Tyrannia: and Other Renditions

by Anya Johanna DeNiro

In these 11 stories―and the weird spaces in between―people of all kinds struggle to free themselves from conventions and constraints both personal and political. Places ranging from the farthest reaches of outer space to the creepy abandoned farmhouse in the middle of nowhere become battlegrounds for change and growth―sometimes at a massive cost. Tyranny takes many forms, some more subtle than others, and it is up to the reader to travel along with the characters, who improvise and create their own renditions of freedom. Poet and fiction writer DeNiro uses language like no other. This second collection of stories explores our relationship to art, history, and looks at how everyday events, personal and political, never cease to leave us off balance.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Ebooks, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Unfinished

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2013

Reviews

[Ed Erwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Update: this book is having a weird effect on me. I've gone back to the stories I originally hated, and I really like some of them now. Gonna have to bump up the stars!

One story is available for free here: The Philip Sidney Game. Its recursive structure reminds me of a Charlie Kaufman movie.

Here is also a free excerpt from the much weirder story "The Walking-Stick Fires".

And here is the story Tyrannia.

Original review:
One of the weirdest books I've ever read. And from my reading history, that is saying a lot!

While 3 of the stories here have been published in "Asimov's Science Fiction" they are not your grandfather's SF stories! The writing is experimental, and the genre for most stories is closer to "Weird" than Sci-Fi.

I found this in a little free library. Was intrigued because it is from "Small Beer Press" which publishes interesting things. Absolutely hated the first few stories I tried. (I read in random order, so not the first stories in the book). I kept going. Turns out I really liked some stories very much, such as "Highly Responsive to Prayer" and "The Philip Sidney Game". But most of the stories were just too confusing for me to get into.

This is the first book I've picked up, as far as I remember, to have a Book Crossing ID in it. So I'll get to go on that site and ask whoever put this in the box "What were you thinking ?!?!?!"

PS: That little free library is one of the cutest ones I've seen. Picture here: https://www.bookcrossing.com/hunt/1/5...

[Jessy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of this was too confusing to be enjoyable. I upgraded my rating from 2 to 3 stars based on the stories "The Flowering Ape" and "The Wildfires of Antarctica," which I really liked. On the whole, this was too 'experimental' for my tastes.

[Mills College Library]

Fiction D394t 2013

[Emma · Rating 2 out of 5]

beautiful writing, confusing stories

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into this book having been a big fan of Alan DeNiro's previous short story collection, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead. This collection did not disappoint. Many of the details in the stories are a bit ridiculous -- details, whether factual or fictional, frequently are -- but in every story I was able to identify some emotional core that resonated strongly with me. Elements of horror, fantasy, and science fiction mingle freely and enthusiastically, and DeNiro seems to cultivate his ambiguous endings like it were a breed of rare flower. Which does tend to give the stories the general feeling of a particularly vivid dream, something which, as far as I'm concerned, is a good thing. Particularly enjoyable were the stories "(*_*?)~~~~(-_-):TheWarpandtheWoof" and "The Flowering Ape," the latter being a particularly touching meditation on being different and growing older. This book may not be for everyone, but this is basically exactly the sort of short story collection that I would like to read more often.

[Leo Reich · Rating 2 out of 5]

A plastic Walmart necromonicon of teenage angstiness. There are only 4 stories that I really enjoyed at all and even then, the author torpedoed them with hasty and intentionally ambiguous conclusions just as they started to get interesting. Political buzzwords substitute for actual depth, and sometimes the writing is actually pedestrian. The second-to-last story starts every single sentence with "This is the story of," and it gets old far faster than the page length would imply. The last story ends with the author's love letter to himself, and so on. You'll see phrases like "eco-terrorist Jews" and
the colors were pretty pretty." Some of the ideas are really interesting but they are killed in their formative stages before they get a chance to really get off the ground. There is some merit here, which is why it gets two stars instead of one, but to paraphrase another reviewer: "a trashy mess of bad vibes and negative energy" is a really good way to summarize this book. I'd recommend avoiding it.

[Rick eich · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tyrannia is supposed to be this WEIRD new book with a WEIRD new way of writing, but it just comes off like a cryptic buzzkill of stories that make absolutely no sense at all. Like talking to a person who is massively stoned and cant finish even one sentence without jumping off the tracks into several new bizarre stories that have nothing to do with each other at all. Its a trainwreck of negative energy and a bore.

[Carly Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I only enjoyed some of the stories in this collection. I just wasn't drawn into them.