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Red: A Tor.com Original
A young man grieving for his lost sister steps into the world of their favorite board game, in a desperate attempt to find her. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
32 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 24, 2017
2 people are currently reading
59 people want to read
About the author
Ramsey Shehadeh
9 books6 followersRamsey Shehadeh splits his time between writing software and writing stories. His fiction has appeared in Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Shimmer, and The Drabblecast, as well as in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's STEAMPUNK RELOADED anthology.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
June 12, 2020
Outgrowing stuff is depressing, she’d say. I’d rather not.
meh. i was kind of tempted to give this one two stars, because i felt completely abandoned at the end of it, and a little surly. but then i thought maybe it was just the frame of mind i was in, with personal loss clouding my perception, so i ended up going with a three, but it's a charitable, qualified three.
up until the ending, i was getting along just fine with the story - it presented an interesting scenario - a boy whose sister had gone missing, who felt guilty over her disappearance because he had abandoned her on their walk home in order to go flirt up a girl, and his search for her within the structure of a board game his parents had designed for them. it was a nice blend of sorrow and ambiguous magical realism - maybe happening/maybe just elaborate coping mechanism yadda yadda. it had good movement, mixing back and forth between memory, adventure, guilt, grief, and observation.
but then it just ...ends. it culminates in this moment of acceptance/closure for the character:
“Ok,” he said. “I get it.” He looked up and saw that the POLICEMAN was standing at the head of LIGHT STREET, beside the WAREHOUSE, watching him. “I get it.”
and then a concluding action that kind of left me baffled because i, for one, did not get it.
i'm perfectly willing to write off my comprehension-fail as the result of blurry-brained grief and exhaustion, but i have a suspicion that the open-endedness was intentional and meant to be one of those 'interpret it any way you want' stories that's fine for some readers, but if i'm expected to draw my own conclusions, i need more bread crumbs to follow. or more sleep. either way, it's a low three stars, whether the fault is my own or the story's...
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2017/05/24/red/
come to my blog!
meh. i was kind of tempted to give this one two stars, because i felt completely abandoned at the end of it, and a little surly. but then i thought maybe it was just the frame of mind i was in, with personal loss clouding my perception, so i ended up going with a three, but it's a charitable, qualified three.
up until the ending, i was getting along just fine with the story - it presented an interesting scenario - a boy whose sister had gone missing, who felt guilty over her disappearance because he had abandoned her on their walk home in order to go flirt up a girl, and his search for her within the structure of a board game his parents had designed for them. it was a nice blend of sorrow and ambiguous magical realism - maybe happening/maybe just elaborate coping mechanism yadda yadda. it had good movement, mixing back and forth between memory, adventure, guilt, grief, and observation.
but then it just ...ends. it culminates in this moment of acceptance/closure for the character:
“Ok,” he said. “I get it.” He looked up and saw that the POLICEMAN was standing at the head of LIGHT STREET, beside the WAREHOUSE, watching him. “I get it.”
and then a concluding action that kind of left me baffled because i, for one, did not get it.
i'm perfectly willing to write off my comprehension-fail as the result of blurry-brained grief and exhaustion, but i have a suspicion that the open-endedness was intentional and meant to be one of those 'interpret it any way you want' stories that's fine for some readers, but if i'm expected to draw my own conclusions, i need more bread crumbs to follow. or more sleep. either way, it's a low three stars, whether the fault is my own or the story's...
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2017/05/24/red/
come to my blog!
May 30, 2017
Tor fantasy short story, free to read online at Tor.com. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature (click on the link for several more online short fiction reviews):
Ansel, age 17, is playing a homemade board game with his parents. It’s a type of detective game, a little like Clue, and it once was a favorite game of Ansel and his younger sister Louise. Louise has been missing for some time, and Ansel, who was the last person to see her, has been racking his brain, trying to figure out a way to find her. In his desperate grief, he finds himself inside of the game, playing the part of a detective, seeking clues to Louise’s whereabouts from the characters in the game.
“Red” is a fascinating story: The gradual disclosure of the story of Louise’s disappearance in the real life scenes, and its effect on Ansel’s family, interweaves so well with Ansel’s investigation inside of the game. It’s never clear whether he is actually magically inside the game, having found a portal into another world, or whether it’s in his imagination, or is a psychotic effect of his guilt and sorrow. The characters he meets inside the game have many of the same limitations that they do in the actual board game, but there’s some flexibility there, as with the LIBRARIAN:
But this very bittersweet story is still really appealing to me.
