactly just like the blurb. But that's not saying that this collection sucked. Overall, I think it's okay, unique, and a breath of fresh air for me. I'm just slightly disappointed.

It started strong with Salot and I think that short story is my most favorite. It reminded me of the stories I used to read in True Philippine Ghost Stories. Salot was really creepy and I had a hard time falling asleep after reading it for fear of a "demon" knocking on my door and calling my name. I'm such a scaredy-cat sometimes.

The succeeding stories were a mix of hit or miss for me. Ana's Little Pawnshop on Makiling St. was really interesting. People come to the store to pawn things like a blind girl exchanging her singing voice for sight or a basketball player exchanging a week's worth of laughter for the quick mending of a broken bone.

The story I was really excited for was The Man on the Train wherein a guy ends up in an MRT station beyond Taft, a station that was not supposed to exist. As a commuter, that was a sliver of fantasy mixed with my everyday mundane routine. The idea was really unique but sadly, it didn't work for me. It was also very far from what I imagined the story to be, which I guess was my fault.

Another favorites of mine from the collection are Sugar Pi and Siren Song. I like these stories and bonus points for the unexpected m/m and f/f romance.

The ideas for the stories were really cool in my opinion. It's just that, the tone or the execution didn't work for me. At one point, I had to put down this book because I can feel the onset of a book slump coming just from reading these stories. The writing style was okay, nothing too special I guess.

[Monique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally posted here.

A very satisfying read.



Confession: I had no idea that this book existed nor have I heard of the author before my wonderful bookish friend Tina marked it as her currently-reading book sometime last November, perhaps earlier. And then, the author herself rated one of my favorite Mitchell novels, Cloud Atlas, with 5 stars over at Goodreads, which popped up on my feed through Tina. (Anyone who rates Cloud Atlas with 5 stars has impeccable taste in books, ergo, he/she is someone I would definitely care to be friends with.) So on my next trip to the lone bookstore (that is not a bargain bookstore) at the next-door mall, I was elated to find a copy of A Bottle of Storm Clouds: Stories at the Filipiniana shelves. Needless to say, I bought it right away.

A Bottle of Storm Clouds: Stories is, obviously, a collection of short stories on Filipino myths, history, culture (pop or tradition), etc. My very first read for 2012 was Alternative Alamat, another compendium of short stories edited by Paolo Chikiamco, which I liked so much that I gave it 5/5 stars. If you have read that book or are at least familiar with it, then you would know what to expect in A Bottle of Storm Clouds . In fact, Eliza has contributed a story in Alternative Alamat which also appears in this compendium: Ana's Little Pawnshop on Makiling St. It was a wonderful retelling of Philippine folklore which featured Alunsina and Maria Makiling (shame on you if you're Filipino and you don't know who they are!) and, although not one of my favorites, was highly appreciated nonetheless.

So what are my favorite stories from the lot?

As shown in the image above, they are: The Storyteller's Curse, Reunion, and Siren's Song . The Storyteller's Curse gave me really, really good chills. Reunion was a twist on the biblical story of Cain and Abel, but it intrigued me so much mainly because it explored the concept of reincarnation - clearly not a Christian ideology. I liked Siren's Song because of the magic, tradition, and folklore woven into the story.

To sum it up, I immensely enjoyed this book: the stories were well-written, they weren't predictable, and they involved themes and ideas that are close to home. Perhaps I would have appreciated it more if I had read it sometime around Halloween, given its eerie settings, but since I don't strictly go for thematic reading, devouring this at Christmastime was no problem at all. Mutilated mermaids for company for the holidays, anyone? :)

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Original post at One More Page

Lower Myths got me craving for more of Eliza's stories, so when I found out that Visprint released an anthology of her stories, I knew I had to get it. A Bottle of Storm Clouds contains 16 short stories that have appeared in various anthologies, all with the same local fantasy goodness. I was so excited to get this one after the 2nd Filipino ReaderCon (I really, really wanted to win one, but alas, I didn't) -- and I wasn't planning to read it immediately to save me some local fiction goodness, but I couldn't wait, either. And so I read.

