The Silvered by Tanya Huff

The Silvered

3/5. Tanya Huff in her taking self seriously mode, as opposed to my personal preference, her oh fuck it all, let's have fun shame is for the weak mode. Which is annoying, because as usual with Huff, I read this while sick, and let's just say that taking self seriously Huff is not what I'm looking for at that juncture.

This is some standard magic and werewolves in fantasy war scenario, with some bonus torture porn that I really did not appreciate, and, well. It's funny how, even when she is not writing about bestiality, Huff manages to write about bestiality, y'know? Y'know. Like, no bestiality appears on these pages! And yet you are clearly supposed to be going there in your head every ten seconds. I'd much rather she'd just written it herself, as she clearly likes to do.

I guess what I'm circling around saying here is that taking self seriously Huff doesn't think shame is for the weak, and it shows. Her taking self seriously books are always kind of flat to me, weirdly constrained, weirdly stiff. Like those boring space marines books. None of the joy or kinky don't give a fuckness of her not taking self seriously books.

I know which I prefer.

Sisters of the Revolution

Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology

4/5. I backed this collection on Kickstarter and got an early release copy. Took me a while to get through it, though, so it seems to be out now.

The introduction to this collection specifically notes it is not intended to be a full survey. Which it isn't, and shouldn't be. It's just unfortunate that – and I knew this going in – the Vandermeers and I have very different tastes. They really like the Weird and the surreal, and I often don't. I spent the full first third of this collection sighing a lot in boredom and complaining to my wife about stories whose entire purpose is to turn women into thematically significant animals or objects. You know the sort of thing. It's not my thing. Those of you who do enjoy it, I wish you well of it.

Anyway, I still enjoyed this, and do recommend it. This introduced me to a lot of authors I was only peripherally aware of before, and made me think. Some brief story notes on a few pieces that jump out as I look back.

Ursula K. Le Guin, "Sur" – One of my favorites. Tale of the women who were secretly first to reach the South Pole. Beautiful and restrained and warm and cold at the same time.

Susan Palwick, "Gestella" – This story of a werewolf aging at a different rate than her (misogynist) husband was the most viscerally upsetting in the whole collection, to my mind. I almost didn't read the last page, but ultimately made myself. I owed it to the protagonist.

Nalo Hopkinson, "The Glass Bottle Trick" – A Bluebeard story, told, frighteningly, from within his home.

Joanna Russ, "When It Changed" – Another version of 'men arriving into a society of all women.' And a good one. Not particularly subtle, but the thing is it needed to be unsubtle, because the patriarchal assumptions it is pushing against are too pervasive for many readers to see around without a lot of help.

Octavia E. Butler, "The Evening the Morning and the Night" – Hm. I had a lot of issues with this story of living with impending disability, and ultimately I shook my head over it. But I was engaged, I'll give it that.

Hiromi Goto, "Tales from the Breast" – One of the few Weird stories that really worked for me. Hallucinatory and disturbing story of post delivery and breastfeeding.

Carol Emschwiller, "Boys" – Hm. Sort of interesting (post apocalyptic? Unclear) story of a gender-separated society, that gets less interesting the more I think about it, because the more I think about it the more I realize the story doesn't work unless you base it on a lot of gender essentialist assumptions before the first word was in place. Which might have been part of her point. Or not. Also unclear.