#bookreview: KL Noir: Blue

KL NOIR: Blue by Eeleen Lee
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I thought the first story, Ballerina in Pink (Roslan Mohd Noor) was pretty okay but nothing spectacular. Also, typos. So the copy I have is the first print, so maybe they fixed this in subsequent prints, but I normally don't expect that many obvious typos in the first story. It IS right in the beginning after all, before your eyes start to cross over and your brain shuts down.

Mamu Vies' Whose Blood Was It, Anyway? was a well-crafted story which I quite enjoyed. This was followed by A Woman in Five Pieces (Karina Bahrin), which was a reprint. Reprint aside, even though it dipped into the paranormal (read: it's a ghost story!) it was interesting and there was a point to it - how to get the ghost of the murdered woman to finally rest in peace.

Actually, 5 out of the 15 stories were originally published elsewhere. Which is a little ridiculous because one of the reasons I bought this book was because a favourite writer friend of mine, Damyanti Ghosh, had a story in it... Only to find out that I've already read her story in Readings from Readings 2: New Writing from Malaysia, Singapore and Beyond. *sigh*

Anyway, so another notable piece was Monster (Xeus) - annoying kid was kidnapped, parents try to get him back. Some delicious justice takes place.

Unwanted Utopia II: Deviant (Joelyn Alexandra) was a rather interesting, futuristic, sci-fi type story, that I would love to see fleshed out into a full novel. It does sound like it's a snippet of something longer.

The thing I didn't like about Bag (Elizabeth Tai) was that first person/third person perspective switch. I think the story would have been stronger if it had all been written in third person. Though that's probably personal preference.

The final story that stood out to me was Zedeck Siew's Hearts in the City. It's one of those slightly mind-twisting stories that I enjoy. Also, slightly fantasy - regret-maggots, anyone?

Okay. So I guess this further concludes the fact that Noir isn't really my thing, though I thought if it was going to be more police procedurals I would like them better than KL NOIR: RED. I mean, I do like murder mysteries (Ian Rankin, Jeffrey Deaver)

So overall... I guess it's okay. Maybe a 2.5-ish?

View all my reviews

Review of KL Noir: Red here.