Rating: WARTY!
This book came to me under false pretenses! Yes, I requested it, but it was listed on Net Galley under 'Comics & Graphic, Sci Fi & Fantasy', and it's not - it's not graphic at all, that is. It's actually a collection of short stories - all text and no illustration. I don't go in for such collections because they tend to be boring. I was only interested because I'd thought it was a series of short graphic stories, but now I'm saddled with it, and it did not disappoint: when I read it, I found it largely uninteresting as I've consistently found such collections. I have a theory about this.
About 75% of the way through the book, I realized that one of the problems with it was that I wasn't really getting into the stories. In a way, I was doing this on purpose because I knew the story would be over before I truly got into it, even if I liked it, and this wasn't doing me any good. I had no incentive to invest in the story or the characters, and this is precisely why I don't read collections of short stories! I had thought that a graphic version might be different, but of course this wasn't a graphic version.
In fact, in theory(!), a collection like this ought to have something going for it, because some of the author's names were impressive: Elizabeth Bear, Jim Butcher, Charles de Lint, and Neil Gaiman jumped out at me (not literally, Silly!). You'd think people who are doing as well as they are could afford to put out their short stories for free, just as a generous gesture to celebrate their success and thank their readers! I know I would. It occurred to me though, that the reason these well-known authors were scattered in amongst the lesser-knowns is that this was really a vehicle to get the lesser-knowns' stories out there by attracting people using the better-knowns.
On the other hand, maybe the better-knowns contributed their stories for free in order to give exposure to the lesser-known authors? That's a generous gesture if it's true, but I have no idea if it is and on a personal level, it still did nothing to make these stories any more palatable to me. Maybe others will have more success with them than I did. I hope so. For m, though, when reading a collection like this written by one author, you know what you're in for, and if you don't like it after three or four stories you can quit knowing you gave it a fair chance. You can't do that when every story is by a different author. You have to at least try each one. Here was my experience with this collection, edited by by Paula Guran:
Freewheeling by Charles de Lint struck me as a pointless story about a delusional kid who was shot by police. I read it the whole way through and found it had nothing new or particularly interesting to say. A disappointing start.
A Year and a Day in Old Theradane was a wizard fantasy by Scott Lynch which held no interest for me.
Caligo Lane by Ellen Klages was a story about a witch creating a map in old San Francisco, but it was not something that appealed to me. It rambled on with little to say and was far too obsessed with the minutiae of creating maps. The graphic novel format might have improved this, but that's just Format's last theorem. Talk about cart a graphic!
Socks by Delia Sherman was the first story to grab my interest. 'Socks' is the nickname of a young girl whose feet smell. She lives in a home for orphaned children where everyone has to pull their weight. A new girl arrives and fascinates Socks, but then the girl leaves, having cured her foot odor problem. That's about it. It doesn't sound very interesting when put like that, but it was an imaginative story well told, even though it really didn't have much of a place to go.
Painted Birds and Shivered Bones by Kat Howard is the story of an artist who thinks she might be going crazy when she observes a naked man transform into a bird. This man, it turns out is cursed to keep transforming back and forth and he becomes the artist's muse for a whole new collection of paintings, which bring her great success. The story wasn't bad, but it really didn't do much for me, and it was at this point I decided I was not necessarily going to read all of every story in this collection!
The Goldfish Pond and Other Stories by Neil Gaiman was the first one I skipped because once I began it, I found it to be deadeningly dull, and I had no interest in pursuing it. I've liked some works by Gaiman, but it would seem, overall, that he's not an author for me. This story was full of boring details about making a visit to Los Angeles to discuss making a movie out of a novel he'd written. It was purportedly fictional, but it felt like it was autobiographical and I wasn't interested in unoriginal observations of Hollywood. I took issue with this: "People talk about books that write themselves, and it's a lie. Books don't write themselves. It takes thought and research and backache and notes and more time and more work than you'd believe." Nonsense! if you're working that hard then writing isn't for you! Yes, I can see the value of research on some occasions for some novels, but then I'm not one of those people who adores the realism in Tom Clancy novels or the verisimilitude in David Weber sci-fi. I find it tedious. There's only one novel I've written that honestly felt like work, and that one is sitting on hold waiting for me to evaluate whether it's worth finishing! I think that if it feels like work, then you're either doing it wrong or you're in the wrong profession altogether.
One-Eyed Jack and the Suicide King by Elizabeth Bear aka Sarah Bear Elizabeth Wishnevsky
I didn't like the title of this story and would have avoided it purely because it gave me a feeling of mild nausea and powerful boredom. But I had to give it a try! I had read and liked The Jenny Casey trilogy: Hammered, Scardown, and Worldwired, but not enough to want to immediately chase down everything she wrote to read it voraciously. As it happens, I could not get into this one. It bored me from the start. I'm willing to give a novel a lot of pages to bring me in, but I feel no such compulsion with a short story. There's too little space to waste. If you don't get me in the first couple of pages, you've likely lost me, and especially so if your story starts out way overly dramatic. This one failed on both counts. I can't tell you what it's about except that it started on the Hoover Dam with an accident - or, given the title, perhaps a suicide.Street Worm by Nisi Shawl
When I first read this title I thought it had said "Street Worn" and it smacked of 'too cool for school', like Lou Reed's Street Hassle title for one of his albums - same effect. Transformer was better! But I digress. The title isn't 'Worn', it's 'Worm' so this improved my perspective somewhat. The story did bring me in quickly. It's about a young rebellious girl who can see worms on buildings. Is she insane, or does she have a view of the world with which most people are not privileged - or cursed? I liked the story well enough but the ending was abrupt and rather odd given the build-up.
