“Sarah’s Stone” by Joan L. Savage

“ME Control” by G.K. Werner

“Polar Daughter” by Sharon Irwin

There are some interesting pieces of world building in “Sarah’s Stone” by Joan L. Savage, but I’m afraid I, personally, didn’t appreciate the story. In a world where goblins are the undertakers of the dead, Sarah has just lost her father to disease. When the goblins take her father’s body, Sarah goes in search of him in the belief that he can be brought back alive.  I’m not certain why Sarah thinks this, but she goes on her small heroine’s journey and eventually has a rather basic encounter with a goblin. While the story show’s promise, I hoped for more.

I wasn’t thrilled by the technical quality of “Polar Daughter” by Sharon Irwin. The story starts with the main character and a girl laying down to sleep followed by an extensive flashback told mostly in passive voice.  This failed to both draw me into the story and move the plot along. Irwin does tell a good mystic quest about a disfigured, sickly Eskimo girl abducted by a polar bear. There is a clearly mythical underpinning as Irwin winds many traditional archetypes into her heroine’s journey, but I didn’t find it compelling, and I didn’t truly care what happened to the main character.

"ME Control" is a deliciously ironic and funny flash story.  G.K. Werner displays a sly sense of humor laced with irony in it. In the same way that campaign slogans become educational policy, Werner explores the idea of educational accountability, literally, by taking mind control to a whole different level. What I really loved about "ME Control" is how it works on multiple levels. And the choice of subject matter the class is discussing and the twist ending bring it to an even higher level.