Review: Sing No Suns, Sing The Night - Stories by Michael Michel

Blurb:

When the light that guides us fails, we must face the darkness within…or perish.

A warlord’s bitter crusade. A starship’s crew caught between a mindless monster and a race against starvation. Conflicted aliens unable to stop their conquest. The unhappy life of a sentient gun.

Sing No Suns, Sing The Night is an SFF short story collection and an ode to Grimdark. Hope and despair. Love and hate. Sweet beginnings and sour ends. These stories cover themes that challenge our beliefs about self, society, and the nature of living.

If you’re ready to be dragged to the lip of the abyss and dangled over the edge, read on.

Review:

I discovered this book on Twitter when the author did a cover reveal. The title alone caught my attention. At the time, I hadn’t yet started reading Michel’s work, so I didn’t know what to expect from this short story collection. 

Cut to over a year later, and I’ve devoured every single piece that Michel has published. He has one of the most unique voices in fantasy, his writing evocative, his stories compelling. Of course, all that comes from years of practice and learning. I was intrigued to read his early works. That’s what this collection is—pieces that Michel wrote while working towards publishing his first novel.

I’m going to break this one down story-wise, so bear with me.

Path to Glory

The first tale in this collection is an action-packed one. A quick scene of an ambush, Path to Glory reads more like a chapter in a longer story. A novella or a novel maybe. The action was fun and gripping, with just the right amount of world-building to intrigue me of the setting. With some development, I might even want to read more. This wasn’t the best opener, if you ask me, but it was entertaining regardless.

Beyond the Clouds

I genuinely feel this should have been the first story. This one feels more like Michel’s work. The setting is intriguing, following Nasrin as she takes her visually challenged daughter, Yasmin, to the Tree of God so she can get vision. The characters—despite the small word count—feel real, their hopes and motivations heartbreaking and believable. Again, the story reads more like a chapter in a longer tale, but the dreams and dread that Michel evokes here make me want to read more about this world. A novella would be perfect.

Dreams of Rust

A short story told from the POV of a loaded gun. This short feels less SFF and more literary. As if this were written for a writing exercise or prompt. Great execution, no doubt.

Absolution Affect

Absolution Affect is one story that I genuinely hope gets turned into a novella or a novel. Ben is secretly an Angel (an alien species currently invading Earth), and has been living in ‘human’ Ben’s stead for a while. The time has come for Ben to take his ‘human’ father for the Absolution process. The journey they embark on changes him and his worldview. This story reads quite like classic sci-fi. It reminded me so much of Asimov, except the clinical exploration of science and logic is replaced with visceral human experiences. The profound emotional conflicts that Michel throws our way makes for a very compelling read. It’s moving. It’s heartbreaking. This here is exactly the kind of story I was hoping to read in this collection. 

Bound by Scars

This short follows Lodai as he and his father see a huge white beast across the river. He names the beast Scar, and keeps trying to look for the beast, while dealing with inner doubts about his own family and their relationships. This one was very, very interesting. I want to see more of these white beasts, find out what their origins are, what this world is. The treatment felt very nature documentary-esque with the way that Lodai observes Scar and his behavior. I loved how these observations made Lodai question his relationship with his family. I wasn’t a fan of the ending, but I won’t complain because I know this was written long ago. 

The Damned

This was my least favorite story to be honest. It’s not bad, it just didn’t resonate with me. This one’s a sci-fi survival drama. A spaceship’s crew are trapped because an alien has broken into their ship and has locked itself in the drive room, preventing them from flying to safety. As the days pass, the crew members turn on each other, laying bare some pretty bad sides of humanity as they scramble for survival. The reason it didn’t work for me was that none of the characters felt real to me. Plus, we jump POVs quite a few times, and I didn’t feel grounded in any of them. 

You Who Are Highly Favored

Another short, almost writing-exercise-like tale. This one reminded me so much of Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky. The whole story unfolds as transmissions from an alien lifeform that’s supposedly highly evolved, sending humanity messages of peace and evolution. Naturally, the skeptics that humans are led to these messages being perceived as a threat. An intriguing read for sure.

Infinity Held

The longest of the lot, and certainly the most evolved. This one has three disjointed POVs which connect in the final scene in a way that’s pretty mind-blowing. You can see the twist coming based on the common themes among the three, but that doesn’t mean the impact of the ending was lost. The ending and the philosophy made me think of The Last Question by Isaac Asimov, which is one of my all-time favorite short stories. That made Infinity Held quite a high note to end on.

In Conclusion:

If you like Michel’s work, you’ll love this collection. But don’t expect the finesse of Dreams of Dust and Steel. In fact, I wouldn’t even call this a good entry point into his bibliography. If you are curious, read War Song instead. However, if you’re familiar with Michel’s work, and want bite-sized tales of his early writing, this one should scratch that itch.