A much more solid short story collection by Ford than the Drown Life, in my opinion.The Annals of Elin-Ok***Jupiter's skull ***A night in the tropics ***The Empire of ice cream *****The Beautiful Gelreesh ***Botch Town ** (I didn't finish it as it was too rambling nd episodic, it could be that it coheres at the end, but I don't have that much patience)

More like 3.5, and I might someday raise that to 4. Very good stories, with the first, "The Annals of Eelin-Ok," particularly standing out on my first pass through the book. (I'm sure I'll be coming back to it.)

Another fantastic collection by Jeffrey Ford. The title story, about synesthesia, is phenomenal. I preferred the stories with mythic themes, such as "Boatman's Holiday" and "The Green Word," but the writing style and surreal twists make each story powerful in its own way.

Pretty great collection of short stories. The title story and The Annals of Eelin-Ok are particularly good.

The very first story in this collection ROCKS! Worth it for this one alone!

Great collection, as usual from Mr Ford. Whimsical, scary, unsettling, funny. Title story is a classic, but I think the Annals of Eelin-Ook was my favourite.

Why did I pick up Jeffrey Ford? Because he came with stellar reviews by Jonathan Carroll.I read “The Girl in the Glass,” a novel by Ford, several months ago. It was good, but not blow-your-mind. So, I had taken his other books off my wishlist. However, someone had already picked up a copy of “Empire of Ice Cream,” a collection of his short stories, and I was gifted it shortly thereafter.And really? Ford is definitely in his element with the short story. Carroll’s intro explains it best: “One of

Wonderful stories. Almost five stars, but I hung back because a couple of stories didn't resonate as strongly. I picked this up after reading the eponymous short story for TAW book club. It's an excellent, award-winning story: if you don't read the whole book, I highly recommend finding a copy of the story online. A couple of the stories really snuck up on me. I thought the first story was clever up until I found myself crying at the end. "Jupiter's Skull", "A Night in The Tropics" and "Boatman'...

Another marvelous collection of stories from multiple award-winning Ford, The Empire of Ice Cream assembles 14 tales published between 2002 and 2006. Central to it is the novella "Botch Town," which became the basis of the novel The Shadow Year--winner of the 2008 Shirley Jackson Award. My favorite stories in the collection were the title piece, "Boatman's Holiday," "A Man of Light," and "The Weight of Words." While I'm not quite as enamored of the more hallucinatory tales ("The Beautiful Gelree...

This is a fantasy/slipstream short story collection. Some great stories in this one, but not all of the resonated with me. I have a further review on the Electric Spec blog.

This is my first real encounter with Jeffrey Ford. I wound up picking up the book because of the title. Overall I'm finding his writing to be dense and a lot of exposition, which makes my eyes tire quicker. Slower going with his collection than with some I'm reading.The Annals of Eelin-Ok--Perhaps my favorite whimsical offering so far. A creative and charming look into the life of an imaginary creature that Ford manages to conjure up clearly enough to feel real.Jupiter's Skull--mostly felt this

Uneven by comparison with Ford's sensational first collection, The Fantasy Writer's Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream nevertheless contains more hits than misses. The title story, Botch Town, and The Annals of Eelin-Ok all received awards, and deserved them. The Trentino Kid, an uncharacteristic venture into traditional supernatural horror, is also splendidly effective; A Night in the Tropics dares to employ the hoary 'thief steals cursed object' plot premise, and gets away with it. In both of

Not as strong as his other collections but the title story, boatmans holiday, a man of light and a night at the tropics were all very good. Botch town is the original version of the shadow year.

I guess I'm givin' this one a 4.5 in reality. I can't give you anything concrete that I disliked or that threw me, and Ii did like this anthology a little more than his drowned life copulation. BUT and it's a medium Jennifer Lopez Butt, I didn't really click with some of the stories and found myself going back and forth between it and a novel I started.Well after writing this I felt I was letting the book down somewhat. I went skimming back through the pages and found that on the whole I did enj...

This is a beautifully written collection of a wide range of fantasy stories. A few of the stories take us to strange worlds inhabited by fascinating creatures. One of my favorites was "The Annals of Eelin-Ok," a tale about faries who live in sandcastles. Most of the stories, however, take our world and put a slight fantasy twist to it. The last story in the collection, "The Trentino Kid," shows us a blue collar world of clamming, hard work, a struggle to find meaning in life.What made this such

It takes me much longer to finish short story compilations than it does to finish regular novels. I suspect that the reason for this is that I like having time to absorb and think over a story after I've finished it. While this took me longer than other books that I was reading alongside it to finish, I really loved it. This is my introduction to Jeffrey Ford's work, and I cannot wait to read some of his other stories. Right when I thought that I had found my favorite story, I would read another...

I enjoyed this book. Very imaginative, very different, but after a while the author's writing style became a little repetitive (he recycles story structure). Highlights include "The Annals of Eilin-Oik," "Boatman's Holiday," "The Beautiful Gelreesh," and of course "The Empire of Ice Cream." The "Empire of Ice Cream" was one of the most intriguing short stories I've read in a long while.

A well-regarded collection. I've read and liked the title story, which is "about a man, a composer, with synesthesia. Coffee ice cream causes him to conjure a young woman who is also an artist and a synesthesiac. The story comes to a predictable but still quite satisfying and moving conclusion." I'm cribbing the description from Rich Horton, whose review is the one to read: https://rrhorton.blogspot.com/2018/11...Better still, the collection is all of $2 at Amazon!

This is Golden Gryphon book 44.

For personal reasons, I found The Empire of Ice Cream to be a fascinating and haunting read, one of my favorite books of recent times. I don't know of any other fiction that deals so directly with synaesthesia, and if Ford doesn't have that condition himself, he sure knows how to write about it. The early parts of this book, in which the narrator carefully describes his condition, are gripping and bound to be intriguing to even those who don't have that bizarre neurological condition. Halfway th...