Fairy Tale Spotlight: Cold Brew [Short Story Review]

"Cold Brew" is a short story by Phox Sillanpaa. It is the sixth story in a collection called "Tales of Hayven Celestia," which was published in 2020. As I have already stated, this is a universe created by author Rick Griffin, in which he allowed many other people to write stories in.

This one was rough but well-written. It involves a geroo captain named Kris and his friend, a ringel named Seax. They are forcibly freed from their slavery to the krakun and then unfortunately forced into space pirate life until they can pay off their debt... ironically to another krakun. It's an unfair situation, but it's the life they have to deal with.

Without going into spoilers, the real difficult thing with this story was the fact that they had to do bad things while trying really hard not to. To make matters worse, some of the people on their pirate crew were not so big into doing the right thing at all. This was a situation where good people were placed in an impossibly bad situation with no clear way out.

The hardest thing about this for me was the fact that two friends could suddenly be at each others throats because the situation was forcing the worst out of them. I always take friendship trouble a little harder than most, but I am happy the author played it straight.

"Cold Brew" is a great story, but it is a difficult one to get through because of the topic at hand. Either way, I do recommend it it.

This blog was written on October 8, 2025.

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