Take a look, it's in a book...

If you finished that title in your head (singing it), we should high-five when we see each other next. The titles in this anthology are amazing! True artistry if one can create a title to a short fantasy that makes a student *want* to read for fun. I read "A Fearful Symmetry" when I first got the book, before any other one. I enjoyed the short story, even though it didn't explore any type of new plot that hadn't already been well-mapped out. Again, we have the story within a story within a story, if not incredibly concise. And again we have the "words give life" motif, no all too common to me. I enjoyed most the *reasoning* the narrator gave behind his opinions/actions. I get my thrills through thought-processes in stories. If they are absent I usually have to substitute my own, which is only so much fun when it gets redundant. Here, the narrator allows the audience to see why a so-so plotted story is actually important to consider. He begins by saying he was drawn to the "symmetry" of the story. So that tells a lot about him, like that he is very logically inclined, etc. So he goes beyond the simple elements of the story to discuss the story itself. His emphasis in this short short tale is on the fact that it remained unfinished by a long shot, and that is where he came in, to bring it to completion. The reader, in Kang's world, plays just as important a role as the storyteller. Whether, it's our job to complete an unfinished story, perpetuate it, or simply wrap our minds around it to breathe life into it, readers are the ultimate endpoint of a story, and their importance should be made known. I like that we shouldn't just except ghost stories as they are, but rather become a part of them by laying the spirits to rest. Yay!