Maze of Trees

by Claudia O'Keefe

Product DescriptionCarly can never go home. Tricked into becoming the Goddess of Lonely Spaces, the Los Angeles native has spent years protecting a remote, pristine forest in West Virginia from developers and other interlopers. Yet that same magic which empowers her to safeguard an endangered tract of land, its animals, trees, and rivers, won't let her beyond the forest's reach. Aching with loneliness herself, Carly errs by falling in love with a visitor to her woods, something her magic forbids and will do anything to stop.Reviews for Fiction by Claudia O'Keefe"O'Keefe carries you along with a style as light and swift, but as full of meaning, as a fairy tale."-Tangent Online"...an eloquent testament to loneliness and sacrifice in an endangered forest."--from Publisher's Weekly starred review of Best New Paranormal Romance by Paula Guran"...a beautifully tragic story about wild places, the intrusion of human development, and being trapped into a metaphysical role. [O'Keefe] shows both the glories and the isolation of being a goddess of wild places, mixing in a sweet and sad love story."--Russ Allbery, Eagle ReviewsOriginally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, "Maze of Trees" was chosen for inclusion in Best New Paranormal Romance and made Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading List. O'Keefe's short fiction has also received Honorable Mentions from The Year's Best Science Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection.Word 12,000 (Long Novelette)

Genres: Fantasy

36 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2011

Reviews

[Arden · Rating 3 out of 5]

The goddess of lonely places wishes she could be something other than lonely. But can anyone fight against their own nature?

Not for very long, I assure you. But this piece of writing is shorter still. And the flavor is bittersweet.

You can't fool the breeze that carries the words your heart speaks. It ferries your soul across spaces open or close and not even the sturdiest door can keep it out. Only you can refuse to hear it. This is one of humankind's strongest powers, the ability to not hear another's heart.

3 stars. Lacking in character development, but that only made me want more. This would make a solid premise for a novel.

[Sarah Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a little odd, but an okay story. Carly goes to a farm in West Virginia to accept a cheap room, but instead finds the farmer hanging in the barn. When she touches him some strange thing jumps into her, and suddenly she can control the power of loneliness, pulling in people or pushing them away from the area with her powers.
There wasn't much romance in this really, it was more about Carly's own loneliness, and her desire to leave the forest where she was trapped and return to her normal life.

[Mazmum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really short story but I really loved the prose.

[Ruhegeist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Free e-short story from Amazon. Better then I thought it would be. I would have liked it to be longer and more fleshed out.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I downloaded this free from amazon to Kindle, otherwise I probably wouldn't have picked this up.

The book is full of beautiful descriptions of the landscape and nature. It can be a little rough to get into because I wasn't feeling in the mood for really long sentences at the time. However, at about 20% way through the book, where Carly and Laney are really starting their relationship it got easier.

I hadn't realized it was a short story (stupid me) so the ending came up very quickly for me and it was quite emotional. I didn't think that would happen, but I think I caught on to what was going on before Carly did. The ending is very vague and it leaves the reader wondering what will happen to each character next.

[Aithne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I loved the story line, this novella could have used more frequent paragraph breaks to improve readability.

When viewed in the Kindle (even with smaller font) the appearance often looked like one long run on sentence.

Since the premise intrigued me, I had to set the run on sentence idea aside because I wanted to finish.

[Martina · Rating 5 out of 5]

i wished this novella would have been longer, i enjoyed it SO much!

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent little short story. I wish there would have been more depth to the characters. Seemed a little shallow.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Touchingly sad little short story. So much pain.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

So short. If I blinked I would have missed the story. Not impressed.

[Susan]

I have this in the Paranormal Romance anthology it was originally published in ...

I hope to HECK that the story was edited before it was published as an ebook -- for a short novella, this story had at least 2 typos EVERY SINGLE PAGE