Rating: 
Summary: Publishers Weekly on EXTREMITIES
Review: "Daring... In these stories, Koja uses her considerable gift for sensory description to real purpose... She creates characters on and over the edges of madness, self-destruction and sexual obsession." -- 9/14/98
Rating: 
Summary: I bought this one for my wife ...
Review: ... and she was polite enough to read half of it. One night, we were reading together and she could not keep it in anymore. She felt that Extremities was written with way too much focus on verbose descriptions. The focus on environment and surroundings made Extremities never scare her or even intrigue her. I read a couple stories from it, too. I can honestly say that the author seems really close to writing something good in her stories, but that they all lack that "certain something". This book is probably best enjoyed by true enthusiasts of this genre; otherwise, it is quite boring.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic...
Review: ...utterly fantastic. Koja is so creative, it frightens me. The premise of these stories are so dark it makes me happy to read the next short story. (I usually cannot stand short stories collections.) At the very lesat, you should get this book for my favorite, "The Neglected Garden."
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic...
Review: ...utterly fantastic. Koja is so creative, it frightens me. The premise of these stories are so dark it makes me happy to read the next short story. (I usually cannot stand short stories collections.) At the very lesat, you should get this book for my favorite, "The Neglected Garden."
Rating:
Summary: An excellent collection of a great writer.
Review: EXTREMITIES is a collection of 14 reprints and 2 originals. All are excellent. These are mostly tales of fantasy with a dash of internal psychodrama thrown in to concoct a potion so alluring that I read the whole collection in one sitting. Koja has a way of spitting out a simple scene and taking it to it's totally unexpected ends. For example, "The Neglected Garden": a husband wants to divorce his wife, she doesn't want to, so she impales herself on the back fence and the husband watches as days go by. Simple enough premise, right? But what's inside these two characters, how do they cope with one's "suicide" so public, what happens when a neighbor or friend sees her? That's the magic of Koja's writing...always wanting to know "what next?". Another tale, "Bird Superior" asks, "What if a plane crash survivor is given the "gift" of flight? How would you deal with it? Could you handle it? Koja looks at it and the conclusion is mind-bending. These are but 2 examples of Kathe Koja's artistry in the short form. A great introduction to those of you have heard of, but not yet undertaken a Koja novel. To Koja fans like myself, this is a treat of the mind and soul. Highest Recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent collection of a great writer.
Review: EXTREMITIES is a collection of 14 reprints and 2 originals. All are excellent. These are mostly tales of fantasy with a dash of internal psychodrama thrown in to concoct a potion so alluring that I read the whole collection in one sitting. Koja has a way of spitting out a simple scene and taking it to it's totally unexpected ends. For example, "The Neglected Garden": a husband wants to divorce his wife, she doesn't want to, so she impales herself on the back fence and the husband watches as days go by. Simple enough premise, right? But what's inside these two characters, how do they cope with one's "suicide" so public, what happens when a neighbor or friend sees her? That's the magic of Koja's writing...always wanting to know "what next?". Another tale, "Bird Superior" asks, "What if a plane crash survivor is given the "gift" of flight? How would you deal with it? Could you handle it? Koja looks at it and the conclusion is mind-bending. These are but 2 examples of Kathe Koja's artistry in the short form. A great introduction to those of you have heard of, but not yet undertaken a Koja novel. To Koja fans like myself, this is a treat of the mind and soul. Highest Recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Merely a bad dream
Review: For me, the short stories' lack of "story" was fatal. I did not enjoy it. That aside, a dark picture is well painted.
Rating: 
Summary: Overwritten "High Brow" Emptiness
Review: I've noticed that there are basically two types of horror fiction: stories with easily-readable prose that are mostly concerned with telling the story (Bentley Little, Richard Laymon, Dean Koontz) and stories--mostly written by women, who knows why--that require a lot of effort to decipher due to their so-called literary merits. This collection falls into the latter category. If you stripped each tale down to its basic story elements, you'd be left with almost nothing. Reading these stories was, for me, like doing hard, sweaty labor for minimum wage--it just ain't worth it! I honestly have to wonder how many people read this stuff for enjoyment and how many read it to be part of some "scene". I read all categories of fiction, not just horror, but I can always count on the horror field to produce some of the best examples of awful, overwritten prose. This collection may just be the finest example yet.
Rating:
Summary: Astute and Thought-Provoking
Review: It was so nice to read a collection of stories by an author with a truly original voice and style. Ms. Koja meshes prose and poetry to create a complex - yet unimperious - flow. I read this book quite some time ago, and I can still remember each story that comprised it vividly. That is the tattoo of a talented author. My favorite stories were, by far, "Waking the Prince" and "Lady Lazarus", a wicked memorial to Sylvia Plath if there ever was one. Although some of the stories were better than others, it seemed to me that each story served as an integral part of the eerie-riddled beauty that Ms. Koja meant to create.
Rating:
Summary: A Brain-tingling collection
Review: It's a ahame that so many of Kathe Koja's books appear to be out-of-print. As somewhat of a horror officiando, I truely found these stories to be some of the most stimulating and STRANGE that I have read. I consider this collection to rank right up there with my favorite author, Clive Barker. I was even able to get my husband (who thinks my literary preferences leave something to be desired) to read the second tale, "The Neglected Garden", and HE LIKED IT! A must for everyone's collection!
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