Transmutations by Vergere Street

Transmutations by Vergere Street

Rating: 3/5, average

This short story collection was written by someone from my university. They were in my Animal Theory class and I remember them saying they hunted all their own meat and that made me curious, so I friended them on Facebook a little bit ago, and through that found this story collection.

There are six stories in the collection: “Suitcase”, “The Magic Fish”, “Exorcism of a Lazy Student”, “Feathers”, “Wish”, and “Heritage”. The first five are fictional, and the last one, “Heritage”, is autobiographical.

“Suitcase” is about a young woman who’s dog-sitting when something very unlikely but ironic happens…

“The Magic Fish” is a fantasy set in Feudal Japan. In this story, the hero turns out to be as selfish as the villain and they both die. The last line feels very “whoop-de-doo”: “And so, everyone of any importance to the story died, except for the fish, who lived happily ever after.” This one has some nice descriptions, though: “One day, Genjo’s mother fell terribly ill with a fever that left her golden skin as lifeless an dry as undyed silk, and stole the laughter from her voice.”

“Exorcism of a Lazy Student” – this one is very silly, but relatable for university students.

“Feathers” – This one was my favorite! It has a romance plot kind of like “Howl’s Moving Castle”, with a haughty man and a woman who’s down to earth (literally, she’s an Earth goddess). It has kind of a fantasy/Native American setting/tone which is really interesting and a really sweet and satisfying ending.

“Wish” – I didn’t really like this one. The characters all seemed like jerks. It takes place on a Panther Beach near Santa Cruz. Some college kids are smoking and find a magic lamp and then random tragedy happens. It’s kind of like a B horror movie. This was one of those stories that had me thinking “That was neat, but what’s the point?” at the end. 

“Heritage” – This one made me cry, so, uh, beware. It’s about Vergere’s childhood wolfdog, and her growing up with him, and if you love animals it’ll probably make you cry too, but in a good way!

These stories had a lot of really cool ideas and events and concepts, but half of them (“Suitcase”, “The Magic Fish”, “Wish”) leaned a little too hard on imagery and irony and seemed like they were lacking in interconnectedness between character, plot, and theme. In “Suitcase”, the character doesn’t seem that smart, but something lucky happens to her out of the blue. In “The Magic Fish”, the character gets punished harshly for something that didn’t seem so terrible to me. In “Wish”, the characters were flat and unsympathetic, but their terrible fate still felt unearned.

There were also a couple of typos, “cheery” for “cherry”, “shall” for “shawl”, not too many, but I would recommend hiring an editor (I offer affordable editing for indie writers! Check out the Editing tab for more info).

I would recommend this collection to anyone who likes fantasy because the imagery is really good and even if it leaves you a little confused at the end, the journey is still fun. I really enjoyed “Feathers” and “Heritage”, which are much longer and more developed than the other ones. I read this a couple of nights before going to sleep and it was a great way to relax because of the fable-like style of many of the stories. 

I’m really looking forward to what this author will write next!