Ansel, age 17, is playing a homemade board game with his parents. It’s a type of detective game, a little like Clue, and it once was a favorite game of Ansel and his younger sister Louise. Louise has been missing for some time, and Ansel, who was the last person to see her, has been racking his brain, trying to figure out a way to find her. In his desperate grief, he finds himself inside of the game, playing the part of a detective, seeking clues to Louise’s whereabouts from the characters in the game.
“Red” is a fascinating story: The gradual disclosure of the story of Louise’s disappearance in the real life scenes, and its effect on Ansel’s family, interweaves so well with Ansel’s investigation inside of the game. It’s never clear whether he is actually magically inside the game, having found a portal into another world, or whether it’s in his imagination, or is a psychotic effect of his guilt and sorrow. The characters he meets inside the game have many of the same limitations that they do in the actual board game, but there’s some flexibility there, as with the LIBRARIAN:
They’d drawn her as a kind of caricature. She had a large undifferentiated shelf of breasts, bee-stung lips, absurdly high heels. But she was philosophical about it. They just made me, she always said. I am me.I loved everything about this story … except the ending. It’s abrupt and annoyingly ambiguous, though perhaps I’m simply not perceptive enough to get the author’s subtle clues. Confusingly, there are both positive and negative images and hints, both light and dark. Despite multiple rereadings of the ending, it’s simply not clear to me whether Ansel’s direction at the end is a positive step for him or a nihilistic one. Ansel says, in the end, “Ok, I get it” … but I don’t.
But this very bittersweet story is still really appealing to me.
May 25, 2017
First, kudos on the cover. Second, the writing style is fine and stylish. Third, this is confusing stuff.
A boy is trying to figure out where his missing sister is, while meanwhile living with parents who try to pretend things are okay for his sake. When he's speaking to the board pieces and game, the titles of the characters (like LIBRARIAN) are capitalized. It's mesmerizing but tricky stuff.
The ending cuts off abruptly. The author was trying to say something that must have went over my head completely. Whoosh, it's gone!
A boy is trying to figure out where his missing sister is, while meanwhile living with parents who try to pretend things are okay for his sake. When he's speaking to the board pieces and game, the titles of the characters (like LIBRARIAN) are capitalized. It's mesmerizing but tricky stuff.
The ending cuts off abruptly. The author was trying to say something that must have went over my head completely. Whoosh, it's gone!
November 7, 2021
Ansel's sister goes missing and he feels guilty as he was supposed to walk her home but didn't. Now he is trying to find her and also cope with his grief.
A short mystery that started out really well. Sometimes I felt like there were things that were only happening in Ansel's head as grief can make you think somethings that aren't there but like a lot of others, I didn't like that abrupt ending. It's not that I don't like open ended stories, I do if they are done right but this felt incomplete. I liked the writing.
2 stars
A short mystery that started out really well. Sometimes I felt like there were things that were only happening in Ansel's head as grief can make you think somethings that aren't there but like a lot of others, I didn't like that abrupt ending. It's not that I don't like open ended stories, I do if they are done right but this felt incomplete. I liked the writing.
2 stars
June 7, 2017
I do not do "Lady or the Tiger" endings. Not giving your readers a clear enough to understand it ending is sloppy and rude. Which is a shame, because the rest of this story was really amazing and led you to care and want to know what happened. Three stars for the beginning and middle. The ending needs work!
December 29, 2017
This story was so beautifully done, but it ended too suddenly. Like a lot of the comments on Tor, I want more!
I liked the writing in this one, it wasn't to difficult to get your head around but it built up such a beautiful, and often times tragic, image in your head, it was like you were there with Ansel.
I have my theory on the ending, that Ansel has outgrown this game, in the literal sense, but also the idea that he has outgrown looking for his sister. "Outgrowing stuff is depressing, she’d say. I’d rather not" - as Louise had said, but it's time for him to move on.
I liked the writing in this one, it wasn't to difficult to get your head around but it built up such a beautiful, and often times tragic, image in your head, it was like you were there with Ansel.
I have my theory on the ending, that Ansel has outgrown this game, in the literal sense, but also the idea that he has outgrown looking for his sister. "Outgrowing stuff is depressing, she’d say. I’d rather not" - as Louise had said, but it's time for him to move on.
May 24, 2018
Engaging, but feels incomplete. I would love to read more of this!! Where's the sequel?
August 11, 2017
Red is a short story about a brother who lost a sister and is throwing himself into a game to figure out what happened. What stands out about this short is the ending; specifically, how abrupt the climax is. It is a story that stops without warning, leaving readers with a lot of questions. Given the highly symbolic nature of the tale, there's a lot one can unpack to try and figure out what the ending really means. It's a gutsy move that I found offering me a satisfying puzzle to ponder.
