Krystal A. SmithCritiques

Imaginative stories that will expand your horizons and take you places where only imagination rules. Strong female leads and spiritual exploration pepper these wonderful tales. A must read!!!

Very well written collection of short stories that focus on different female characters. This wasn’t really my specific cup of tea, but I can appreciate a well written short story no matter the topic.

A beautiful and diverse collection of short stories, focused on females, relationships, personal expectations, and the tangles of emotions.

While the stories focused on the a different group of women than I would normally associate myself with (being white and heterosexual as opposed to black and lesbian) there was truth and insight I was grateful for in each one.

"What the Heart Wants" and "Feeling Blue" were my favorites.

The stories in this volume are gorgeous, the language lyrical. I agree with the reviewer Kesterbird that some of the relationships in Two Moons are deeply messed up in a real-world sense, but the gorgeous weirdness of the surreal aspects of the short stories kept me reading nevertheless. My favourite of the stories may be Feeling Blue, about the mural that talks to Clare to remind her to take care of herself. I just read Shadowshaper recently, so murals coming alive is a theme I am enjoying very much in fiction right now. :)

I want to love these. I want to love them because having queer women of color showing up as main characters in speculative fiction is important, and the voice is promising, but... the actual relationships are so blindly toxic, without the author seeming to have noticed that toxicity. The most fantastic (as in literal fantasy) parts of these stories are where they shine brightest; it's the reality that's really messed up. Like, ok, tearing out your heart post breakup to have a conversation with it and it singing you songs and bringing you flowers? that's fine and surprisingly cute. But flipping out on a loved one who doesn't immediately accede to your precise and previously unexpressed desires for the progression of the relationship but instead wants to think about it? That shit is terrifying. The only part of the friendship with the bleeding-on-the-counter-and-walking-around-making-breakfast-heart that is creepy is that said heart is such a bad, enabling friend as to tell this person that they did nothing wrong and that it was all the other person's fault.
That's just one story, but it's not the only example I could've picked. There's the moon marrying a human: not creepy. But the moon picking an infant, watching her grow up, grooming her from early adolescence, and then swooping down to fetch her? Nah.

-received as part of librarything's ARC program-

Warning: My copy of Two Moons: Stories is an "uncorrected proof" advance copy, and so some details may change between this and the final publication. That said...

Wow. This is quite the collection. Although I don't believe I've read any of Ms. Smith's writings before this, I could probably have guessed her works included some poetry, as a few of these stories (particularly "Search" and perhaps "Demetria's Nature") felt like poetry expressions that'd expanded into several pages of prose, although most read more clearly as very well-constructed and -charactered short scenes or stories, some fairly realistically so and others clearly more oddly fantasistically ("Two Moons"). Well, okay, "What the Heart Wants" was a little on the weird side for me, but... Quite a range of presentation styles, quite a depth of story and character talent, I definitely found this little collection worth the read.

The only editorial suggestion I might have (again, noting that this is an "uncorrected proof" advance copy; YMMV) is to reconsider/rewrite the second sentence of "Anyone Out There", as I read it several times and am still not clear what it's trying to say. To be fair, I believe that's the only sentence in the book I had such an issue with, so hardly a knock on the book as a whole.

I loved this book. I read a lot of speculative fiction novels, but not short stories, and I've always loved poetry. These though are shorter than short stories, beautifully written verbal paintings showing glimpses of different stages of relationships---definitely more like poetry made prose than what I'd think of as a "short story".

This was an interesting collection of short stories . The author has included a fantasy element in each of the stories. If you enjoy fantasy/speculative stories then you should give this a chance.

I'm not sure what (if any) expectations I had for this book, but overall I was a bit disappointed. Of course there were some good stories as well as ones I wasn't as fond of, but the author seems to have no particular style. Some writings were abrupt and felt forced, while others flowed beautifully or had a poetic feel to them. Sometimes the story would just end, leaving you feeling like it wasn't really completed, just over. Maybe it just wasn't up my alley.
This book was provided free as part of the Earky Reviewer program.

read Two Moons (2018, pre-pub review) by Krystal Smith. Collected works by a black lesbian poet. Many of the stories have African American and/or lesbian themes and feature magical realism and speculative fiction. These are not my preferred genres but some of the stories I liked a lot while others I felt were flat.

I did really enjoy What the Heart Wants. It's bizarre but told in a very matter-of-fact way. It reminded me of something that my 12 year old daughter would write (that's not a knock, she's talented). I had her read that one story and she enjoyed it as well though found the sudden shift in personality of the main character abrupt and not believable. I also enjoyed Brescia's Rose.

As with most anthologies, there are good stories, and poor stories. The author has a way with the sentence - beautifully written, full of emotion, easy to read, however, she needs to work a bit on the subject matter - for example, the story about Esme, the star, and Luna who fell in love with a Human Woman, didn't make much sense. Then there is a story called "Harvest" - an absolutely beautiful story about a woman who bares a child. So, this is a mixed bag. Some are middling, others amazing.½

I received this book as a member of EarlyReviewers.

This collection contains 14 short stories by author Krystal Smith in her first collection. The stories are a delight to read - some sad, some cheerful, and some laugh-out-loud funny. Shape shifters, conversations with Death, and a woman trying to convince her heart to move out are all part of this slender volume.

This is a slim collection of stories that traverse across speculative and fabulist landscapes. The lovely cover art really captures the feel; there is a dream-like and earth-mother quality that is very appealing. These brief stories are written with an essentially warm heart - an intriguing and unique debut for writer Krystal Smith.