The idea of a participant in a “live” tv show is nothing new and has been done both in the past with the excellent Running Man written by Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman and more recently The Hunger Games. Revolver attempts to be a political statement using the persona of Cara Jones as a downtrodden political animal who has one last chance (or more importantly her family as she will not come out of this alive, hence the revolver) to bequeath wealth by appearing on a nationwide reality television show. It would appear the more abuse, revelations personal anguish and confrontations she can expose will result in positive votes and an increase in her dollar value. Of course all this comes at a price and the viewing public will only expect one final bloody outcome! If this short story is an attempt to make some type of statement on behalf of womankind then it is totally lost on me, I thought the writing and the idea (which is certainly not original) utterly irrelevant and a total waste of my (albeit) limited reading time.

Because I cannot in good conscience choose a story from an anthology I was a part of, I must fallback on my second choice for Best Novella 2015. 

And the award goes to...

Revolver, by Michael Patrick Hicks.

In case you're wondering, my favorite novella of the year (and my favorite work from Gregor Xane period) is Loving the Goat, from the collection Dead Roses. Had I not been a part of that collection, his would be the obvious winner. This should not detract from Hicks's stellar outing. I read over twenty novellas this year, and Hicks got second place over the likes of Stephen King and Kealan Patrick Burke.

Let it also be known that I know Michael Patrick Hicks. We follow each other on social media sites and chat every once and awhile. I didn't choose his book because of this. I chose his book because of how accurately it captured the current state and future of America.

It's rare that I read a book that is so realistic that it scares me. With our current political landscape, medical rights being removed from women, religion trumping democracy, and the current debates regarding gun control, this short story is becoming more and more relevant every day.

People will either love it or hate it, either seeing the realism of what our country is currently moving toward, or refusing to see the truth around them. Either way, this is a well-written story told by an author who has stripped the blinders off and has the courage to show a future that people won't want to see.

Like Cara, we have a choice in our future. I view this story as a wake-up call: if we ignore what is going on around us, we could someday find ourselves in Cara's shoes.

I felt like this short story was over the top politically, even though I generally agree with the points it makes. It's more effective to show the world you're writing about and let the reader make up his/her own mind than to beat us over the head with a political agenda. It also was so reminiscent of the recent WDBJ shootings that reading it made me a bit queasy. It's well-written and quite well-edited for a self-published work. I only noticed one error--a taught/taut homophone mistake. I'm certainly not sad that I spent 99 cents and forty minutes of my time on it, but I can't recommend it wholeheartedly, either.