lightreads

Get in Trouble: Stories

4/5. Specfic short stories. The first time I read Kelly Link years ago, I found her fuckin' weird to the point of incomprehensibility, and I liked it. Now I read her and I find her fuckin' weird just barely to the point of comprehensibility, and it's still great. I don't know if she changed her style or I became a more complex reader – both, probably – but it's still working for me.

One of the stories in this collection, "I Can See Right Through You," is available to read online. It's not my favorite from the collection, but it gives an entirely accurate sense of what she does and how: pop cultural commentary that almost fools you by pretending to be obvious, until you think about it a little bit and go wait . . . what the fuck? You can also read the opening story "The Summer People" online. I kept trying to reduce this story to a class metaphor, because yeah, it's totally doing that, but let's be real, that's the least of what it's doing.

My favorite story in this collection isn't available online, unfortunately. That would be "Secret Identity," the story of a teenaged girl at a hotel where a superhero convention and a dentist convention are taking place. She's there to meet her internet boyfriend, who thinks she's in her thirties. I'm making this sound tiresome, but it's actually about refrigerators and sidekicks and users and dentists and it's freakin amazing, okay.

And then there's "Origin Story," the one about the woman meeting her superhero boyfriend in an old theme park, and "Light," about the woman with a twin born out of her shadow and pocket universes and mystery sleepers and hurricanes, and and and.

Labor Day: Birth Stories for the Twenty-first Century: Thirty Artful, Unvarnished, Hilarious, Harrowing, Totally True Tales by Eleanor Henderson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


For context, I should note that my response to this collection probably has a lot to do with the fact that I read two-thirds of it while repeatedly slamming my head into the emotional brick wall that is a stubborn breech baby. So in one respect, this collection was helpful because pretty much any group of birth stories, in the aggregate, will be all about how this shit doesn't go to plan. It just doesn't. It is peripherally comforting to remember that, as one's plans crumble around one's ears.

On the other hand. This is a collection of stories of singleton births and twin births; births in the hospital, at home, the birth center, the car; births after miscarriage; births after infertility; births of well babies and sick babies and at least one dead baby; complicated births and easy births; medically mismanaged births; traumatic births; beautiful births. That sounds like it covers a lot of ground, and it does. But for all that, there's a . . . sameness here. And I don't mean that this collection has put its finger on the concerns and experiences of America's gestators. More like this collection has put its finger on the concerns and experiences of well-educated, well-informed, married, intentionally pregnant women writers of New York Times notable books who seek out midwifery care and who have caesarians at a noticeably lower rate than the norm, which is to be expected as an artifact of economic/access privilege. I mean, some of that describes me, too, and yet this collection didn't truly speak to me, didn't reach me while I'm wrestling with this thing that is happening to me, which it should have.

I don't know. Maybe it's not the fault of this book. Maybe it isn't just that the experiences of women who write New York Times notable books (most of which I suspect I would loathe – the books, not the women) are so similar in essence, even while being different in facts. Maybe it's birth stories themselves. Maybe they are like relating a dream: so personal and vital to the teller, but rather strange and impenetrable to the listener, because that's just how it is with an experience so profound.

Or maybe it's me. Maybe this memo from the universe I am taking right now -- let go, you are not in charge here, there is no amount of smart that will fix this, let go -- maybe I still need to hear it a few dozen more times before I can hear anything else.




View all my reviews

A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction by Terry Pratchett

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Pratchett completists should jump on this, but otherwise I think I'd be irritated to pay full hardcover or audio price for a collection with so much juvenilia and so many punchline stories. I mean, his drabbles and short shorts and poems are often quite good – "They don't teach you about death, your mom and dad. They give you pets," – but still. Oh, and the A.S. Byatt introduction is awful, because apparently she can be judgmental and dismissive of genre fiction while she's talking about genre fiction that she likes, but what the fuck ever, A.S. Byatt, you just keep chewing those snotty sour grapes. A few scattered thoughts:

"The Sea and Little Fishes" – A Discworld story of Granny Weatherwax, and what it's like to be very very good but not very nice. I, uh. I might have identified with this a leeeettle bit. One of the standouts.

"The Hades Business" – Apparently written at the age of 13, and my God, it doesn't show. Well, I mean, it does in the prose, and in the ideas when put to scale of his full range of work, but honestly, he was so clearly already himself at that age, it's a little eerie.

"# ifdef DEBUG "+ "world/enough" + "time" – Life and death and virtual reality. Dated, sweet, apparently adored by the masses. But it made me very uncomfortable in some subliminal gender related ways, and that feeling has only worsened with thought.

"The High Meggas" – A 1986 short story that later became The Long Earth. Dimension hopping across alternate earths with bonus survivalist and truth dilemma. It did make me want to read the novel, largely because it's such a fertile concept. Most notable for being maybe the tenth time in this collection Pratchett says something should have been/wanted to be/eventually was a novel, which is apparently his form of choice. If you couldn't tell. And knowing that . . . I honestly wish a few of his books were short stories now.




View all my reviews

Dark and Stormy Knights by P.N. Elrod

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Anthologies, you know. It’s like asking people to throw random things at your head and hoping they pick cotton balls instead of rocks.



The good



Rachel Caine, “Even a Rabbit Will Bite” – A surprise standout. I’m not a Rachel Caine fan (hello, deliberate impregnation without consent plotline in her series, unclean unclean!) but this really worked. Very ancient dragonslayer teaches the trade to her apprentice. There’s just one dragon left in the world now, and only on the brink of extinction can you ask if this should ever have happened. Nothing hugely surprising, but one of the most balanced, layered stories here.