A Bottle of Storm Clouds is one of those books that you can't help but keep on reading but you also don't want to end just yet. I tried not to read this book too fast because I wanted to savor each story. There's something interesting and entirely different in each story -- some of them were creepy, most of them sad, but all had really good fantasy elements that stretched my imagination wider than it did before. :) I liked how Eliza hinged most of the stories with real human experiences like grief and sadness, family and friendship and love and even selfishness and life crisis. It's a good balance between magic and reality, and there are certain lines that meld them together nicely, like this one:

Magic. Amanda thought of clear skies and stars, steamed rice and fish, bagoong soaked in vinegar. A cup of coffee in the early morning, the feel of grass, the city lights. Clarissa. Her brother carrying her on his back, her parents dancing on the cool patio as it rained. The ground pounding with life. A poem humming in her head. (Siren Song)

My personal favorites: Ana's Little Pawnshop on Makiling St., Intersections, Sugar Pi, Parallels, Monsters, The Storyteller's Curse, Siren's Song. I think there's a story for each and every reader in this collection, and probably even for every mood. I liked this collection a lot, and if you want to read good, local fantasy with different flavors, get A Bottle of Storm Clouds. I'm sure you'll find a favorite in one of them. :)

[Honeypie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horror-themed book read for the club this month. And nakakatakot nga, in all fairness.

Not just on the monsters/ghosts level kind of horror, but more on the reality kind of horror.

I'm scared of the stories about parallel universes, the most.

[Ｆｒａｎｋｈ · Rating 5 out of 5]

There was one night when a man came in and bought a bottle of storm clouds. He claimed to be a poet. "I needed the rain," he said. "I couldn't write in this goddamn heat."

"What did he pay for that?" I asked.

"That's just a week's supply of storm clouds," Ana said, "so I only asked for six months of his life. I'm going to use that for my sunflowers. That way, they wouldn't wait for a long time--isn't that fantastic?"

I hoped the man wrote good poems.

Loss, I believe, is a theme in fiction that's difficult to capture resonantly in prose but authoress Eliza Victoria's anthology was essentially able to bottle it in a condensed volume that features sixteen tales ranging from horror, science fiction and fantasy.

Curiously entitled A Bottle of Storm Clouds, the thematic bulk of Victoria's short stories is usually about losses and the dangerous and often pitiful coping mechanisms creatures of brevity such as ourselves can only cling onto in order to survive tragedies.

I can't even begin to describe the impactful deftness of Victoria's style. I once described her prose to be "Chandleresque" but this was more present in her novella Dwellers, which was a supernatural mystery/psychological horror piece about cousins who can inhabit other people's bodies as vessels.

In this volume, that same quality is still present but with less noir and more infused with fantasical inclinations, considering Victoria writes generally for the speculative fiction genre. This collection of hers, in my opinion, offers some of the best short stories I have ever had the pleasure to read.

We have her mediations on quasi-science fiction tales such as Intersections and Parallel which both deal with alternate universes and the repercussions of attaining the ability for dimensional travel. Other sci-fi pieces are Earthset and The Just World of Helena Jiminez, the latter of which was part of the Diaspora Ad Astra anthology I reviewed last month. We also have Night Out that tackles prostitution and homosexuality in a more futuristic setting. Victoria's writing is never delicate when telling these stories and I will not have them told in any other way. Nothing about her fiction is painless as it is a very earnest examination of the things that have the ability to destroy us.

Her horror stories can be both folklore-oriented such as Sand, Crushed Shells and Chicken Feathers and Ana's Little Pawnshop at Makiling St. or makes use of more metaphorical monsters like in An Abduction of Mermaids and The Storyteller's Curse. Even her fantasy has some grounded truth to them which can be found in her reimagining of the Cain and Abel biblical story in Reunion. Other times they can just be short and spooky such as the final story in the collection entitled Once in a Small Town which is I think under 500 words.

