Promise

"Promise is one of the most enjoyable collections of short stories that I have read recently. Like Bradbury, there is not always a lot of hope to be found, but certainly a lot to think about."

"If you like creepy sci-fi, I highly recommend Promise."

"This collection of weird science fiction stories certainly lived up to its ‘promise’. Every story was strange, unsettling and had interesting commentary on what it is to be human… or not human, as the case may be!"

"Promise is a creative, poignant, and very human science fiction and science fantasy collection."

"I like short stories, and I like these short stories. They’re easy to digest, varied and often playful... though invariably with a hint of darkness."

"Quoting the last line of the last story in Promise by Christi Nogle does not, cannot, count as a spoiler because, as that hanging sentence informs us: it does not end. The stories gathered here may promise much, but resolution is not part of the deal.

And that, I think, is the point. Christi Nogle’s stories conduct us insistently towards the precipice, but it is up to us to step over the edge."

"With her recent Stoker win for Beulah, Nogle’s star is on the rise. Promise shows she’s a master of the short story as well—both horror and sci-fi, usually both at once. That’s another of Promise’s strengths: Nogle’s wizard at a combination of sci-fi and horror—a trick that often falls flat in the wrong hands."

"Promise is a collection of strange and often open-ended tales that are fascinating, hypnotic and make you ponder. Well worth a look if you enjoy the more experimental side of science fiction."

"Like all the great fabulists of the past, Nogle weaves the real and fantastic to create moody tableaus of unreality that are equal parts heartfelt and strange. Her stories ask big questions in small spaces, because this is where the human heart resides."

"PROMISE is a collection filled with surreal, dream-like, whispered tales that read like thread unspooling and a spindle waiting to prick and wake us—the shocking sting from a scorpion’s tail. Nogle weaves together strange musings that infect and reveal the uncanniness of the human body that makes us feel uncomfortable in our own skin."

"Nogle writes of technology and strange science and horrific futures, of the all too human propensity to turn dreams into strife and heartbreak. She conveys vast universes in terse, pristine prose with tales that roam the imagination and haunt like a spirit contemplating humanity's place in this world. Uncanny speculative fiction enriched with poetic beauty, the stories Nogle creates are both familiar and alien, as mysterious and illuminating as the Voyager's Golden Records as perused through the eyes of a non-human intelligence. An astounding collection."

"There's a melancholy underneath every Nogle story, a creeping dread willing to fill any absence it can find. Promise is an exploration of our strange futures all tethered to this unmistakable voice, one that will guide you home through the void it knows all too well."

"Beautifully written tales of the strange possible futures threatening to impinge on us. By turns strange and tender, Nogle's weird SF captures that feeling of disorientation that is at the heart of what it means to be (or to try to be) human in a transforming, damaged world and in all the worlds adjacent to it."

"PROMISE more than delivers on its premise: weird science fiction. Like many of the characters within the included stories, you’ll find more slithering in shadowy corners, and at the edge of your peripheral, than initially meets the eye. Christi’s voice is wholly unique and shines equally during extraordinary moments of despair, love, yearning, curiosity… and beyond. Don’t wait for some glowing orb or anatomically-correct android to deliver the message telepathically; listen to me: pick up this collection today."