Maybe this is cope, maybe it's my dislike of modern fantasy, a genre that keeps repeating the same narrative elements to get the same reactions out of the reader, but I found the stories kinda bland, and to me they all seemed like something ChatGPT could have written on a good day. Compare them to Behm-Steinberg's Taylor Swift [0], which has a far more interesting premise, significant character development, and good style (to be fair, story number 6 also has relatively good style). Or to Samatar's The Huntress [1], a poetic piece of flash fiction that is willing to leave much more ambiguity and really shows what's possible in terms of style.[1] https://tinhouse.com/the-huntress/
[0] https://gulfcoastmag.org/stories/2015-barthelme-prize-winner...
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