Jim Butcher, “Even Hand” – Oh Jim Butcher, how are you so charming while still being . . . you? A mystery for the ages. Harry Dresden is Sir Not Appearing in this story, except for how when a story is about John Marcone, it’s really all about Harry Dresden anyway.



Ilona Andrews, “A Questionable Client” – A long night’s slugfest of bodyguard work, enlivened by some interesting worldbuilding and a nice ending. No real there there, but lots of color.



The bad



Deirdre Knight, “Beknighted” – How am I supposed to take an author seriously when she says “preciseness” instead of “precision?” Also, the story is a floridly overwritten bit of nonsense that is supposed to be romantic and atmospheric but . . . isn’t.



Shannon K. Butcher, “The Beacon” – A story about a guy who shoots people before they can unknowingly pull demons across the void to kill everyone. Except one day, it’s a little girl, and you know shooting those old people, that was okay, but this is just not on, and also the girl’s mother is hot. The story isn’t great, but I hated it more than it deserved for its inept attempt at depth.



Vicki Pettersson, “Shifting Star” – It’s so awkward when you automatically assume the sexually harassing neighbor dude who can’t take no for an answer is one of the bad guys, only to discover he’s supposed to be the hero. Always an awkward cocktail party moment! Add in the bit where the heroine fucks with his memory and then makes out with him, and I pretty much had to scrub my brain out after reading this. But I think we already knew Vicki Pettersson’s sexual politics were this bad.



The indifferent



Carrie Vaughn, “God’s Creatures” – Unexceptional story about a werewolf hunt that does the whole “who’s the real monster here?” routine. Been there, done that.



Lilith Saintcrow, “Rookwood and Mrs. King” – Vampire detective gets hired to kill a woman’s undead husband, and then she pwns him all over the place. Vaguely entertaining.



P. N. Elrod, “Dark Lady” – Chicago, vampires, mob, etc. Fun, but not something I’ll remember two weeks from now.





View all my reviews

Eclipse 2: New Science Fiction and Fantasy by Jonathan Strahan


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Stories Jonathan Strahan likes round two: more scifi, fewer women. I picked through this over several months, so random impressions from stories actually interesting enough to remember:

Ted Chiang, "Exhalation": The reason I picked up the collection, and totally worth it. Classic Chiang, if a bit didactic in that way he can pull off. I won't bother trying to describe it, because it's available here and you should all go read it.

Stephen Baxter, "Turing's Apples." Classic Baxter: interesting Big Idea, terrible character work, that perpetual feeling that the sentence after next is going to really annoy me.

Peter S. Beagle, "The Rabbi's Hobby." I think I'm missing the Beagle gene or something. I can look at this ghost story and think about all the good atmosphere and character work, and yet? Meh. Nothing happens.

Paul Cornell, "Michael Lorits is: Drowning." Not really a story, about the future of social networking. Well-executed and entertaining.

Tony Daniel, "Ex Cathedra." Swear to God, I can't tell if this story about the end of the universe is great or utter nonsense. I think it's great.

Terry Dowling, "Truth Window: A Tale of the Bedlam Rose." Maybe this would have been interesting if I knew the surrounding universe? *shrug*

Nancy Kress, "Elevator." People in a hospital locked in an elevator, with one of the worst and most idiotic disability clichés front and center. Yuck.

Alastair Reynolds, "Fury." Strangely disappointing and obvious story about robot brothers and a galactic empire. I expect better from him.

Ken Scholes, "Invisible Empire of Ascending Light." A premise that really grabbed me, and an execution that was almost there. Cool politics, cooler world-building that I won't spoil. It made me want to read his fantasy novels.

View all my reviews >>

A collection of fantasyish shortish stories . . . ish.

Utter crazycakes fantastico. These pieces feel like dreams in that they work almost entirely underwater, in whacked out right brain metaphor speech. The sort of stories that I finished and went "wuh-waaah?" because I was still working on what had actually just happened. And like dreams, these stories get you in the limbic system, so you're all tense and twisted up and upset and involved in something that doesn't even make conscious sense, but man is it getting at something deep down there in the subconscious well.

I generally don't like this sort of thing, but this was really quite wonderful. In that perturbed dream way where I'm not entirely sure I'd ever want to go back there again.

A collection from the author of Heart-Shaped Box. Some horror, as you would expect, but also just a lot of fiction with a touch of the supernatural.

Damn but that's a good book. I knew for sure during the opening story, "Best New Horror," in which our narrator is an anthology editor who gives us a one-page synopsis of a novella manuscript he receives, and the compressed summary made me forget where I was. Right on through the weird and metafictional "Pop Art" (bad! Pun! Alert!) and the amazing little vignette "Dead-Wood" and the totally inexplicable but fascinating "My Father's Mask." The closing novella, "Voluntary Committal," about a boy with childhood onset Schizophrenia (or possibly not) who can build things that he shouldn't, gathers up everything good about this book. It's tense, rich storytelling, the sort that makes you feel like you have to figure out how to breathe again when you put it down.

It's not all great. This is a book about fathers and sons, if you know what I mean, and there aren't many well-drawn female characters who aren't also victims. Interestingly, though, what this book does have is a fair share of disabled people – Asperger's, Schizophrenia, learning disabilities. And, wonder of wonders, the disability isn't an outer manifestation of evil.

But yeah. Damn.