My personal favorites have to be the very first story I read from her (featured in the anthology, Demons of the New Year ) named Salot; the surprising Sugar Pi about a highschool mathematical genius and his best friend on a quest to figure out the last digits of Pi; the satirical The Man on the Train which is a quintessential bereavement story; a deconstructed Aswang story called Monsters; and the enchanting Siren's Song that is probably the longest piece of the collection, and one that stayed with me in a blinding moment of terror and acceptance.

I once again recommend another accomplished Eliza Victoria book. I am so happy that I decided to pursue her writing after coming across Salot months ago. This is a very imaginative and memorable anthology of speculative fiction and, if you're a Filipino who can access this at your local bookstore, then you're missing out if you don't pick this one up soon!

RECOMMENDED: 10/10
* An impeccable, spellbinding volume that cuts and wounds

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I read this last night in 4.5 hours straight. Power was out again because of the typhoon, so I read it with nothing but my flashlight on, in my room cloaked in darkness. :D *fist pump*)

Some of the story plots are not new to me, but the characters (and the relationships between), that did me in. I am fan, Eliza Victoria!

Some of my favorites are:
Man on the Train
Parallel
An Abduction of Mermaids
The End of Pi(?)
Reunion
Storyteller's Curse
Siren Song

[Annette · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️

Beautifully written but much of the stories are too depressing.

[Lynai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Also posted in It's A Wonderful Bookworld.

As a reader, I am fairly easy to please. Give me fiction any time, and I’d most likely keel over in delight (that’s actually an exaggeration, but I think you get the point). However, I must admit that speculative fiction is something new to my reading taste buds. The very first book that I remember reading along this genre is Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, and I confess that I didn’t like it that much that time. I guess at that time my mind’s not ready yet for the kind of stories that Neil Gaiman tells. And then I read Fragile Things, also by Neil Gaiman, and little by little, my interest grew. And then I read another Gaiman, The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, and I was totally won over. When I read that Eliza Victoria writes speculative fiction, I got curious, not to mention that one of my friends at the book club has but all wonderful things to say about this author and A Bottle of Storm Clouds.

So, my mind is still reeling from all that I have read. All the sixteen stories in this collection are really really good: spooky, eerie, baffling, mess-up-your-mind kind of good. To say that I absolutely loved this book is an understatement. Eliza Victoria is another local author whose works I’m going to be on the look-out for. I have become a fan!

This may sound blasphemous to some of my bookish friends but I appreciate Eliza Victoria’s stories more than Neil Gaiman’s. (Please don’t hate me, Gaimaniacs.) It’s because I find her stories more relatable, close to home, because, well, the setting is mostly in the Philippines — my home.

It is so difficult to pinpoint one particular favorite story so I am going to pick out my top 5:

Ana’s Little Pawnshop on Makiling St. – Want to exchange your most treasured memory of the night sky with a pair of spectacles with glass lenses filled with multi-colored nebulae?
Sugar Pi – Sure, the math formulas and theorems stumped me, but there is something very heart-warming about Vincent.
The Just World of Helena Jimenez – Imagine a world where justice is served swiftly and decidedly, leaving no room for the weighing and tipping of the scales.
The Storyteller’s Curse - You are a writer and suddenly the stories you write come to life. I loved the emotions displayed here.
Once, In A Small Town – All of your dead loved ones came back.
(Runner-up:) Siren’s Song – Mutilated mermaids and gifted townsfolk. This could be the longest story in the collection, but I could be wrong, and I’m too lazy to verify, heee.

A Bottle of Storm Clouds is one book by a local author which makes me proud to be Filipino. Adding Unseen Moon to my Christmas wishlist. (*hint hint*)

[Victor Ocampo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many writers of the fantastic forget that stories should be about people and not concepts, magic or myth. Eliza Victoria's greatest talent is her uncanny ability to spin complex narratives using simple, unadorned language and to tell riveting tales from the point of view of ordinary people -- regular folks caught in the claws of the awesome and the uncanny. Not all the stories are perfect, but many are literary treasures (or at least guilty reading pleasures), particularly "The Man on The Train","Sugar Pi" and especially, "The Story Teller's Curse". Anyone who wants to know what the heart of Filipino Speculative Fiction is like should go and read this book right away.

