Book Review: Finding the Bones
Finding the Bones. Nikki Kallio, Cornerstone Press, 16 February 2023, Paperback and eBook, 194 pages.
Reviewed by Kelly Fumiko Weiss.
Finding the Bones is a collection of short stories and one novella written by Nikki Kallio. While each story is distinct from one another, they share a common theme of showcasing the human reaction to incredible situations. Gothic, sci-fi, and fantasy genres blend together as Kallio explores what humanity truly means in the face of extraordinary circumstances.
My best advice to readers is to savor each story. Kallio is an excellent writer. Each story is a masterpiece of creativity and compassion. Writing short stories is so hard, and Kallio does it with expertise and grace. I could have lived in any of the worlds she created for hundreds of pages. The agony of this beautiful collection is that you only get small snapshots of worlds she built with just a few words on the page. It will have every reader demanding more.
And, while there may be the urge to sit down and devour her words all at once, I would encourage the reader to take time in between the tales. To let their messages about the human condition sink in. And to give time for the precious few words to breathe past the initial read.
The two stories I cannot stop thinking about begin and end this collection. The first short story, “Geography Lesson,” breaks your heart into a million pieces as you imagine a father raising his daughter aboard a spaceship, trying to explain to his daughter what Earth was like and what her true mother was like, too. It will make you stop and appreciate all that we have on this precious planet of ours and how inexplicable our world really is.
The novella that ends the collection, “The Fledgling,” also stands out. Perhaps because it is the world we get to live in the longest, but maybe more for how realistic it feels that if the sun begins to destroy us, humans would find a way to survive. Our recent pandemic shows our ingenuity and our resilience, but this story also shows the wounds we would have if we truly could no longer trust the sun. Simultaneously a cautionary tale about virtual reality and a love letter to the importance of human interaction, “The Fledgling” brings heartbreak and hope right up side by side.
I truly loved Finding the Bones. The short stories and the novella demonstrate the art of short-form writing and how powerful shorter stories can be when done well. Kudos to Kallio for this collection of work. I would recommend it to any reader.