The trouble with short stories is that you have only a few pages to establish your world, characters, and force the reader to care. Because of this, I normally shy away from anthologies and collected works. This is one of the few exceptions to the rule. Herkes does an amazing job of filling in her world and making you fall in love with her characters with only a few words. I actually became teary-eyed.
Herkes' storytelling abilities are surprisingly great. It's a fast-paced read, but you tend to soak up everything as you read it. It's captivating and exciting. The characters are easy to relate to, while being interesting. The world is similar to ours, but with a few serious changes. Herkes eases us into these changes without overpowering us with a ton of information that we can't process all at once.
What I enjoyed best about this book is that most of the stories are intertwined. We meet several of the same characters in different stories.
Though I sincerely wish that Herkes would take this world and create a full-blown novel out of it, I thoroughly enjoyed the short stories. I'm looking forward to jumping into her Stories of the Restoration series. Though these are also short stories, if they're as well done as Rough Passages, I'm sure to love it.
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