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fishsauce's review against another edition
2.0
This was not good.
I'd heard a lot of good things about this anthology series, so I had high expectations going in. Perhaps I was just setting myself up for disappointment.
The vast majority of the stories here had good things going for them, but needed significantly more work before they were ready to show themselves in public. (Most of the poetry needed even more work.)
A small handful of pieces (by: Mark Leslie, Lisa Poh, Catherine Austin, Elise Moser) I can recommend.
There was also a small handful that simply should not have seen publication; the writing was bad, the ideas behind the stories clichéd and predictable.
If the quality of this entry into the Tesseracts series is representative of the series generally, I will not be picking up another.
I'd heard a lot of good things about this anthology series, so I had high expectations going in. Perhaps I was just setting myself up for disappointment.
The vast majority of the stories here had good things going for them, but needed significantly more work before they were ready to show themselves in public. (Most of the poetry needed even more work.)
A small handful of pieces (by: Mark Leslie, Lisa Poh, Catherine Austin, Elise Moser) I can recommend.
There was also a small handful that simply should not have seen publication; the writing was bad, the ideas behind the stories clichéd and predictable.
If the quality of this entry into the Tesseracts series is representative of the series generally, I will not be picking up another.
edwindownward's review
4.0
A fascinating range of stories. Special mention must go to Graffiti Borealis by Lisa Poh.
katebrarian's review
5.0
This is a seriously solid collection of speculative fiction. Ignoring the part where three of the 5-star reviews are from authors featured in this collection, and the cover which is just so awful, and that it could have used at least one more once-over to correct some typos, this is a really really good collection!
First, I love reading stuff by Canadians. And this anthology includes stories by writers from every province and territory, which is extra Canadian! This is not classic sci-fi...sure, there's space travel and aliens and AI and monsters, but every story is different or weird in some new way. Like any short-story collection, there are some pieces I didn't love, but none of them were due to lack of skill from the author. The first two stories both had a China Mieville-y feel to them, Vermilion Wine about a mystery city in/around/on top of/inside of Italy, with no clues to its existence except for an old book about the ritual uses of wine, and The Wall about a strange membrane separating this world from another that likes to steal babies. The third story, 2020 Vision, is about a man who created a church of Spock. The fourth, Why Pete? a wonderfully written and poignant story of a woman waking up from a deep-sleep space pod to disaster on her spaceship; the fifth, one of my favourites in this collection, Bird Bones, about a boy living with his mad scientist father and genetically modified companion - this story has such a strange amount of heart for being 10 pages long. Look, I could go on, I'm just saying, pretty much every story is great. And if you don't like it, hey, it's short, I promise there's another good one waiting for you!
But actually I have to mention a couple more that I really liked: Sin A Squay, about two Native sisters found, decades later, by their old teacher from a Residential School, a literal monster. Hereinafter Referred To as the Ghost, about the invisible world of the undead and their bureaucracy of haunting. Graffiti Borealis about living graffiti on the streets of Montreal. Team Leader 2040 about a shitty future where the only jobs that old people and refugees can get are playing zombies in a popular and dangerous game in which the rich can pay to shoot people. And everyone is racist. Everybody Wins, about a mysterious lotto game that suddenly pops up across the world and which I'm sure you can all guess is NOT WHAT IT SEEMS.
And all the stories I didn't mention are also beautiful and eerie and gross and wonderful, even the ones I didn't love. So I guess I should start reading some of the past issues of this anthology! Go Canada! Go Canadian sci-fi!
First, I love reading stuff by Canadians. And this anthology includes stories by writers from every province and territory, which is extra Canadian! This is not classic sci-fi...sure, there's space travel and aliens and AI and monsters, but every story is different or weird in some new way. Like any short-story collection, there are some pieces I didn't love, but none of them were due to lack of skill from the author. The first two stories both had a China Mieville-y feel to them, Vermilion Wine about a mystery city in/around/on top of/inside of Italy, with no clues to its existence except for an old book about the ritual uses of wine, and The Wall about a strange membrane separating this world from another that likes to steal babies. The third story, 2020 Vision, is about a man who created a church of Spock. The fourth, Why Pete? a wonderfully written and poignant story of a woman waking up from a deep-sleep space pod to disaster on her spaceship; the fifth, one of my favourites in this collection, Bird Bones, about a boy living with his mad scientist father and genetically modified companion - this story has such a strange amount of heart for being 10 pages long. Look, I could go on, I'm just saying, pretty much every story is great. And if you don't like it, hey, it's short, I promise there's another good one waiting for you!
But actually I have to mention a couple more that I really liked: Sin A Squay, about two Native sisters found, decades later, by their old teacher from a Residential School, a literal monster. Hereinafter Referred To as the Ghost, about the invisible world of the undead and their bureaucracy of haunting. Graffiti Borealis about living graffiti on the streets of Montreal. Team Leader 2040 about a shitty future where the only jobs that old people and refugees can get are playing zombies in a popular and dangerous game in which the rich can pay to shoot people. And everyone is racist. Everybody Wins, about a mysterious lotto game that suddenly pops up across the world and which I'm sure you can all guess is NOT WHAT IT SEEMS.
And all the stories I didn't mention are also beautiful and eerie and gross and wonderful, even the ones I didn't love. So I guess I should start reading some of the past issues of this anthology! Go Canada! Go Canadian sci-fi!
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