A New Death and Others was like a slow, torturous death to read.

How I got this book: Sent to me via email by the author.
Read: February 20th-24th
My rating. Only one star. And that was a stretch.

 When I first saw this book, I thought it would be an interesting read. The title seemed catchy. Plus, I've been wanting to read some anthologies of short stories lately anyhow. Well, this was the wrong title to start that task with.

The stories really just don't grab you and pull you in. In some of the pieces there are references to works that I haven't read before, so I often felt like I was lacking background and not enjoying the full story. I suppose I just would have preferred these particular stories were original rather than being based of titles of the same name.

This is full of ridiculously bad puns. Seriously, they're ridiculously  horrible. I can appreciate puns when they're well written, don't get me wrong, but these were just bad. In addition to the puns there is a lot of blatant racism. I understand that the author was attempting to be satirical, but his tone did not portray that well. 

There is a lot of talk of Egypt, which is interesting, but the character names were a little too odd for me. It felt like the author was trying to infuse science fiction with mythology, which is a strange combination.

The writers tone is also really what threw me off. The tone seems like it's written by a twelve year old boy. It's very shaky and off balance. There's a lot of telling, rather than showing. There also seems to be a cockiness to the tone that seems that the author may not find his readership very intelligent. I felt that some of the pieces were slightly "dumbed down" as it were.

This reading experience wasn't entirely bad though, there were some small portions that I enjoyed. I did like the imagery of the Wolves and Moons in "The Moon Sailed Sadly Through The Sky.
"The Sailor" also has a nice cadence to it, it's very similar to a sea shanty.

These few positives were definitely not enough to win me over with this book. There is some potential, but I feel that this book needs a lot more editing to be palatable. Let me just say I'm very glad it was relatively short.