Monday, June 27, 2016

Review: VACUI MAGIA by L.S. Johnson

This book sounded interesting when I first heard about it, but I wondered what vacui magia meant. It sounded Italian or Greek.

A collection of short stories, Vacui Magia, explores myth and nightmare in a fantasy sense. 

In “Little Men with Knives,” a bored cafeteria lady that is “too old to work and too poor to quit” finds solace and envy in little dwarves that appear at night. “Like stray cats. Stray cats that do housework. My craziness in a nutshell…As nasty as they are, I doubt any of them lie away at night, hating the present, terrified of the future. I doubt they’re afraid of anything at all.” (14) I related to this character the most!

Simple and witty, these stories are uniquely relatable, written in a mix between fiction and haiku. Stories were compelling, for the most part, but they were also riddled with confusion, perplexing the reader. They almost put you in the Twilight Zone. Weird, yet oddly compelling.  Of course, once you get into this confused state and the details are strained with lengthiness, it becomes quite weary.

Nonetheless, these stories were interesting for the most part. Fantastically creepy cover though.  


My rating: 3.5 stars

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