Omelas Revisited

By: C. S. Johnson

Narrated by: Sophia Kasem

Could you live a perfect life, knowing someone else took on all your pain and despair?

Skyla has always lived a perfect, happy life - just like everyone in her community. Even if there are brief moments where she is certain she has experienced pain and regret, those moments are brief and quickly forgotten.

But when Aiden, Skyla’s next-door neighbor, reveals the truth of the community and their perfect lives, Skyla is faced with an unexpected choice regarding her future.

Will her actions lead her community to a better life? Or will she doom them all?

Join Skyla and Aiden in this thought-provoking novella inspired by Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

©2021 C. S. Johnson (P)2021 Christina Johnson

A good novella

I have not read Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" but I know the basis of the story and the utopian/dystopian plot. Also, having read stories like "The Giver" series by Lois Lowry, I am primed for my first C.S. Johnson novella.

Johnson does a great job in a short amount of space setting up absolutely everything you need to know if you had no clue about LeGuin's parent book. You get to know the characters and who they are to their world and to the inner rebels they are. I'm not looking for soliloquies and existential pondering fleshed out fully in this short work of fiction. But there is enough meat to provide a great conversation on other stories in this world or even to pick up the original story. The young characters make an attempt of an idealic solution to the main drama of the story while also allowing the naivete young love allows for. The story gets you in and gets you out with good and proper storytelling - and like all good authors make you want more - even if that means tying up a kid for the good of all readers. I think that was the moral of the story, right?

Will definitely be checking out more of C.S. Johnson's work. Final Grade - A-