2015 reader challenge: a book of short stories (30/50)

Rewind - 1 Star



The first story is called Rewind, and wow, we start with the shittiest one possible lol



We follow Alberto Ferrari's POV. He's one of the co-creators of an app that basically serves as an online Bank, except it makes actual banks go bankrupt because nobody uses them anymore and Star Bank is "safer" and "transparent". Then they become rich as fuck CEOs. Then Alberto is interviewed by a powerful Talk Show Hostess and become

2015 reader challenge: a book of short stories (30/50)

Rewind - 1 Star

“Don't worry. We don't expect you to satisfy all of us,” she adds, mischievously.



“But...I really -”



“You really can do and have who you want, and you've got all night long,” she continues in a serious tone of voice. “And if you like it here with me, you can come back any night you want. You can whip them or let them whip you. You can let them walk all over you. You can fuck three at once, or five, or as many as you want. You can tell them what you want them to wear or ask them for hot little shows or stripteases. You're the president, nobody will deny you anything.”

DAFUQ???????????

party

[This is not the real world. It's all a part of a program, which HE has created. Since this is "his" world, he's kind of like a "god", and everything happens only to favour him. There's even a moment in the dialogue which they say that this is like a gameshark/cheat on a game to make the player Invincible/have infinite ammo/etc. WHAT THE BULLSHIT. (hide spoiler)

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The Kingdom of Turlis - 1.5 stars

KILLED HIM... because.... whatever reason. It's not even specifiec lol and then she kills herself before the guards could get a hold of her. Then both of them reincarnate on Earth but this was Cloradil's plan all along (for whatever fucking reason) and she basically controls his life ever since they met in kindergarten.



When Antelmo finds out about this, he basically leaves her on Earth alone and goes back to his Kingdom to rule as the King. But.... meh. It ALL could've been written better. [Antelmo is/was the King of Turlis (I think his past name was Turlis???? I don't fucking remember) and Anna/Cloradil... because.... whatever reason. It's not even specifiec lol and then she kills herself before the guards could get a hold of her. Then both of them reincarnate on Earth but this was Cloradil's plan all along (for whatever fucking reason) and she basically controls his life ever since they met in kindergarten.When Antelmo finds out about this, he basically leaves her on Earth alone and goes back to his Kingdom to rule as the King. But.... meh. It ALL could've been written better. (hide spoiler)

Life in Prison - 0 stars

IT WAS VERY POORLY EXPLAINED AND THEN WHEN I EXPECTED THEM TO ELABORATE, THE STORY ENDED (hide spoiler)] [One day he gets fed up with it and tries to suicide, but then he "wakes up" in his room with his family around him and everything seems okay. Then some cops come to talk to him and they tell him that the whole suicide thing did happen BUT they recovered his body and planted shit on him so they can "keep an eye on him" even though he'll be outside jail. So basically he's still incarcerated (but at home), and if he does one wrong move they'll press a button and legit kill him or something. I don't know,

The first story is called Rewind, and wow, we start with the shittiest one possible lolWe follow Alberto Ferrari's POV. He's one of the co-creators of an app that basically serves as an online Bank, except it makes actual banks go bankrupt because nobody uses them anymore and Star Bank is "safer" and "transparent". Then they become rich as fuck CEOs. Then Alberto is interviewed by a powerful Talk Show Hostess and becomes even more famous. Then he starts to run for presidency after that interview, because people liked him/his ideas so much that they thought he should be president. Then, he actually DOES become president, with a massive amount of votes even though he started running for it at the last fucking minute., the Talk Show Hostess throws a party just for him, but then we find out it's actually an orgy...And last but not least, Alberto has a crush on an actress called Jasmine Fantini, and guess who was the special guest at theorgy???? YEP. They don't fuck (actually, the only ones who actually fuck themselves are the ladies. He doesn't touch any of them.), but the Hostess somehow finds out about Alberto's crush and THAT'S why she even invited Jasmine.. The universe just decided to grant him an infinite streak of good luck, out of nowhere. And when we find out WHY this is happening ( (view spoiler) ), is throughThat's all the explanation we get. Character A throws a bunch of information at Character B viadialogue. We don't evenshit, it's literally JUST the dialogue till the end. Wow. I told you we started with the shittiest one.This one had the potential to be a lot better than Rewind, but.....The story is too short to properly develop, so I feel like the author is running against time to write the story, so he does it sloppily and leaves out a ton of explanations/plot behind (and I fear this is going to be a recurring thing for ALL of these stories).Antelmo is happily married to his wife Anna, but he's deeply annoyed by his elderly neighbour Constantino Valenti. So one night he???? just???? decides to get his bike and???? leave???????????????? Yeah, I don't get it either. It's not explained why he does it.So he drives way too fast and uhm... draws attention from cops?????? and instead of explaining the whole thing he just???? uhm.... RUNS AWAY????????????? AGAIN: I DON'T GET IT EITHER.Point is: he gets inside a random house to wait for the cops to leave, but the owner of the house is just coming back from buying groceries and, well, isn't that awkward.Then we find out she (the owner, Irene) is a witch and...Nothing is fully explained, when SOMETHING is "explained" it's through dialogue and then they call it a different name that's difficult to remember and you have to reread it so you can remember who the fuck they're talking about and what does it all mean. Irene is not from this world, and she keeps refering to Antelmo's wife as "Cloradil" (I literally had to look it back because I couldn't for the life of me remember those weird ass names) and she keeps implying that Anna/Cloradil is not who he thinks she is and yadda yadda yadda.This story also sucked, but it suckedthan Rewind. (view spoiler) I'm not fucking kidding, Life in Prison deserves. I thought Rewind was the worst they could do????? HA!!!!!!!!Germil was sent to Jail for... no reason. Some robots (who I think are also cops) showed up at his house one day, arrested him and that was it. He doesn't know why he's there and nobody will tell him. When he goes to court, the judge's like "lol nope you don't even get to talk to a lawyer byeeeeeeee"He befriends his cellmate, who tells him that there's basically no way out of there and there's not even much to do anyway. They can eat something, exercise and maybe chat with other inmates, but that's it. He even says that some people can't take it, so they throw themselves out of the window and fall into a void.However, one day, the facility's chairman (or rather, chairWOMAN) takes an interest on him (for NO REASON AT ALL, MIGHT I ADD) and oftenly takes him out of his cell to... "talk". Though they actually talk very little.It's never explained why Germil went to jail in the first place. It's never explained why the director targeted him, in particular.The director makes him drink a strange blue drink (lol also not explained wtf it was) and he suddenly takes a liking in her (he hated her before). He starts to get instantly aroused and wants to fuck her. She obviously planned that all along, so she lets him, but she also takes a whip out of nowhere anD PROCEEDS TO BEAT HIM WITH IT WITHOUT HIS CONSENT.It isn't even a one-time only thing, the director keeps sending Germil to her office and keeps forcing him to drink that blue thing and again he's FORCED to fuck her. When he goes back to his cell (and to his "senses"), he feels horrible about it. The drink also kind of erases his memory, so he can't even remember his wife or his kids' faces or even where he used to work at. This is some level 8000 roofies she's constantly giving him.The ending is unsatisfactory as fuck (view spoiler) and I actually lost all hope for the rest of this book. Three stories in and one is worse than the other. I have better shit to do with my time, so I'm DNF'ing this crap.["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>