[Lyra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the concept of the book: using our own myths and gods as characters.

I also like how (I think), in every story, there's a hidden message. It made me think the stories through and read it between the lines, not taking the stories as it is.

What I don't want here is the confusing endings. There are some stories here that really drove me nuts, thinking what the hell does the story is all about.

But overall, I like it. :)

[D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before the actual review, I just have to say that this was great. No story was weak and I end up thinking, 'Oh this if my favourite' only to find a new favourite when I read the next one.

The stories, aside from being fantastical or horrific, are also about loss. Even the light-hearted 'Sugar Pi' is about the loss of a certain kind of innocence. And I think that loss is something that everyone has experienced, something that everyone can relate to. (The whole, 'Everyone has experienced falling in love' bullshit is bullshit. I've never fallen in love with anyone, thanks very much. But because I have loved--albeit not always romantically--I have experienced loss of some kind. And that's the fucking difference.) And because it's something we can relate to, that human experience anchors in our minds what are otherwise unbelievable things. They become real, somehow, because the emotions are real.

My favourite, now that I've read it all, has to be 'Siren Song'. All the grey areas of morality and what's right and wrong. 'Magic'. What's magic. It was beautiful.

(Added to my lgbtq shelf because there is enough representation for a mention.)

[Jocelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compilation of 16 short stories featuring urban myths, superstitions, fantasy, the supernatural, sci-fi and basically anything a reader was quite fond of, however, some of the stories are super short that sometimes you have to use your hyperactive imagination to come to a conclusion. My fave, I think would be Ana's Little Pawnshop on Makiling street so that after I've read it, I even wished that I would encounter such a store in my lifetime wherein I can actully bargain for something in exchange for a thing I truly longed for.

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

My new favorite author <3 Writing is very fluid; it's like her words are gliding through the pages along with easy comprehension. :) Stories are amazing as well; it reminds me of Neil Gaiman, with her take on the fantastic and gothic, but still relatable and doesn't seem forced. :)

[Don Jaucian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Always lovely reading an Eliza Victoria story. My favorites are:

Intersections
Sand, Crushed Shells, and Chicken Feathers
Parallel
Monsters
Reunion
Siren Song

[Jessie Jr · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rating is based on the (biased) average of all the ratings of each story. With every story having the theme: of longing, of the characters being out of their comfort zones, of being not that horrifying but still dark as what they are. And the stories, though not all of them, are somewhat still hanging in thread, in a thin thread that makes me think if it will fall or it will forever stay hanging since there's no sense of the ground throughout the stories.

Opening A Bottle of Storm Clouds lead me to different worlds and left me with a few words to say each time I return :

Salot: 4 stars "Scary as when I get scared watching Shake, Rattle, and Roll, that I have to put it down just to check that there was still somebody awake in the same room."

Ana's Little Pawnshop On Makiling Street: 4 stars " 'A story that tells itself' she said. 'Therefore it can be a story that lives on its own, leaving the feeling of longing to its readers.' I say."

Intersections: 4 stars "Now that's why I hate the idea of worm holes and teleportations even how convenient they can be."

The Man on the Train: 4 stars "Another story of longingness. I started thinking what does the author have to go through writing these stories."

Night Out: 3 stars "I like the idea of whatever disease they have, not that I like to have it because it's just as fearful as living in hell, but I like the awareness the story gives. And yeah the future can be as fuck as it can be if we let it."

An Abduction by Mermaids: 4 stars "This is a strange world made stranger by what we are facing everyday."

Sand, Crushed Shells, Chicken Feathers: 4 stars "Still wondering what certain stories the author have read or an event in life (if I'm not being too personal) that produced these kind of sad yet still interesting stories."

