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A review by morgandhu
Shoggoths in Bloom and Other Stories by Elizabeth Bear, Scott Lynch
5.0
i have long felt that Elizabeth Bear is a very good writer in the process of becoming a great writer. It easy to see this progression in her most recent short fiction collection Shoggoths in Bloom - all but one of the pieces are reprints and they show how over the past decade her writing has been evolving, growing ever more incisive and provocative and finely crafted. I'd read some of these before - the thought-provoking title story, the heart-breaking Orm the Beautiful, the multi-layered In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns - but when assembled in one place, the range and depth of this collection was striking.
Bear writes about uncomfortable things, and she wants you to think and feel strongly about those things even as she wraps those things in prose that is often a delight to read. She writes about evil and accident and caprice and entropy and just plain bad luck, and about people who find ways to keep fighting no matter what. She writes about hard choices and missed chances and those times where everything you have just isn't enough, but still you give everything because fighting to the end is better than giving up. And she writes about something that has always resonated with me, the willing sacrifice, the knowledge that there are prices to pay and the only thing you can do to keep your soul is pay the price.
That's some of what you'll find in this collection. The hardest truths of all, woven into the most beautiful of fictions.
Bear writes about uncomfortable things, and she wants you to think and feel strongly about those things even as she wraps those things in prose that is often a delight to read. She writes about evil and accident and caprice and entropy and just plain bad luck, and about people who find ways to keep fighting no matter what. She writes about hard choices and missed chances and those times where everything you have just isn't enough, but still you give everything because fighting to the end is better than giving up. And she writes about something that has always resonated with me, the willing sacrifice, the knowledge that there are prices to pay and the only thing you can do to keep your soul is pay the price.
That's some of what you'll find in this collection. The hardest truths of all, woven into the most beautiful of fictions.