Hugo 2020 Nominations (Best Short Story);

I was incredibly moved by this story from the first gasp of finally understanding what it was doing. The story is playing so deeply into the game of innocence and violence, morals and choices, and telling it through the point-of-view of a ten-year-old (and growing) child makes for a poignant, heartbreaking choice.

This is a story about what war does to adults, how it makes them desperate, no matter their position or vocation. This story is about the fleeting beauty of life, and how the threat of death makes it even more precious in every second, never knowing if you'll be alive the next year to see something you loved again. It's about anonymity, and poetry, and a world soaked in blood placed within the chest of a child with unwaveringly dedicated faith.

This such an important story and I'm still working my way around how to explain it without giving it away. There's such importance in the line that basically breaks down this whole short story in a summary:

It's not about right and wrong, she said to him. It's about making it hard.

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Spend a dollar, visit an alternate history where the worst weapon ever devised has a key held in the heart of a child raised to represent the death such a thing brings. In a literal way, a terrifying, poignant way. So much power in one short story. ( )

2.5 stars

At points somewhat confusing.
Unflinchingly brutal and very bleak. ( )

I was extremely moved by this story but my heart is broken after reading the author’s reason for writing it. When we live in a world where world leaders have access to weapons of mass destruction at the push of a button and drone strikes create terror in the lives of the victims while also giving a dispassionate distance to the perpetrators, this story becomes much more relevant. There are no answers here, only questions - about the consequences of war and whether we make it easy on the leaders who are making life and death decisions for millions. Very profound and well written, if ultimately devastating. ( )

A beautiful, haunting story without any easy answers. ( )