PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksNew Micro edited by James Thomas and Robert Scotellaro, collects 135 stories of fewer than 300 words written by 89 different authors. The diversity makes the experience of reading it rather like approaching a series of tide pools and dipping one’s face into one long enough to see the features of the world inside then coming up for a quick taste of air before plunging into the next. In between each pool, seawater clings to the skin like the liquid essence of storytelling itself. As such, the book is most suitable for brief dips, though the ambitious reader may feel the urge to swim shore to shore in one go ... Some stories in the collection display too clearly the machinations of the author’s hand — a danger, perhaps, of a form with such formal limitations. In others that underwhelm, stylistic elements are overbearing despite the stories’ slightness or words are too few to flesh out a plot and bring characters to life. To be left wanting more from a work of microfiction is a sign that its essence hasn’t carried off the page. Yet even these failures sparked questions about what makes a story work, which is useful — a success of a different kind.