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A review by wanderlustlover
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 145 by Ian McDonald, Anna Wu, Finbarr O'Reilly, Suzanne Palmer, Simone Heller, Neil Clarke, Aliette de Bodard, Yilin Wang
3.0
Summer 2019 (Hugo Award Nominee 2019 - Novelette);
I have a lot of amazing, moved feelings about the way this ended, and that almost convinced me to mark this as a 3.5 stars, which is coincidentally it's median rating right now, but the longer I sit it with, the more I can't give this novelette an extra half-star for picking itself up and dusting itself off from its many problems along the way with a moving closure.
This Novelette did have many things in its favor. I did like the incredibly slow reveal that the main character was in fact non-human, and how that wouldn't stick out in the slightest to someone telling their own life story. Especially when there are no humans around. As well, the same with the figuring out of the ghosts are holograms, and the haunted places are the remains of the civilization before this world turn post-apocalyptic and then restarted entirely, not even having a collective memory of it the places, their own 'weavers' (/robots), what the stars looked like, or where they'd all come from originally.
Things not done well have a lot to with pacing, rambling about, and generally losing my attention several times.
I have a lot of amazing, moved feelings about the way this ended, and that almost convinced me to mark this as a 3.5 stars, which is coincidentally it's median rating right now, but the longer I sit it with, the more I can't give this novelette an extra half-star for picking itself up and dusting itself off from its many problems along the way with a moving closure.
This Novelette did have many things in its favor. I did like the incredibly slow reveal that the main character was in fact non-human, and how that wouldn't stick out in the slightest to someone telling their own life story. Especially when there are no humans around. As well, the same with the figuring out of the ghosts are holograms, and the haunted places are the remains of the civilization before this world turn post-apocalyptic and then restarted entirely, not even having a collective memory of it the places, their own 'weavers' (/robots), what the stars looked like, or where they'd all come from originally.
Things not done well have a lot to with pacing, rambling about, and generally losing my attention several times.