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cj_jones's review
5.0
I don't give out fives lightly, this one earned it. Full disclosure: My name is in this book because I gave them money to make it exist. One of the authors, Lucy Snyder, came to me during the kickstarter. I don't know why she chose me, but she said "We're doing this steampunk anthology--" at which point I reared up on my hind legs and said "Now wait a minute, lady!" Because I have some rather strong opinions on the topic of steampunk. I like my steampunk to have some PUNK in it, much like some drinkers like to have gin in their gin & tonic, or eaters might like to find steak in their steak and potatoes. I do not think this makes me a bad person.
I was reassured on this point, however, that I would find this collection quite to my liking. The basic theme was that steam existed outside of the upper class of Great Britain, and thus could not help but to speak to some basic power differentials; colony and colonizer, powerful and subjugal, and the abrupt introduction of technology to a society wholly unprepared for it. Or perhaps more prepared than they 'ought' to be, as a great leveler. And so I said shut up and take my money.
I have not been the least bit disappointed. There is a meat to these stories, thick, juicy, made for chewing, and all in short story sized bites that satisfy or occasionally leave you wanting maybe just one bite more. Also, they use my word 'steampulp' in the introduction, to showcase the difference between these and those dashing high adventure Victorian fantasies that are still a lot of fun to read and have amazing fashion sense.
Talking about the plot of a short story anthology isn't exactly helpful, but I can point to a slate of talented authors who ensure that each story is well honed--a short story can't mess around. It needs to get in, throw a few punches, get to the point, and wrap itself up. (A painful lesson I am slowly learning in my own work.) And some of these stories may have... more subtle punches, I suppose, than others, but that just means the sucker punch at the end is more effective.
If you're a fan of the genre--especially if you lean more toward the monocles and gears--I recommend you pick this up and devour it. If you don't know yet if you're a fan of the genre, and especially if you have an interest in history or Alternate Universes, I also recommend this as a stepping stone from other worlds you might be familiar with. And as an olive branch, I think I'm going to wear a top hat for the rest of the day.
I was reassured on this point, however, that I would find this collection quite to my liking. The basic theme was that steam existed outside of the upper class of Great Britain, and thus could not help but to speak to some basic power differentials; colony and colonizer, powerful and subjugal, and the abrupt introduction of technology to a society wholly unprepared for it. Or perhaps more prepared than they 'ought' to be, as a great leveler. And so I said shut up and take my money.
I have not been the least bit disappointed. There is a meat to these stories, thick, juicy, made for chewing, and all in short story sized bites that satisfy or occasionally leave you wanting maybe just one bite more. Also, they use my word 'steampulp' in the introduction, to showcase the difference between these and those dashing high adventure Victorian fantasies that are still a lot of fun to read and have amazing fashion sense.
Talking about the plot of a short story anthology isn't exactly helpful, but I can point to a slate of talented authors who ensure that each story is well honed--a short story can't mess around. It needs to get in, throw a few punches, get to the point, and wrap itself up. (A painful lesson I am slowly learning in my own work.) And some of these stories may have... more subtle punches, I suppose, than others, but that just means the sucker punch at the end is more effective.
If you're a fan of the genre--especially if you lean more toward the monocles and gears--I recommend you pick this up and devour it. If you don't know yet if you're a fan of the genre, and especially if you have an interest in history or Alternate Universes, I also recommend this as a stepping stone from other worlds you might be familiar with. And as an olive branch, I think I'm going to wear a top hat for the rest of the day.
saltandcedar's review
3.0
Honestly, I wanted to like this anthology more. There was some stuff I really loved, nothing I hated, but a lot of it I just didn't get at all.
justabean_reads's review
4.0
ETA: I was not aware of one of the author's history of bullying and harassment when I wrote this. I have amended my review of her story to reflect that.
Solid collection. Like all anthologies, I found a couple stories that I didn't care for, but those were outweighed by several gems, and the overall proficiency in writing and quality ranged from competent to excellent. I liked the diversity of settings, something from each continent, and a variety of view points and social positions from the more popular places. The stories tended to anti-imperialism, as you'd expect with an anthology of this nature, but largely avoided being didactic on the topic. I also appreciated the inclusion of so many female authors, as well as authors from diverse backgrounds.
As a brief comment on each story, and a rating out of five:
"Shedding Skin: Or How the World Came to Be" by Jay Lake: I understand opening with a SW clockwork take on the expulsion from Eden, and some of the theology was fun, but the storytelling voice just didn't work for me at all. It felt like it was trying to be Mark Twain, and not hitting the humour or irony. 2/5.
"Hidden Strength" by Jaymee Goh: Story of a couple struggling to adapt to a new home and a newly-clockwork husband, set on an island nation in SE Asia. Interesting setting, but the romance didn't get enough space, and the ending felt rushed. 3/5.