July 21, 2017
This was a really cool short story that needed a bit more development to reach it's potential. I liked the confusing style and writing but I can't bring myself to score it higher due to the fact that it feels unfinished!
May 25, 2017
Great writing, but even as a depressing ending it still felt really unfinished.
May 24, 2017
[I WISH I HAVE A SISTER & COULD READ THIS TALE TO HER BY MYSELF]…
…"An image flashed through his mind: he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor between the coffee table and the TV, watching a black-and-white swamp creature stagger out of the marsh. He turns to Louise, sitting on the couch behind him with a cushion clutched to her chest, peering over the top of it with wide, terrified eyes. She catches his glance and lowers the cushion just enough to smile at him, conspiratorially.
An old memory, and a good one. He carried it with him into Louise’s room."…
I loved it. It remind me something that I couldn’t share or say it remind me something that I always love to play in my mind in my every depressed moment of my life (I mean no offense with it – of course). Well what to say really? A missing sister who’s name is Louise. Her brother Ansel. He lost her on the way when they all including with his sister was returning to their house along their friend circle. It was then Ansel fall for the girl to began a conversation who (the girl) likes him (Ansel). Well till then Ansel really didn’t know that after then he will lost her sister. No there’s no clue about why suddenly Louise vanished. It was in the end of the evening time when the sky becoming form in darkness. Well, I don’t know if I would do that if that was me when Ansel’s did tell him to bring his sister with him always after their class but for once he ignored it and he lost his sister. I feel of course very sad and sorry for him…
It’s a promising and an interesting short story to read & I repeating again that I loved it…
December 11, 2021
A young man grieving for his lost sister steps into the world of their favorite board game, in a desperate attempt to find her.
Red by author Ramsey Shehadeh is a bittersweet fantasy short story. I read it on Scribd, but you can also read it for free on the Tor.com site https://www.tor.com/2017/05/24/red/
The bed was made up, her stuffed animals clustered together against the headboard. The stack of books beside it was like an archeological dig of her interests, each stratum a different phase: Pooh at the bottom, then L’Engle, Tolkien, Plath, King, Orwell, Faulkner. Loose pages from her sketchbook sandwiched in between. All of it covered in a thick layer of dust.
A well written, surreal story about a family falling apart after the disappearance of their youngest daughter. We never really know if Ansel is actually in the board game or if it is all in his head. We slowly get to know more about how his sister got lost through Ansel’s investigation. I loved the story but the end was very abrupt and even if Ansel got his answer, we never did.
4 Stars
Red by author Ramsey Shehadeh is a bittersweet fantasy short story. I read it on Scribd, but you can also read it for free on the Tor.com site https://www.tor.com/2017/05/24/red/
The bed was made up, her stuffed animals clustered together against the headboard. The stack of books beside it was like an archeological dig of her interests, each stratum a different phase: Pooh at the bottom, then L’Engle, Tolkien, Plath, King, Orwell, Faulkner. Loose pages from her sketchbook sandwiched in between. All of it covered in a thick layer of dust.
A well written, surreal story about a family falling apart after the disappearance of their youngest daughter. We never really know if Ansel is actually in the board game or if it is all in his head. We slowly get to know more about how his sister got lost through Ansel’s investigation. I loved the story but the end was very abrupt and even if Ansel got his answer, we never did.
4 Stars
May 25, 2017
http://www.tor.com/2017/05/24/red/?ut...
Ansel's younger sister Louise disappears on the way home from play practice one evening. Ansel was supposed to accompany her home, but he chooses to pursue a girl he is interested in, under the guise of running lines with her on the walk home. Louise and Ansel had spent hours playing a detective board game together and in her absence Ansel inhabits the board game trying to find Louise. This is a mesmerizing story of grief and guilt. Red is a heartbreaking short story with no easy resolution and an abrupt, unsatisfactory ending.
Ansel's younger sister Louise disappears on the way home from play practice one evening. Ansel was supposed to accompany her home, but he chooses to pursue a girl he is interested in, under the guise of running lines with her on the walk home. Louise and Ansel had spent hours playing a detective board game together and in her absence Ansel inhabits the board game trying to find Louise. This is a mesmerizing story of grief and guilt. Red is a heartbreaking short story with no easy resolution and an abrupt, unsatisfactory ending.
June 3, 2017
Ansel is a young man still grieving for his lost sister. He and his family are trying to come to terms with her unexplained disappearance. They continue to play the family favorite board game, a more complex version of clue. Ansel always use the green detective. His sister used to use the red one. As he tries to remember a detail that would help locating his sister, he steps into the world of their favorite board game, in a desperate attempt to find her.
A very interesting and beautifully written story, with an abrupt and disappointing ending.
