Battleborn
Nevada stories: miners, gamblers, survivalists. Watkins writes the desert like it's a character with a grudge.
Ten stories share one register: relentless sadness and doom, with the desert grinding down another miner, gambler, or runaway in the same key each time. The Diggings, a Gold Rush novella some readers find page-turning, strikes others as a structural outlier that doesn't belong with the rest. Watkins hasn't mastered endings yet, several say, with stories cutting off abruptly rather than resolving, and confusing tense shifts pull readers out mid-scene, one complaining “wandering verb tense makes me tense.” A reader sums up the fatigue: “ten sad stories, with no huge variation, all utterly humourless,” while another calls the collection “exceptional technique, but curiously absent of heart.” More than one reader admits finishing “out of obligation” rather than pleasure.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
