This is the third piece of Moreno-Garcia’s writing I’ve read, and as with the other two, I found myself alternating between being entertained and frusThis is the third piece of Moreno-Garcia’s writing I’ve read, and as with the other two, I found myself alternating between being entertained and frustrated. There is certainly a great amount of imagination and commitment to her vision on display here, and the various dreams and hallucinations she describes in this novel feature some of her very best sentence-to-sentence writing. But all too often, she falls into the traps of signposting and explaining and infodumping, which all serve to take me out of the spell she’s casting.
This wound up being a fairly absorbing, enjoyably creepy, but frustrating read. ...more
As with pretty much every anthology, there were a couple of clunkers contained in these pages, but there were also some excellent, innovative, and traAs with pretty much every anthology, there were a couple of clunkers contained in these pages, but there were also some excellent, innovative, and transcendent stories, and overall, I was very happy to encounter the works of so many new and interesting writers from around the world. ...more
This is a fascinating thought experiment, with some beautifully considered ideas about the ways in which beauty can arise from the ashes of tragedy, aThis is a fascinating thought experiment, with some beautifully considered ideas about the ways in which beauty can arise from the ashes of tragedy, about how generational trauma is passed down, and about what it means to be both alone within — and connected to — a community.
I just wish that the ideas landed a bit more viscerally and with more immediacy in the execution of telling the story.
But I love how much the very gifted Rivers Solomon is willing to delve into adventurous, difficult territory in their writing, and I look forward to continuing to follow their work, after being very impressed by their first novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts. ...more
This is another fascinating, strange, absorbing work by the fiercely intelligent Arkady Martine. She once again displays some quirks that are perhaps This is another fascinating, strange, absorbing work by the fiercely intelligent Arkady Martine. She once again displays some quirks that are perhaps a bit too ubiquitous — a prevalence of both a lot of italics and many parenthetical interruptions — but I also can’t help but admire her commitment to her idiosyncratic style. Her characters are vividly drawn — although sometimes her dialogue feels a bit too hyper articulate, a la Aaron Sorkin — especially, in this installment, the child Emperor-in-waiting Eight Antidote and the second-in-command Swarm. And she is able to dramatize in very convincing fashion the complex, horrible truth that the fates of entire civilizations rest on flawed, lonely individuals and their whims.
I know folks who bounced off of A Memory Called Empire, and I can understand why, but I’m glad to have read these two novels, which I found to be quite satisfying and evocative....more
I felt very much the same way about this book as I did about Ted Chiang’s first collection: that I’d spent valuable, meaningful time engaging with a pI felt very much the same way about this book as I did about Ted Chiang’s first collection: that I’d spent valuable, meaningful time engaging with a profoundly intelligent, deeply curious, extremely disciplined thinker. I admire the confidence and skill and courage he brings to his craft, and I was thoroughly captivated and fascinated by every story contained here. I just wish he was able to bring his considerable gifts more fully to bear in the creation of characters who feel as alive and complex as they could; while the ideas in his stories are quite richly fleshed out, I wanted my heart to be as engaged as my head was.
Still, I love the fact that Ted Chiang remains committed to short-form storytelling, and I will continue to seek out his wonderfully thought-provoking work. ...more
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