"Promised" by Nisi Shawl: Excellent, as I've come to expect from Shawl. The theological concerns of an African American missionary swept up in the struggle against the Belgian occupation of the Congo. Possibly a little bit wish fulfilment, but the strong central character held it together, and who doesn't wish that had gone differently? 4/5.
"The Firebird" by Emily B. Cataneo: A surviving member of the nobility struggling to keep herself and her sister alive in post-revolution Russia. I really liked the integration of cyborg parts as initially status symbols and then tells for the rich, but the main character was pretty much an asshole, and I had very little sympathy for her. 3/5
"The Little Begum" by Indrapramit Das: Another sisters story, this time trying to survive in British-colonised Calcutta, and by retelling the mythology of the country. Unfortunately, it felt more like a description of a setting than an actual story. 3/5
"Forty Pieces" by Lucien Soulban: An Arab exile in Constantinople struggles to come to grips with his father's legacy, and to gets dragged along to find the lost city that his father never could. Terrific fun, with strong central characters and narrative. I loved all the descriptions and sense of place. 5/5.
"Hatavat Chalom" by Lillian Cohen-Moore: A young women in the Jewish ghettos in Venice dreams of battle and a destroying clockwork monster. I really want this one as a novel, but it still worked as a short story. Wonderful feeling of character and setting, and the prose was gorgeous. 5/5.
"The Leviathan of Trincomalee" by Lucy A. Snyder: Tamil/German Jewish girl hunts sea monsters using her and her father's submarine. The prose felt a bit workmanlike in places, but the story just ripped along, and many adventures were had by all. I wouldn't mind seeing more of these characters either. 4/5
"The Hand of Sa-Seti" by Balogun Ojetade: Egyptian inventor fights giant bug monsters to rescue a princess from an undead wizard. Despite the fun setting, it read like a D&D campaign, and not a terribly interesting one. The female characters also weren't great, though no one was that well drawn, so it may have been unintentional. 2/5.
"The Omai Gods" by Alex Bledsoe: More or less walking Easter Island statues vs. Chinese raiders. It would have been interesting if it hadn't had quite so many rape threats, or at least had some interesting women to balance that out. As it was... 1/5.
The Governess and We by Benjanun Sriduangkaew: BS/Winterfox/Requires Hate is a horrible bully and failure as a human being, and I'm not giving her good review. 0/5.
"Tangi a te ruru / The cry of the morepork" by Pip Ballantine: A Maori character in Ballantine's Peculiar Occurrences universe. I might have appreciated it more were I familiar with the universe. As it was, I liked the main character but felt we got an awful lot of set up for not very much story. 3/5.
"The Construct Also Dreams of Flight" by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz: Latin American robots trying to fly in order to excape... something? I think. The writing was gorgeous, but I have no idea what actually happened in this story. 2/5.
"Budo: Or, The Flying Orchid" By Tade Thompson: Colonised West Africa in conflict with the British. A lot of things happened in this story, and I felt like we didn't get the time or space to appreciate or connect with any of them, and it felt more like a summary than a story in places. 2/5.
"The Şehrazatın Diyoraması Tour" by S. J. Chambers: An anti-Orientalist tour of Constantinople, after a fashion. I liked the idea behind the story and the horror elements, but again it didn't really have a lot of story in it, though it's possible that that was part of the point. 3/5.
"The Emperor Everlasting" by Nayad A. Monroe: A somewhat whimsical alt-history of the Inca, with their empire surviving to 1914 and beyond. I loved the humour and the stubborn and sensible older female lead. 4/5.
"Mary Sundown and the Clockmaker’s Children" by Malon Edwards: Robot battles in post-apocalyptic Creole Chicago. The storytelling style was similar to Jay Lake's at the start, but this time the immediate first person narrative in regional dialect really worked for me. The difference may have been making the narrator a character, and her and her relationships central to the story. 4/5.
"Good Hunting" by Ken Liu: A demon hunter and a "demon" struggling to survive in an increasingly unmagical China as colonised by the British. This story got a bit more space, and I love how Liu developed the characters over decades and tracked the effect and use of technology on and by them. It was a good story and well told. 4/5.
Solid collection. Like all anthologies, I found a couple stories that I didn't care for, but those were outweighed by several gems, and the overall proficiency in writing and quality ranged from competent to excellent. I liked the diversity of settings, something from each continent, and a variety of view points and social positions from the more popular places. The stories tended to anti-imperialism, as you'd expect with an anthology of this nature, but largely avoided being didactic on the topic. I also appreciated the inclusion of so many female authors, as well as authors from diverse backgrounds.
