Symbios

By: J. A. Konrath

Narrated by: Luke Daniels

Bestselling author J.A. Konrath brings us a gruesome story of the depths a person will go to in order to survive.

When his deep space mission goes awry, Lieutenant Jehrico Stiles crash-lands on an unknown planet. With breathable air, drinkable water, and a friendly native species, the planet seems almost utopian. The only trouble is, Stiles is starving. The planet’s vegetation is toxic, and there’s nothing else to eat. As his hunger grows and his body weakens, his definition of edible starts to change. He discovers that sometimes survival means doing things you would rather not—and eating things that would rather not be eaten.

©2013 Joe Konrath (P)2014 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

I WAS HUNGRY

For me, in the collection of Twenty Six Horror Tales, this was my favorite. The book has a few twists, don't think you know what is going to happen. I heard this first in the collection Twenty Six Horror Tales, but I was taking a long trip with a friend and I wanted a sample of what Konrath does, without getting out the whole batch of stories. If you are just wanting to know how Konrath writes short stories, this is a good example.

Luke Daniels is unanimously great.

Conspicuous Consumption

It's an interesting idea, but bland in implementation... Variations on the idea have been done better... The allegory of resource plundering and over consumption is pretty well layered, and is a bright spot to an otherwise unremarkable story... The narration is superb and makes the read far more enjoyable than it would have normally been... Bought it on sale for less than 2 bones so won't complain overly much...

Short, and no real background.

We don't have time to like this character, and we don't see his struggle to prevent what happens. The survival instinct may be strong, but this strong? I'd rather die, why doesn't he? Which makes him unsympathetic. Finally, we needed a twist to make things right, but there is none! Wasting an opportunity, what about migratory animals appertaining, consumable to humans, and or protagonist going insane with the weight of his crimes? Given the name of this story, a grave and unforeseen consequence to his original actions? Anything ironically making what he did lead to his destruction!