A Water Matter by Jay Lake
This was amusing because of the title and the author's last name, but then came the fact that no one in the story had a name - only a title. There was The Dancing Mistress, the Girl Assassin, the Duke of Copper Downs and on and on. I started feeling like I didn't want to be there pretty quickly, so this is another one which I largely skipped. The tone was too playful for the content, too.
Last Call by Jim Butcher was the one I was really looking forward to, but sadly, it was a Harry Dresden story. I have no time for the man. I loved Butcher's Codex Alera series, even though I typically refuse to read series with pretentious words like 'codex' in the title (or 'cycle', or 'chronicles', or 'saga', or other such names), but I can't stand his wizard series, so I skipped this one unread. I was hoping for something new and different in a short story but apparently Butcher isn't up to it. I have a theory about this business of slipping a short story based on your series into a collection like this, which I shall go into later.
Bridle by Caitlín R Kiernan
This one turned me off in line three when it mentioned 'unseelie'. Nevertheless, I skimmed the next few pages. It turned out to be the selfsame lost cause I'd feared. I'm not a fan of 'seelie' or 'faerie'. Actually I'd be more of a fan of the latter if the authors had the guts to call it 'fairy' instead of dancing away from it, like 'faerie' is something to take seriously, whereas 'fairy' is absolutely not! That this was first person PoV did not help.
The Last Triangle by Jeffrey Ford came next. Finally here was a story which took hold of my attention not because it was bizarre or quirky, but because there was a actually something going on. It moved quickly, too. Sadly, it was first person PoV, but I tried not to hold that against it given how much it had taken my interest hostage. In this one, a junkie crosses paths with a woman on a quest, and she offers him a place to stay, and food, as long as he keeps clean; then she asks him to keep a look-out in town for an obscure symbol which she has seen appearing on buildings. She has a theory that they come in threes and mark an equilateral triangle when plotted on a map. Maybe she has a point...! This was the most interesting one in the whole collection this far, but it still lacked sufficient gripping power to make it stay with me, I knew as I finished it that I would forget it quickly.
Working for the God of Love and Money by Australian author Kaaron Warren
This was very short and not very engaging. It was a about a man who was trapped into working for the god of the title - who had his 'boy' con coins out of people (paper money was no good). He would melt them down and immerse himself into the molten metal, after which he would rise up from it with a new suit covering him. There was no explanation given for why he did this. The boy, who is the man, comes up with a way to free himself from this god. That's it! It was much less than I had hoped for given how this initially began, and it quickly fell from grace with me. I wasn't sure, when I first started reading it, if the god was actually a god or if it was just a person whom the main character perceived as being godlike. This confusion didn't help the story.
Hello, Moto by Nnedi Okorafor
This is, unfortunately, a first person PoV story about magic. The weakness of the 1PoV approach is once again highlighted as the author switches voice so we can observe another character in third person. I am so tired of this sloppy technique that I quit reading this particular story at that point. It was a bit of a mess anyway.
The Spirit of the Thing: a Nightside Story by Simon R Green
The fact that this story was subtitled "A Nightside Story" suggested it was like the Jim Butcher story - a short story from a novel series, and since Simon Green evidently writes only series, this didn't bode well for this story. With very few exceptions, I am not a series fan, and I don't feel comfortable with an effort to drag me into a world with which I have no familiarity and little to no interest in, by means of a short story published in a collection. I skipped this story on principle. It was the same as the Jim Butcher story in this regard.
A Night in Electric Squidland by Sarah Monette
I have to confess a soft spot for writers named Sarah since it's one of my favorite names. As Bishop Goddard Larsen might say, "I've known several people named Sara(h) and been fond of them all." But that title? It turned me off to be honest. This story is about Mick Sharpton, who has clairvoyant powers. He can feel the personality of a person on things he touches, and can see some sort of aura over a person's head. He works with Jamie Keller for the Bureau of Paranormal investigations. Why is it always a bureau?! The two of them are called into a new case - a person has been found cut in half - longitudinally. It's connected with the Electric Squidland nightclub, where a person disappeared some time before. Evidently something weird and horrible is going on there. The problem was that the story kind of fizzled towards the end, and dissolved into attempts to shock with sex and gore, and horror which wasn't particularly sexy, or gory or horrible. But overall, the story wasn't bad. It just wasn't good, either.
Speechless in Seattle by Lisa Silverthorne
Okay, I admit this title amused me! And Lisa Silverthorne is a pretty cool name for an author, but the story was very trope magic - almost like it was lifted bodily from Harry Potter. It was a bit like reading a fanfic from someone who had morphed Seamus Finnigan and professor Quirrell together. The idea of a wizard who stutters and has to craft spells using language would have been an intriguing and entertaining material for a novel, but this was not that story. It was less a magic story than it was a romance, so I felt that the initial concept had been betrayed or at least sidelined by an inexplicable need to have the main character get himself a girlfriend. Why does this trope fill so many stories? Cannot men and women stand on their own? It's tedious and the story was too short for it, so I didn't like it on that principle alone, aside form any other issues. This 'love' had nowhere to go and no room to breathe.
Palimpsest by Catherynne M Valente
This was more of a poem than a story, and I have no idea what it is about even though I read it through (it was very short). It was really just a description of a place, so there really was no story there. I didn't like it at all.
Ash by John Shirley
This last story actually started out promising to be interesting, then it reached a point where I was convinced I knew what was going on. It reminded me of a play I wrote ages ago, but the ending was so unclear that I honestly don't know if I figured out what had happened or not. Either way the story wasn't holding my interest.
So overall, while I expected to at least like one or two stories reasonably well, in general terms, I found this whole collection to be less than desirable I'm sorry to say. I was disappointed that it wasn't what I expected, and then even more disappointed that these stories failed to really grab my attention. I cannot recommend this one.
