I just don’t know what I think about this short story. I liked the tone, I liked the way in which it was written, but I wasn’t really sure whether or not it was even a story until I got to the afterword. I just don’t know enough about the history of World War II or even the Allied Nations to actually pull apart this fictional historical biography.
I love new spins on old stories. After all, there is something about faery tales that brings us back again and again and again. And An Unwelcome Guest is a brilliant way to reimagine Rapunzel. Nix’s spin on such a classic left me outright laughing and grinning. It was cute, funny and not at all what I was expecting.
It was a little difficult to get into the flow of this short story. Not so much because of the style of writing, or even the militant background, but just because in the creation of these short stories, it was quite a change of pace. A strange demon like creature walks out of the middle of nowhere and heads off towards a nuclear testing site. Not sure what couldn’t go wrong there really.
This short story kind of reminds me of Firefly – cowboys and spaceships.
I started this story loving the old man. I felt sympathy for this seemingly innocent creature standing alone in his garden, pruning the roses. Genuine concern when he was being interrogated by the unknown woman. But, as the story unfolded, I quickly switched my alliances.
This is certainly not like any holiday that I would want to take. Skulking around in a slightly off-kilter, unusual world (which, after all, is the cornerstone of SciFi), selling goods and killing others. Yeah, definitely not the kind of holiday that I would like.
Aliens and vampires – a combination that I never expected, thought of, or have experienced before. Yet, it is something that worked brilliantly in Infestation. Actually, I was really disappointed when this ended – I wanted to know more about the slightly weird, hippy-style main character. And I wanted to know how this epic war of aliens that left us with killing-machine vampires actually turned out. Did he win the war in the end? Did he bring back his creepy sounding captain?