Sugar Pi: 5 stars "As much as I like Pi(and also Pies), this story is one of a kind. I can definitely argue that this is as good as John Green's or David Levithan's best stories. And now I also have a strong argument to the existence of FOREVER."

Eathset: 4 stars "It's as if I'm reading an article in a news paper, or is it because she worked once."

Parallel: 3 stars "Also set in another world; yes it makes me think of what if's and would I and something more philosophical, but as it is a short story, or maybe because there is another story same as the idea as this that unfortunately came first."

Monsters: 4 stars "Aren't we?"

The Just World of Helena Jimenez: 3 stars "This is one which I like to ask clarification from the author. As of now I didn't quite like it. Is this the one that needs symbolism to decipher it's depth? Right now I just don't know."

The Storyteller's Curse: 3 stars "Just because it is."

Reunion: 5 stars "One and probably the only disappointment I have with this one is that it ended up as a short story. Why not even a novella? Last words? None. Because I don't think I have those kind of things for this one, this is a story that I will be rereading when I think of A Bottle of Storm Clouds."

Siren Song: 4 stars "Another that could have been longer, and I wouldn't bother it being on this collection."

Once, In a Small Town: 4 stars "A perfect ending to every story that preceded it. It was as if I listened to an album and this is the closing track that perfectly lets its listener to play the whole album again, letting a lingering tone ringing at the back of my head that reminds me of A Bottle of Storm Clouds."

Overall, I wonder where are the other stories that were also once inside the bottle.

[elsewhere · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A Bottle of Storm Clouds: Stories" by Eliza Victoria contained a total of 16 short stories. I would list down my favorite short stories, the just-okay, and my least favorite ones.

The Just-Okay Short Stories:
#1: Salot
This first story scared me. I liked the concept - man with chicken legs - how could I not? My only issue with this story was its ending. It was quite underwhelming (as it had a great buildup).

#2: Ana's Little Pawnshop on Makiling St.
This had such an amazing concept: A goddess in a human world? Count me in! It had creative descriptions as well. The ending was satisfactory.

#13: The Storyteller's Curse
Ah, I admired the concept of this one!

#15: Siren Song
I liked the story and the introduction, but not how it was wrapped-up. I would have liked it better if it ended differently (or if it was more open-ended).

Some other just-okay stories include:
#10: Parallel, #12: The Just World of Helena Jimenez, and #14: Reunion.

The third, fourth, and fifth stories, titled:
#3: Intersections, #4: Night Out and #5: The Man on the Train were my least favorite stories in this collection. But, the ideas were original and magical, still.

Favorite Stories:
#6: An Abduction of Mermaids, #7: Sand, Crushed Shells, Chicken Feathers, #8: Sugar Pi, #9: Earthset, #11: Monsters, and #16: Once, In a Small Town.

Overall, I enjoyed this short story collection. Even the just-okay stories were much appreciated, since it had such original, imaginative, and creative ideas. I immediately became a fan of Eliza Victoria after reading this collection. As a result, my actual rating for this was 4.75/5 stars..

[Kristel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice read for Halloween! If you want speculative fiction stories with a touch of Filipino culture, then this short story collection by Eliza Victoria is a good start. I love that this 16-story compilation is packed with so much local flavor that it made me reminisce local urban legends and folklore that I used to hear and read when I was younger (remember those horror komiks and Kwento ni Lola Basyang?). Whether it is demons, gods and goddesses, kulam, mermaids, ghosts... the book doesn't run out of good stuff. My personal favorite is "Salot", the first story in the book which tackles a young, good-looking man with chicken legs who got help from a high school girl. I easily got attached to the story (I read it three times) and for me it sets the tone for the remainder of the book. I am not familiar with speculative fiction, but I love how the fantasy, real and symbolical elements of the stories are combined that you have to dig deeper and deeper to know the meaning of the story (maybe it was my reading comprehension, but whatever). Eliza's subjects are also mostly about family, which is not unusual for Filipino lit. My only downside is that I have little patience for reading anthologies. But who knows, maybe it will change in the future.

