“She poured the dregs of the coffee over his boots with some contempt and walked out.”
I’m a fan of strong female characters, vengeance stories, and weird westerns so this suited me down to my toes!
I loved the world-building and will be reading more stories of The Line.
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik ★★★★★
Female-powered non-anti semitic version of Rumpelstiltskin was a winner. I’m so glad I have the full version just waiting for my attention on the shelf!
Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar ★★★★ ½
“I’m often amazed by the things we are willing to endure that we would never allow our loved ones to suffer, and the double standard that governs the stories we tell ourselves.”
And the ladies save each other in this one...
Special thanks to all my friends that recommend this story because without your praise I would have DNF’d; the beginning was drudgery.
In the Desert Like a Bone by Seanan McGuire ★★★★☆
A revenge story with lyrical style, it reminded me of Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne Valente.
Even The Crumbs Were Delicious by Daryl Gregory ★★★★☆
That was a heck of first line!
These are the kind of fairytale rewrites I enjoy; modern reworkings of villains and heroes.
The fringe members of society, witches, thieves, stoners, are shown to care more about each other, and the abused children, than their acceptable nuclear family.
I feel there is this huge fear today about helping children in bad situations. Just opening your home to share a meal could have you “burned at the stake” by society.
Contrary to twenty season of Law & Order: SVU not everyone is a pedophile. Some people just want to help.
Reflected by Kat Howard ★★★★☆
I first ‘met’ Kat Howard in The Very Fabric and was mesmerized by her imagination. Since then I’ve read other short stories, collaborations, and 2017s glittering, magical, Gossip Girl: An Unkindness of Magicians.
Reflected, while not my favorite, is very Kat Howard: magic, bright powerful women, and heart.
Read The Very Fabric for yourself: https://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/summer_2014/the_very_fabric_by_kat_howard
It’s the brown lesbians (no cultural context) with agency version of Sleeping Beauty. I quite liked the clever possessed-by-a-witch angle.
The moral of the story is that fathers who forbid their daughters from entering a library get what they get.
And it was too long, way too long.
Well, that was a strange story about appreciating your friends and family.
The author states the original is strange and bleak. Guess I’ll stick to this version.
Some Wait by Stephen Graham Jones ★★★½☆
“Theo Vance’s splotchy skin, it was from a pesticide spill that happened in the barn... all our arms and faces are starting to show the same patchwork lately - we’re marked.”
The Pied Piper reimagined as eco-horror; a reminder that we are stealing our children’s future with our unsustainable lifestyle.
An important message, but neither the best nor worst I’ve read from SGJ.
Giants in the Sky by Max Gladstone ★★★☆☆
A solid story with a shaky beginning. At some point part of humanity took a space elevator up and left the rest to their own devices.
It felt like a dark sequel to Walkaway. Like all our friends uploaded, or went exploring, or both, and left the surface to default, to the zottas and their wars.
The Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub and the White-Footed Gazelle by Sofia Samatar ★★★☆☆
“Somebody has to pay. There’s always an animal, a wonderfully absorbent material, capable of sopping up an ocean of cruelty.”
The reality of that sentence, literary and otherwise, makes me shudder and cry.
This was less an original story than a book report. The author wants to bring attention to newly translated medieval stories that she feels are as relevant and entertaining as A Thousand and One Nights.
Fair play to her for summarizing, analyzing, and drawing interest towards what sounded like a long story of pain, love, mistakes, overreactions, travel, and magic.
The Other Thea by Theodora Goss ★★★☆☆
This was a very good episode of some show on Nickelodeon. A young witch had her shadow ripped from her by her conservative grandmother to neuter her rebellious urges.
Now a woman, Thea must find her shadow or die.
I’m a big fan of Theodora Goss and I think she did well with this short YA, I’m just not into YA.
Familiaris by Genevieve Valentine ★★ ½ ☆☆
Yes, it absolutely sucked to be a woman in a classic fairytale. You’re damned if you go along, you’re a villain if you show some agency.
A better version of this type of “mixed media” story was The Mere Wife.
My review of The Mere Wife: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2545211040?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1
Badgirl, The Deadman, and The Wheel of Fortune by Cartherynne M. Valente ★★☆☆☆
Devastating story of a little girl sold to a drug dealer by her heroine addict father.
No reprieve.
No happy ending.
Pearl by Aliette de Bodard ★★☆☆☆
“He thinks of the remoras’ hopes for the future, and of the things that parents pass on to their children, and makers to their creations.”
This could have been a charming story of a little robot, built by robots, who becomes a daring explorer and parent to a new generation of artificial intelligence.
But it was weighed down by a negative human POV of greed, selfishness, and ambition.
The choppy time jumps didn’t help either.
The Thousand Eyes by Jeffrey Ford ★☆☆☆☆
Twice I fell asleep reading the first two pages.
Twice.
The third time I gritted my teeth and, two more narcoleptic lapses, finished this thirteen page story in two hours.
You can take your dead Cheers, your whispers, and your paint and shove them up your pen.
Underground by Karin Tidbeck ★☆☆☆☆
After escaping her rapist’s underground dungeon what does Karin Tidbeck think a woman should do?
A) Go seek punishment for her rapist/captor and help for herself
B) Seek self-help
C) Risk her life to help her rapist
Tidbeck chose C which is why I chose one star. No amount of gender power dynamics or good writing could save that choice.
And yes, I did read the authors note.
Yes, I agree the original fairytale was disturbing.
Tidbeck made it worse.
When I Lay Frozen by Margo Lanagan DNF
I wasn’t grasping this story. At first I thought the MC was a spider, which was interesting. But friends comments suggested otherwise so I must have missed quite a lot, lol. Pass.
That’s a wrap! I read 17/18 stories for an average of 3.2.
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