Book Review: There is a Rio Grande in Heaven

"There is a Rio Grande in Heaven" is a short story compilation from the LatinX perspective. The plots cover everything from the Mayan fall to the conquistadors to dystopian science fiction to the life of a boy escaping violence in El Salvador. Some stories are poignant, some are funny, and some are just disturbing (but in a good way)

Mr. Reyes has found a nice balance for his scene-setting. He gives enough details to pull you in but doesn't deposit any Tolkien-esque info-dumps of exposition. I would liken it to Steinbeck, who used scene description to inform the reader of the MC's mindset.

My only criticisms, which aren't dire, are that 1) I felt one or two of the stories could have been tighter, and 2) the pagination was frustrating. The title pages and first text for each story were unnumbered, making keeping track of the pages somewhat challenging. Yes, I know that has nothing to do with the writing, but it irked me, okay?

But seriously, this was, overall, a solid compilation.