I usually really like things spelled out nice and clear for me, I hate open-ended endings. So it's pretty surprising to me that I LOVED this short story, because its a puzzle with no one right solution! I felt like I had the mystery figured out to my satisfaction, and I really appreciated the dreamy and confused atmosphere the author had created.This story reminded me of three other stories:1. The Buffy episode "Normal Again," in which Buffy exists both in the regular BtVS world, and a "normal"

I really enjoyed the writing style of Insects of Love. The story itself wasn't really my thing, though. The timeline and alternate reality jumps made piecing together the story difficult, and there is absolutely no resolution. By the end, there isn't even any indication given for which sequence of events was the real one, or if they were all just imagined. And that's kind of the point of the story, but good lord was it confusing.So if stories like that appeal to you, you'll probably enjoy it.Mak...

Read this on Tor.com.I quite enjoyed the story about an entomologist and the entomologist's sister who disappears. The story contains insects, tattoos, and mystery.Not all questions are answered in this thought provoking story. My quest to read more by this wonderful author continues.

Rating: 0-1 / 5So...um....it's about insects?Well, I wanted that and only that, I'd go elsewhere to get a good story. This is an example of what I would call a boring story with insect themes.But, there are other ways to get insect-related entertainment: ask Japan!

"(I did know. She’ll meet Michael in thirteen years, if my count is right, but in this memory I never know if time is moving at the same rate as it is in the other ones, depending on which life we’re leading; maybe she meets him in twelve.)"

The Insects of Love is a novelette following an entomologist as she looks for her dead sister... maybe.Reading reviews of this is almost as interesting as reading the novelette itself, because it's the kind of story about which you can draw completely different conclusions depending on how you look at it; it's also the kind of story that makes you put together increasingly weird theories about what's actually happening as you go on. It's barely grounded and you could question everything, as you

Tor-Tor baby ;).This one is pretty sciency... I couldn't make out what was going on a few times because there are so many scientific bug facts swarming around in Valentine's prose here. If I loved bugs and cultural peculiarities to them I would probably have loved this. As it was I felt very The Butterfly Effect about it all. While being very factual, it is also reads a bit like a dream sequence.... in this way it threw me for a loop. Of course, this isn't necessarily a bad thing.BUGS!

This story jumps around, and you never really know the full history of what happened. The narrator doesn't know either as she keeps wondering if her memories are true or if things are really happening to her. I didn't follow the story very well, but I did love the imagery.

I have read and loved stories that raised questions which are left unanswered. This was not one of them. Possibly because I wasn't expecting this kind of story, I think the premise would have been better utilised in the mystery/crime genre, with the tattoo and the letters written by the sister who disappeared really were clues for the other sister to find her. But perhaps Genevieve Valentine was not that kind of author.And instead we get this sci-fi/fantasy novelette that tells of several possib...

I read this story for free here http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/05/th...I think this may be one I have to read multiple times to really understand it. There seems to be multiple streams of thought in the one story which makes it slightly confusing.I'll update this review when I read it about 10 more times!

I chose this shortie for that beautiful cover. And damn, isn't it something?And then when I was about to start, I looked for some friend reviews and found that 5 of my friends rated it a very "meh" 3 stars.But not being a quitter, I continued anyway. And after reading my friends' reviews, I discovered that all of them found it "meh" because of 1. Bugs2. Lack of answers3. Floral prose4. Dream sequences5. So going into this story knowing that I may be let down, probably actually made me search for...

Tears always sting me. Kids who grow up in dry places aren’t supposed to waste water.i didn't really get this one.i registered the recurring motifs and where she megaphones her own linguistic playfulness, but between the time shifts and/or alternate realities and the structural gimmicks and the somewhat strained insect analogies, for me it's all too much static masking the narrative. it's got an inconsistent and disjointed flow - the story seems really excited to drop a lot of detailed informati...

Free online Tor novelette. There are bugs. Lots of bugs. And (very large) tattoos of bugs. And a mystery about a disappearing sister, and some sibling rivalry, and some more insects. There's also some lovely dream-like imagery and a lot of shifting around in time.What there aren't, are answers of any kind. Why did the sister disappear? What happened to her? Why is the other sister so confused about time? And what is the deal with this crazy time-shifting stuff anyway?If anyone can give me a cohe...

Rarely do I read something and finish without understanding the plot, which is why this novelette was kind of frustrating, and I actually searched reviews to see if anyone could explain to me what just happened. But after reading the goodreads' reviews, no one else knows either! However, the prose is lovely, and I was sucked into what was happening, even though I never figured out what that was.

This novelette is like a balancing act: there is no linear narrative and many questions are left unanswered, and nevertheless as a reader I didn't feel lost and I could visualize what was going on. This is the story of an entomologyst, her disappeared sister who may have had very specific reasons for getting a certain tatto on her back, and the sister's fiancé, another entomologyst. Several types of insects and their uses are intertwined in the story in a way that reminded me of A.S. Byatt's Ang...

Everything about an insect tells you what it is.Soraya is a "champion of the insects." She understands their habits and inner workings, but the human race remains a mystery. Now, her sister Fairuz has disappeared, and Soraya will risk everything to find her. This is beautifully organic story that seems to answer none of its own questions. Science, nature, a government conspiracy, sibling rivalry and undying love all mix together, but the tale just didn't grab me. Another Tor freebie - http://www...

Though the story seemed pretty intriguing, I've found it hard to keep up and understand it, due to the way it was narrated. The information about the insects was a nice touch though. The ending, however, was confusing.

Then we’re walking together, and I know already that something is wrong, that someday I’ll need to remember this and I won’t, that something is slipping away I’ll never get back. This is such a deeply confusing and utterly compelling story, composed in a dream-sequence way. I've read it twice now and I am convinced it's my favourite short story ever.

An entomologist seeks her missing sister, who disappeared in the midst of a top-secret government mission. There seems to be some kind of time-slippage happening... or possibly alternate realities.This is beautifully written, and I loved how it was developing... but it ended abruptly, and felt a bit unsatisfying.

As other readers have pointed out, the prose couldn't carry this short story through the jumbled narrative. With more pages, this might have made more sense and purpose. This way, only the relationship of the two sisters made some sense, while the character Michael was a discordant "extra" whose purpose was unclear. Without Michael, this might have been much better.