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A review by lezreadalot
Fantasy Magazine, Issue 59, December 2015: Queers Destroy Fantasy! by Christopher Barzak
4.0
Caitlin R. Kiernan's "The Sea Troll's Daughter" was excellent! Really engaging, really moving, really fun. I adored Kai Ashante Wilson's "Kaiju maximus ®" as I will probably adore everything he writes, but I'm a bit confused. Where was the queerness? Did I blink and miss it? "The Lily and the Horn" needed a reread for me to really get into it, but I enjoyed it a lot.
The rest of the anthology was good. Not really what I expected from something called "Queers Destroy Fantasy!" I would have appreciated less subtext and more text from several of the stories. But they were all enjoyable in some way. And I really appreciated Ellen Kushner's essay!
More or less worth the read. 3.5 stars.
Merged review:
But as we engineer the superhuman corpus, again I say, let us not neglect the heart!
Read this a few years ago as part of a collection; the reread was enjoyable and illuminating. I love what Kai Ashante Wilson does with words and lyricism, I love that he uses images and metaphors that are personal, and black ("If you’ve ever sucked and chewed on sugarcane, then you have the right image." I have!), I love the metatextuality in his work, I love the little nods he gives to video games. Reading the little interview he did after, I wasn't expecting to hear that some inspiration came from Bioware games, but thinking about it, I'm not very surprised!
Love the thought of a heroic gene, and that image of the hero, having to hold herself apart from her family, and yet depending on them so completely to complete her mission. Really good!
The rest of the anthology was good. Not really what I expected from something called "Queers Destroy Fantasy!" I would have appreciated less subtext and more text from several of the stories. But they were all enjoyable in some way. And I really appreciated Ellen Kushner's essay!
More or less worth the read. 3.5 stars.
Merged review:
But as we engineer the superhuman corpus, again I say, let us not neglect the heart!
Read this a few years ago as part of a collection; the reread was enjoyable and illuminating. I love what Kai Ashante Wilson does with words and lyricism, I love that he uses images and metaphors that are personal, and black ("If you’ve ever sucked and chewed on sugarcane, then you have the right image." I have!), I love the metatextuality in his work, I love the little nods he gives to video games. Reading the little interview he did after, I wasn't expecting to hear that some inspiration came from Bioware games, but thinking about it, I'm not very surprised!
Love the thought of a heroic gene, and that image of the hero, having to hold herself apart from her family, and yet depending on them so completely to complete her mission. Really good!