JV Love

Worth buying for the title story.

If I had paid 77p for The Sea is Not Black as a single short story, I would probably have thought this was good value. The second story, Alice's Sasquatch, was distinctly weaker, lacking the strong ending of The Sea is Not Black. The final two are exerpts from J.V.Love's The End of Sorrow: A Novel of The Siege of Leningrad. They held together as short stories but felt more like a sales tack.

Excluding Alice's Sasquatch, the three remaing stories are set in Russia, the first in 1994 and the other two during WWII. The author has an excellent feel for the chaos of war and the stark, money oriented society of modern-day Russia. Alice's Sasquatch seemed a bit disconnected from the other three, although money does feature highly.

Four stories of the standard of The Sea is Not Black would have been wonderful and I kept reading in the hope that another of that calibre would surface. It reminded me of a TV series that ran in the UK many years ago "Tales of the Unexpected". The end had a great kick to it.
An author that may be worth looking out for in the future.… (meer)