The way that she inserts in between instances of her science fiction does much the same. Michelle Browne’s handle of the language, period point blank, kinda astounds me, most of the time. Here, with “The Stolen,” I’m afraid I must say the same. In my Neuromancer review, I mention how pretty much every sci-fi I’d ever read up until then suffered from straight-laced, unimaginative writing, but now Neuromancer gave me hope that the artful combination of imagination and science could catapult a novel into greatness. Before you bark, hear me out: I mean only to point out that my personal opinion about each, at least writing-wise, is similar. I hope no one draws the wrong conclusions about my saying this, but I’m afraid I must compare, in a manner of speaking, Michelle Browne’s “The Stolen” to William Gibson’s Neuromancer. No impact whatsoever on my opinion or review. What crimes are committed in the name of peace, control, and harmony? In a world where public violence is a distant memory and peer pressure is a mandated punishment, Clarice and Sarah are about to find out. Until, that is, she runs into an old familiar face, and breaks the fragile tension holding her life together.

Spending her days daydreaming about untranslatable words and craving candy, her world is mostly idyllic. In “WordThieves”, Sarah White is trapped in a nightmarishly bureaucratic peacenik paradise on Io. Little does she know what this re-education will include…or its price. Her previous misdemeanours in a nightmarishly controlling world have caught up to her, and she is taken in with other felons for re-education. In “The Fields”, Clarice is a governess on a small, remote backwater colony. The Stolen: Two Short Stories by Michelle Browne Image Posted on 10 December 2013 Updated on 20 January 2014

The Stolen: Two Short Stories by Michelle Browne

The Stolen by Michelle Browne