[Imee Alfonso · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantasy-themed book with stories that can never be more real than reality.

Filled with brain-freezing life truths and fridge brilliance, it took me an hour to finish one story. 15-30 minutes of reading, the rest staring into space, trying to grasp the whole story and just falling in love with book more.

[Bomalabs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading her later works, I wouldn't be surprised reading such stories. Ang taba ng utak! She takes daily situations (and current events I guess - the Glorietta Explosion, things regarding the MRT), add a What If and turn it into a fantastic story that will make you say "Oo nga no".

Top 2 for me will be Sugar Pi and Ana's Pawnshop.

[Poetry · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are modern takes on different on characters like Maria and the likes. Some of her open ended endings work for me but some didn't.

I like the way she gave Maria a different persona with one of her stories. A fresh way to look at an old character.

[S.B. Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review in progress

[Kallena · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing story. At first, I saw this on Google. By the looks of it, I got really interested because of the cover and while I am reading, I am able to feel the story tralalalala

[Ineng · Rating 4 out of 5]

i like the story of the pawnshop, the siren song. uhmm well, these two really stand out in my memory hahaha

don't expect happy endings, you end it.

[Maricar Dizon · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I really like the notion of transcendental numbers, of infinity. It makes me think of the soul. A lot of people don’t believe that a part of them can last forever, because they can’t imagine it. But Math believes in it.”

This collection of short stories has been in my shelf for a couple of years now. It was given to me as a gift but even before that it was already in my radar. I have been interested because I love the title and I am also fascinated with Philippine Speculative Fiction. I tried to read this a few times before but for some reason I can’t get past the fourth story.

I guess it is really true that reading a book requires the right timing. Because when I picked this up again it has been an easy and magical journey for me. I enjoyed reading this book. Every story has been a memorable experience. The first four stories drew me in. ‘Salot’ was an amazing starter. There was one story (Night Out) that I did not like. It was torture reading it no matter how hard I tried to like it. But when I finally got past that I was sucked in completely by the author’s imaginative story telling.

The stories in A Bottle Of Storm Clouds are creepy, disturbing, mind-boggling and often times frightening. I always have to stop for a few minutes after every story to digest what I’ve read before jumping into the next. A lot of times I’ve exclaimed “Oh my God” because of the twists and revelations. I was really amazed and envious that Eliza Victoria was able to conjure these tales.
I have a lot of favorites but my top picks are

1)PARALLEL – I cried so hard with this one. It was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

2)SIREN SONG – magical. It made me stare at nothing for a long time.

3)SUGAR PI – made me want to delve deeper into pi. Very smart and the ending was good.

4) SALOT – creepy and majestic I literally got goosebumps

5)MONSTERS – This was very well-written. I love the plot and I really got scared.

6) REUNION – I love this story because this was something I would love to write too. The rest of the stories aside from Night Out were all good too. Most of them gore and disturbing so I do not recommend this book to those under eighteen years old.


I will never forget the experience of reading this A Bottle Of Storm Clouds. I love it when an author can surprise me with the ending. However, I have a feeling that there are people who will find it difficult to read an Eliza Victoria story. She has this way of writing that will make you puzzled and confused at the beginning. But I promise that everything makes sense at the end. Her stories in this collection are all plot driven. I don’t know if that is why most of her characters are apathetic and doesn’t really feel alive or maybe it is just her style. Either way I did not really care much about the characters aside from those in my favorite stories. I was also uncomfortable when she doesn’t complete her dialogs, as if her characters are sharing secrets that they don’t want me to know. I used a lot of mental energy to read each story. In fact I feel tired now that I finished the whole book. I might take a few days to rest but I will definitely read more of her works in the near future.

[Law of Literature PH · Rating 3 out of 5]

First time I ever read Eliza Victoria was in the anthology The Farthest Shore: An Anthology of Fantasy Fiction from the Philippines—in a short story titled The Just World of Helena Jimenez, which is also in A Bottle of Storm Clouds. It was an interesting world and setting, very dystopian, but I couldn't connect with her prose style. It was difficult to follow the action, which there was a lot.

