The October Country

This was not my favorite work of Bradbury's. A lot of the stories in this collection fell flat or just missed their mark, and I was more eager for them to be over than I was to actually read them.

I was most disappointed by "The Small Assassin". The idea of a newborn baby actively trying to kill it's parents has a lot of potential, but the execution wasn't quite there. I was on board for the mom being increasingly unnerved by her son and the dad not really taking it seriously. The beginning was nice and creepy. But a lot of the story also had me wondering if Bradbury ever had kids. Turns out he did, and the disconnect may have just been due to different times and cultures. I wanted to connect with this story, and it never quite happened.

There were a couple of stories that I did enjoy, particularly the one about the man with wings who has given up flying until his kids turn him into a kite (in a cute way). He also makes an appearance in a different story, about a boy who just doesn't fit in with his weird family, that was also very good.

But mostly these stories were full of weird descriptions and people I didn't quite understand. It was unsettling, but not quite in the way Bradbury intended.

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