Hello everyone and welcome to the next installment in the SWM’s SPOTLIGHT series, where gems from the past, or just some very good overlooked ones, can get a chance to stand in the spotlight! (see what I did there?)

Before I continue, I want to thank Woodclaw and Lfan for giving me the chance to contribute to this series. I am amazed you find my opinions in so high regards. Thank you...

Now: This time, I got the honor of picking an overlooked gem:

A Shared Gift by Furlough

As many of you will likely notice, this story isn’t that old… Most of my, hopefully, future picks for the SPOTLIGHT series are “new” in nature due to the fact that I am “new” and haven’t digged my way through the massive archive yet! Therefore, I’ll stick to newer overlooked ones!

Anyways…

“A Shared Gift” has a good deal of things I like in this genre: Hot women, Superwomen, escalating narrative and some Omni.

Let us unpack a bit, shall we?

I like the general set-up: Main character finds a thing that starts the rest of the action. The protagonist isn’t particularly proactive in the story, mostly seeing and experiencing the changes as they come and not understanding that he is the one responsible for them before the very end. As the story progresses, we the readers, and the protagonist, get to see how the world changes, slowly getting further and further from where we started until the last great change.

IT’S SIMPLY BRILLIANT!

It’s a simple, and somewhat predictable story progression, but it just works!

The thing that really makes this story work for me, is the escalation.

The story very much plays on the idea “They are great now but what if they were better?”

It’s an idea I’ll bet many of us have had more than once in our life and this story takes it all the way to 11!

It is a bit of a slow boil before we reach the more “Super” part of the story but I think the story, and ending, is good enough to excuse the wait.

Originally, I was going to spoil a lot of what happens in the story but seeing as I already have mentioned what can be expected… I suggest you read the story for yourself.

To summarize: The writing is good, the idea is well executed and it touches on many of my soft spots. I have no real complaints beside the slow boil, which really is just nitpicking… GO READ IT ALREADY!