Brief Encounters

Title: Transfer Day Magic
Author: Kaseka Nvita
Length: 2,400 words, 14 pdf pages
Publisher: Less Than Three Press
Genre: m/m fantasy romance
Rating: C+

Blurb: Valentine’s Day could not possibly get any worse for Simeon. Half-gargoyle, he is used to being rejected for his inhuman appearance, used to being alone. The one time he fell in love, that lover ran. Now the last memory of that lover, the dream house Simeon had hoped to turn into their home, has been bought by a different couple. Finished casting the spells he was hired to place on the house, Simeon must finally hand it over to the happy couple—a couple that proves to be his former lover and a beautiful woman.

Review: Simeon is half-gargoyle and still grieving for the loss of his love, Brice, the man who he gave his foundation to. Now, to add insult to injury, on Lover’s Day, the day that new couples hire a gargoyle to add protections on new homes and bind their new homes into their new lives and love, Simeon is having to give up the one home he’d always wanted, and hoped to live in with Brice. The old run down church has been renovated and is now in all it’s glory, but waiting for a new couple to move into it. Saying goodbye to that home is the last thing he wanted to give up, save Brice. Only, to make matters even worse, guess who comes calling with a perfectly coiffed trophy wife on his arm?

Coming in, all told without title pages and such, this story is about 8 pages of content — 2,400 words. Very short. I read it in about 5 minutes, to be honest. That does skew my review just a bit. Because while it was a perfectly nice, cute even, story, I really barely felt as if I got to know Simeon at all, much less Brice, who I ended up knowing next to nothing about.

There is a plot here, but it is very streamlined and succinct. We get a bit of background with voice from Simeon and then a little more about Brice and the home he’s currently warding that he loves so much. Then we get a little bit about just what Simeon is, half-gargoyle, but just a little bit about what that entails. He constantly uses the phrase, “giving my foundation to,” which I took to mean some corporeal part of his heart/love, as it seems to be a permanent thing, even when it spectacularly blows up in his face, just as it did. Then, not much is left but the reunion between the ex-lovers. Of course, this story could have been easily tripled in size and I would have been happy with just a little more, because I really did like Simeon, from the little we get to know of him. But going on what we have here, there’s just honestly not much to comment on, or even get into.

I think that it is hard to write short short stories and have some kind of cohesive plot. Perhaps that is why this story didn’t work as well for me, even though I really found hardly anything wrong with it. There simply just isn’t enough time for more than a scene or a snapshot that alludes to a larger story, if smartly written. So, in the end, I give this a middle of the road score, C+ (the plus for cuteness factor), and say that if you have a couple minutes trying to make up your mind what to read, this just might be a nice way to spend your time.