While I didn't find anything objectionable in this collection of stories, I don't think they held together as well as they were intended to. Some narratives were particularly strong--those involving Tanner and Jun Hee struck me as the sort of quiet, layered exploration of relationships that the author excels at. There were several stories I enjoyed, and marked to reread later.

But I demand rather a lot from anything resembling historical fiction, and I don't think that the framing pieces of the collection managed to capture the feelings and experiences of non-contemporary characters. Instead, several of the stories involved characters who were the same as modern ones, only with slightly stilted language. I'm not convinced by such readings, and I didn't find that the historical narratives either illuminated or reflected the contemporary relationships in the way they were intended. ( )

First, the bad: For me, this was a very uneven collection of stories. "Tyrants" and "Some Thrills" were memorable and well-crafted, but my enthusiasm about the better stories was repeatedly tempered by the story following it. And though I generally enjoyed the idea of the linked story triads, their overall quality was such that I wonder if the form forced Klimasewiski to include some pieces he otherwise would not have.
The good: Klimasewiski explores the quiet, unspoken space around relationships better than anyone I have read recently. His ability to pick up on, and successfully narrate, those moments in the slipstream make me more than optimistic about his future writing. ( )

I hated “Nobile's Airship,” the first chapter in Marshall N. Klimasewiski's collection of short stories, Tyrants, and put off reading the rest of the book because of it. It wasn't necessarily because of the writing, which I found to be quite good, but rather the fact that I had zero interest in the subject matter and found the story very hard to follow. Luckily the stories became much more interesting to me as the book progressed. “The Third House” tells the story of a man and his relationship, or lack thereof, with his fiance and her parents. “Some Thrills” is about a father who brings his adolescent son along on his rendezvous with other women. “The Last Time I Saw Richard” is about a man who impregnates women who are desperate to have babies but have no other prospects. “Tyrants” is the story of a woman who is sent to work for Stalin and finds herself falling in love with him despite her grim mission. The last page or so of this story really haunted me. Next are three tales about the same couple: “Tanner and Jun Hee,” “Tanner,” and “Jun Hee.” Klimasewiski did a great job of writing about the things that couples often leave unsaid and of Jun Hee's struggle between her modern life in the United States and the more traditional life of Korea. The final story, “Aeronauts,” is about balloon travel and although I did not dislike it as much as “Nobile's Airship,” both stories were less than stellar bookends to an otherwise wonderful collection. Klimasewiski is a wonderful story-teller and is excellent at developing characters. If you enjoy plot-driven books I wouldn't recommend this, but this is a excellent example of a book that is character-driven yet does not become tedious. I would definitely pick up another one of Klimasewiski's books provided it was more like the middle chapters than the first and last. ( )

Klimasewiski's stories capture the everyday details of relationships that are at once precariously intimate and coldly detached. Their characters do not incite emotional involvement on the part of the reader, but the unsettling situations in which they find themselves do. ( )

The first story in this wonderful collection, NOBILE'S AIRSHIP evoked the solitude and loneliness of the Pole. The feeling of natural beauty and eeriness lingers satisfyingly long after you read the story. While the writing can be clumsy at times the stories are compelling. ( )