Kalpa Imperial

the greatest empire that never was

246 pages

English language

Published Dec. 24, 2003 by Small Beer Press.

ISBN:
978-1-931520-05-8
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OCLC Number:
52743026

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3 stars (1 review)

«Oh, sí, mis buenas gentes, sí, ya lo creo que sí. Se puede vivir en el sur. Y morir también. Y se puede nacer, y crecer y aprender y matar y sufrir en el sur. ¿Ustedes conocen el sur? ¿Han entrado a ese país vedado y tentador? ¿Han ido al paraíso de los monstruos, al antro de los asesinos, al reino de la barbarie? ¿Conocen a las gentes del sur? ¿Se han acostado con sus mujeres, han bebido con sus hombres, han escuchado a sus ancianos?». Obra ganadora de los premios Poblet y Gigamesh.

3 editions

Kalpa Imperial

3 stars

This book is the October/November #SFFBookClub book. It's a collection of stories about an empire that has fallen and been rebuilt multiple times, each focusing on a very different place and time, and each told with a narrated fable-like style. One stylistic choice that stands out immediately is that the sentence structure is quite long and there are often comically long lists of names or places or ideas or things or professions or or or... I found this to be overall a delight, personally.

This may be due to expectations that I had going into this, but the stories in this novel felt loose and disconnected. This is especially due to coming off collections of short stories like How High We Go in the Dark or even North Continent Ribbon, which interconnect the stories together with shared characters or worldbuilding. Kalpa Imperial had very few touchpoints between stories other …