A very interesting and beautifully written story, with an abrupt and disappointing ending.
June 15, 2017
This short story reminded me of "The boy detective fails", which I loved. BUT. As other readers pointed out, it felt as if the story finished half-way through which was a big let down.
BIG SPOILER. BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG ONE
Even if a resolution is "there is no resolution", there needs to be a build-up towards it and a natural sense of "Okay, so they'll never know what really happened to her". Instead, the ending was just confusing.
BIG SPOILER. BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG ONE
Even if a resolution is "there is no resolution", there needs to be a build-up towards it and a natural sense of "Okay, so they'll never know what really happened to her". Instead, the ending was just confusing.
May 25, 2017
I actually was really into this story, and then seemingly without warning, the story stopped. It felt unfinished and I was left confused. I'm hoping other readers can shed some light onto what the writer was trying to convey, and what really happened to both Louise AND Amsel. Great writing, great setting, and completely engrossing, but a disappointing and confusing end. Someone please explain.
February 3, 2019
actual rating: 2.5
I'm still not really sure if I should round this one down or up. It was a really interesting concept and the writing is technically good, but I was more than a bit confused about what was actually going on and it seemed to cut off really abruptly at the end. I think this would be good if it was like a teaser to a forthcoming longer story, but it seems to just be meant as a standalone so it seems incredibly unfinished to me.
I'm still not really sure if I should round this one down or up. It was a really interesting concept and the writing is technically good, but I was more than a bit confused about what was actually going on and it seemed to cut off really abruptly at the end. I think this would be good if it was like a teaser to a forthcoming longer story, but it seems to just be meant as a standalone so it seems incredibly unfinished to me.
December 29, 2019
the writing here is gorgeous and gutting, but i wish it had been longer. i wanted more of ansel's search, and while it's clear we're supposed to draw a parallel between his movements through the game and his movements in real life, it's less clear how the two actually affect one another. either way, i loved the writing and will definitely seek out more of shehadeh's work.
June 4, 2017
Could have been four stars but minus two for the awful ending.
August 16, 2017
Where is the ending???
September 18, 2017
Not my cup of tea.
December 31, 2018
Grrr....that ENDING.
June 21, 2023
I found this book very interesting but also frustrating because of how open ended the conclusion of the story is. So much open to interpretation and no real solid explanation for what happens.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 21, 2024
Two possible endings, as theorized by some people in the comments:
➡ either she got abducted and murdered and through his guilt, he’s followed her into death through the gap in the world [by Hilary Anderson];
➡ or the ending represents Ansel recognizing the futility of obsessing over his sister’s disappearance and deciding to get on with his life. For one thing, he’s headed down LIGHT street. For another, he’s walking into a fog that’s lit from within. When he last saw Louise, she was headed into darkness and rain. She thought outgrowing things was “depressing,” but he’s definitely outgrown this game, and it’s time for him to move beyond it [by Greg Hullender].
I like the ambiguity, but I can see how the Lady or the Tiger kind of ending in a story isn't for everyone.
➡ either she got abducted and murdered and through his guilt, he’s followed her into death through the gap in the world [by Hilary Anderson];
➡ or the ending represents Ansel recognizing the futility of obsessing over his sister’s disappearance and deciding to get on with his life. For one thing, he’s headed down LIGHT street. For another, he’s walking into a fog that’s lit from within. When he last saw Louise, she was headed into darkness and rain. She thought outgrowing things was “depressing,” but he’s definitely outgrown this game, and it’s time for him to move beyond it [by Greg Hullender].
I like the ambiguity, but I can see how the Lady or the Tiger kind of ending in a story isn't for everyone.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 26, 2017
This was interesting but I wanted more out of it. I suppose it's immature but I hoped for an ending. Even if it was reminiscent of the Lovely Bones.
June 22, 2017
I liked the mood but it felt unfinished. The endig was too ambiguous for my taste.
June 27, 2018
Really good if your the type of person who doesn't mind unresolved mysteries.
If you are the other type of person, intriguing but ultimately frustrating.
I would read more by this author, though.
If you are the other type of person, intriguing but ultimately frustrating.
I would read more by this author, though.
April 8, 2020
This story was so vague, it was hard to even determine the genre. I guess I'd file this as magical realism. It didn't really resonate with me, and as other have said it just peters out.
Read
May 25, 2017I'm not entirely sure of the ending but I think "it's where you go when you are tired of looking" is pretty sad. It felt kind of unfinished because we never find out what happened to Louise, but I guess the story is more about Ansel's journey to acceptance. I'm not sure I liked where this story went at the end but I think it's going to stick with me for a while.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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