Bad Faith

Theodore Wheeler's Bad Faith is an extraordinary collection. Each story is articulately rendered and full of simple wonder. Sentences are crafted with care, joining to form a sonorous selection of prose. With the exception of maybe only one title, each story is of equal caliber. Also, the way the first and last stories are connected, and each story in the collection is separated by a vignette that also fits into the larger story, keeps the reader invested in a way other collections sometimes fail to do.

If there's one complaint to be made about Bad Faith, it's the abruptness of the stories' conclusions. I'm not a reader who feels the need to wrap up a story, by any means, but even I felt that the endings could be a bit jarring. It's a small thing, but some readers will make it a big thing. If you don't mind open-ended stories, there's nothing less than stellar about this collection. Having a taste of what Wheeler is capable of, I look forward to his forthcoming novel, Kings of Broken Things, due to arrive in August.