As a brief comment on each story, and a rating out of five:
"Shedding Skin: Or How the World Came to Be" by Jay Lake: I understand opening with a SW clockwork take on the expulsion from Eden, and some of the theology was fun, but the storytelling voice just didn't work for me at all. It felt like it was trying to be Mark Twain, and not hitting the humour or irony. 2/5.
"Hidden Strength" by Jaymee Goh: Story of a couple struggling to adapt to a new home and a newly-clockwork husband, set on an island nation in SE Asia. Interesting setting, but the romance didn't get enough space, and the ending felt rushed. 3/5.
"Promised" by Nisi Shawl: Excellent, as I've come to expect from Shawl. The theological concerns of an African American missionary swept up in the struggle against the Belgian occupation of the Congo. Possibly a little bit wish fulfilment, but the strong central character held it together, and who doesn't wish that had gone differently? 4/5.
"The Firebird" by Emily B. Cataneo: A surviving member of the nobility struggling to keep herself and her sister alive in post-revolution Russia. I really liked the integration of cyborg parts as initially status symbols and then tells for the rich, but the main character was pretty much an asshole, and I had very little sympathy for her. 3/5
"The Little Begum" by Indrapramit Das: Another sisters story, this time trying to survive in British-colonised Calcutta, and by retelling the mythology of the country. Unfortunately, it felt more like a description of a setting than an actual story. 3/5
"Forty Pieces" by Lucien Soulban: An Arab exile in Constantinople struggles to come to grips with his father's legacy, and to gets dragged along to find the lost city that his father never could. Terrific fun, with strong central characters and narrative. I loved all the descriptions and sense of place. 5/5.
"Hatavat Chalom" by Lillian Cohen-Moore: A young women in the Jewish ghettos in Venice dreams of battle and a destroying clockwork monster. I really want this one as a novel, but it still worked as a short story. Wonderful feeling of character and setting, and the prose was gorgeous. 5/5.
"The Leviathan of Trincomalee" by Lucy A. Snyder: Tamil/German Jewish girl hunts sea monsters using her and her father's submarine. The prose felt a bit workmanlike in places, but the story just ripped along, and many adventures were had by all. I wouldn't mind seeing more of these characters either. 4/5
"The Hand of Sa-Seti" by Balogun Ojetade: Egyptian inventor fights giant bug monsters to rescue a princess from an undead wizard. Despite the fun setting, it read like a D&D campaign, and not a terribly interesting one. The female characters also weren't great, though no one was that well drawn, so it may have been unintentional. 2/5.
"The Omai Gods" by Alex Bledsoe: More or less walking Easter Island statues vs. Chinese raiders. It would have been interesting if it hadn't had quite so many rape threats, or at least had some interesting women to balance that out. As it was... 1/5.
The Governess and We by Benjanun Sriduangkaew: BS/Winterfox/Requires Hate is a horrible bully and failure as a human being, and I'm not giving her good review. 0/5.
"Tangi a te ruru / The cry of the morepork" by Pip Ballantine: A Maori character in Ballantine's Peculiar Occurrences universe. I might have appreciated it more were I familiar with the universe. As it was, I liked the main character but felt we got an awful lot of set up for not very much story. 3/5.
"The Construct Also Dreams of Flight" by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz: Latin American robots trying to fly in order to excape... something? I think. The writing was gorgeous, but I have no idea what actually happened in this story. 2/5.
"Budo: Or, The Flying Orchid" By Tade Thompson: Colonised West Africa in conflict with the British. A lot of things happened in this story, and I felt like we didn't get the time or space to appreciate or connect with any of them, and it felt more like a summary than a story in places. 2/5.
"The Şehrazatın Diyoraması Tour" by S. J. Chambers: An anti-Orientalist tour of Constantinople, after a fashion. I liked the idea behind the story and the horror elements, but again it didn't really have a lot of story in it, though it's possible that that was part of the point. 3/5.
"The Emperor Everlasting" by Nayad A. Monroe: A somewhat whimsical alt-history of the Inca, with their empire surviving to 1914 and beyond. I loved the humour and the stubborn and sensible older female lead. 4/5.
"Mary Sundown and the Clockmaker’s Children" by Malon Edwards: Robot battles in post-apocalyptic Creole Chicago. The storytelling style was similar to Jay Lake's at the start, but this time the immediate first person narrative in regional dialect really worked for me. The difference may have been making the narrator a character, and her and her relationships central to the story. 4/5.
"Good Hunting" by Ken Liu: A demon hunter and a "demon" struggling to survive in an increasingly unmagical China as colonised by the British. This story got a bit more space, and I love how Liu developed the characters over decades and tracked the effect and use of technology on and by them. It was a good story and well told. 4/5.
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