It wasn't until I read Ana's Little Pawnshop in Makiling St., one of the short stories in Paolo Chikiamco's anthology Alternative Alamat, that I was able to appreciate Victoria. It was there that I found the fantasy I wanted to see. It quickly became one of my favorite fantasy short stories ever—probabmy one of my favorite short stories period.

So it was with great excitement that I went into A Bottle of Storm Clouds, Victoria's first collection of short stories. We love to say, "Never judge a book by its cover," but I'm human. I can't help but judge that based on the cover and the title, I would be reading high fantasy short stories with magic and action and adventure.

Maybe that's why I was disappointed.

Victoria is not a bad writer by any means. In fact, she has one of the best prose I've read. Very literaey. Reminds me a lot of 20th century writers like Kafka.

I don't believe literariness and fantasy are mutually exclusive though. Take Robin Hobb and Robert Jordan for example. Maybe it's the short story format. Victoria compresses her stories in 20+ pages, and she writes in a minimalist Hemingway-esque style, without much description.

Or maybe it's the genre. A Bottle of Storm Clouds's fantasy focuses more on dystopian, sci-fi, supernatural, or magic realism. Very similar vibes to fantasy short stories by Filipino authors writing in Filipino. Many of the stories in the collection have an eerie and horror feel rather than the sense of wonder and excitement I usually connect with fantasy.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy any of the stories in the collection—I finished it after all. Aside from Ana's Little Pawnshop on Makiling St., which also appearwd in this collection, other favorites aew Intersections (I love the parallel worlds concept integrated to the Pied Piper story), Night Out (bold move to cover prostitution and AIDS), and Sugar Pi (how imaginative do you have to be to come up with a story about math?).

I must admit, I did not understand many of the stories in the collection, so my appreciation of this book is influenced by my deficiencies as a reader, especially in English, so don't let my less-than-ecstatic review pull you away from this amazing book. I do recognize that Victoria is expanding the limits of Philippine fantasy, and for that, I think this is a necessary read for anyone who calls themselves a fantasy buff.

[Sheena Forsberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This marks the 9th read from my Filipino TBR this year.

Eliza Victoria’s first collection (and my 3rd read of hers). Reading her earliest stories after having made my way through her more recent publications is an interesting way around her work. It’s interesting that Victoria underlines the ‘datedness’ of these stories with items very much of a specific era and that (as far as I’m concerned) the stories somehow still manage to retain their relevance. It points towards an author very much in touch with the human condition.
-Isabella in ‘Salot’ experiences a sort of alienation from her town’s quirks not uncommon to many of us as we relocate to bigger cities. Still-current issues of gentrification and capitalism affecting Ana’s Little Pawnshop are also quite relatable. Themes of loss, grief, etc simply remain timeless and most people will be able to find something that resonates with them within the pages of this collection. It’s not hard to see that Victoria was still honing her craft while she was writing these tales but the signs of a great author to emerge were already present.

-Salot:
A girl at the cusp of university life finds herself growing ever more distant from the old traditions and superstitions of her home town. Having turned more worldly and shooting down any mentions of supernatural encounters she’s soon visited by 2 mysterious men who might (or might not) be omens of things to come. This is an interesting one as I was strangely reminded of Pesta in Norway.

-Ana’s Little Pawnshop on Makiling St.:
A young man takes a part time job in a pawnshop run by the goddess of lost things; everything from the more mundane to magical items. Prices vary and might range from cash to 6 months of your life or most treasured memories of the night sky.
Albeit a deity, Anagolay is not to be left unbothered by the capitalism, gentrification and bureaucracy of the world in which she finds herself.

-Intersections:
Portals have started popping up with the odd individual disappearing into them. Isaac & his friend Jacob have been tracking them when they’re inadvertently sucked into one and find themselves in an alternate dimension. Desperate to go back home they’re going to face some challenges.

