by Margrét Helgadóttir (Fox Spirit Books)
Margrét Helgadóttir is a Norwegian-Icelandic writer and editor who burst onto the scene in 2012.
I’m very pleased she asked us to review The Stars Seem So Far Away, since it handles the acidification of the oceans and famines and droughts of a changed climate from the viewpoint of where those who can flee the wars, famines, plagues and destruction will go: north. For a book with such a grim backdrop and horrific chaos, it’s surprisingly positive and hopeful. The human touch is lovingly supplied by showing things in the points of view of surviving children, a lonely outpost with a single female protector, a woman who scavenges the ships of the dead, a retired astronaut, and other hardy or lucky folks who all funnel into a satisfying conclusion that wraps back into the title and theme.
This is a post apocalyptic book that can either be viewed as a set of standalone, themed short stories (some were published as shorts) or named chapters in a novel. It clocks in at just under 40K words, so it’s a novella. Read it yourself and see if it’s not one of the more worthy offerings at that length.
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