-The Man on the Train:
A man rides the train in this story told in an eerie dreamlike manner. We’re gradually made aware of the man as an unreliable narrator who’s repression includes both us and himself. A tale about brutal loss and repression.

-Night Out:
A melancholic & dystopian scifi tale following the too-young sex workers Nala and Cyan.

-An Abduction by Mermaids:
A missing sister, rumors of mermaids and other supernatural happenings and an ill-fated experiment to prove the afterlife intersects with the daily grind and bureaucracy an assistant editor is dealing with in this short story.

-Sand, Crushed Shells, Chicken Feathers:*
A young man driven near-crazy with grief desperately tries to get his dead sister back and calls on someone else by mistake while his friend thinks he’s either mad or high.

-Sugar Pi:
A boy’s friend tries to crack the code of Pi and eventually dreams about the last digits; but is it all it’s cracked up to be? A story that tries to offset nihilism through friendship.

-Earthset:
A struggling author deals with the fallout after his wife was killed in a gas explosion. Partly told through his scifi WIP, it’s story about loss and regret.

-Parallel:
Grief blinds the MC and his friend in this story where they visit an alternate dimension in the hopes of making something right again. As is often the case, this has its own associated issues and things rarely go to plan. Sidenote: mention of a certain institute; a tie-in to the 3rd story in this collection?

-Monsters:*
A guilt-ridden father desperately trying to safeguard his daughter finds himself going back to the town where whatever event originally took place. A house with a dark reputation and which village kids throw rocks at. His arrival unmasks the events that led to his daughter’s struggle. An engaging story reimagining aswang in a modern setting and which leaves you questioning what’s moral vs survival

-The Just World of Helena Jimenez:
A dreamlike tale of a dystopian world with wardens meting out justice & the surviving victims of a racially motivated mass murder.

-The Storyteller’s Curse:*
A story told from two POVs: From a writer reeling from his family having left him and who’s unable to sleep (and who might have told off a deity in a fit of anger) and from the unfortunate characters he’s seemingly condemned to the whims of a bloodthirsty and bored god. Eventually they intersect. Writing as a godly endeavor; but ultimately as flawed as the person.

-Reunion:
A man looks for his evasive brother through historic times of massive upheaval/unrest in. When they eventually meet in 2008 it’s revealed who they really are.

-Siren Song:*
A town living side-by-side to magic and gifted because of it, find themselves cursed after the brutal killing of a mermaid. The newly arrived member of the community (and a known murderer) is blamed and lynched. Yet things remain bleak, did he kill the mermaid or was he a convenient scapegoat?

-Once, in a Small Town:*
Dearly departed return as if they never died at all. What should be a happy reunion turns sour as the formerly dead don’t remember their deaths while their loved ones do and are driven near-mad by it.

[Majuchan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I really like the notion of transcendental numbers, of infinity. It makes me think of a soul. A lot of people don’t believe that a part of them can last forever, because they can’t imagine it. But math believes in it.”

A collection of short stories that would leave you in sleepless nights and staring into nothingness asking yourself a bunch of “What if’s?” ”

Eliza would take you in an exploration of a parallel universe, where your other self exist; where your recently deceased sibling is still playing her cielo happily.

A place where mermaids brings magic and curse in a town that seems separated from the rest of the world.

With ancient gods living and keeping a shop and corporation in an enchanted protected street. A whole world of what if’s indeed!

The stories even how much wild and weird, they still touches unto human emotions that would let readers connect to each eccentric stories.

#SarilingAtin

[Jeng · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has got to be my most favorite book of Eliza Victoria. Ana's Little Pawnshop, The Man on the Train, Sand, Crushed Shells, Chicken Feathers, Earthset, Parallel, Monsters, Siren Song, and Once, in a small town were among my favorites. Ikaw na, Eliza. Ikaw na talaga. 💕

What I realized about reading her books is that the endings were not meant to be satisfying. And I don't mean in a bad way. I meant not satisfying enough that you find yourself craving to read more of her works. Look where it got me. I've read four of her books in three days. Three days! And still I crave for more.