theknightswhosaybook's review
2.0
(2.5) Anthologies are always tricky to review as a whole, but this one is harder than most. There's such a wide range of stories — some I loved, some that bored me, some that horrified me.
Out of the 24 stories there were five that I deemed worthy to name my favorites:
Urchins, While Sleeping by Catherynne M. Valente
The Other Amazon by Jenny Davidson
Orm the Beautiful by Elizabeth Bear
Something in the Mermaid Way by Carrie Laben
I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said by Cat Rambo
I do recommend reading those if you happen to come across this book the way I did (Other Amazon, Orm, and Manticore especially!), but I personally didn't enjoy the collection much as a whole. There was one story much scarier than I would like, some hard themes to swallow — good things for plenty of people, I'm sure, just not for me.
One story in particular was a bit... shocking, I guess? 304 Adolph Hitler Strasse by Lavie Tidhar is about (from what I can tell) a German man from an alternate universe where Germany won WWII who enjoys writing antisemitic erotica. Yeah, that's the premise of the story. Underneath how purposefully gross the story is there's probably a cutting condemnation of antisemitism and romanticization of the holocaust but personally, all I think is that if someone had let me know what the story was going to be about I would have skipped it and been happier for it. Sometimes you just don't want to read that. But hey, maybe you in particular do.
Out of the 24 stories there were five that I deemed worthy to name my favorites:
Urchins, While Sleeping by Catherynne M. Valente
The Other Amazon by Jenny Davidson
Orm the Beautiful by Elizabeth Bear
Something in the Mermaid Way by Carrie Laben
I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said by Cat Rambo
I do recommend reading those if you happen to come across this book the way I did (Other Amazon, Orm, and Manticore especially!), but I personally didn't enjoy the collection much as a whole. There was one story much scarier than I would like, some hard themes to swallow — good things for plenty of people, I'm sure, just not for me.
One story in particular was a bit... shocking, I guess? 304 Adolph Hitler Strasse by Lavie Tidhar is about (from what I can tell) a German man from an alternate universe where Germany won WWII who enjoys writing antisemitic erotica. Yeah, that's the premise of the story. Underneath how purposefully gross the story is there's probably a cutting condemnation of antisemitism and romanticization of the holocaust but personally, all I think is that if someone had let me know what the story was going to be about I would have skipped it and been happier for it. Sometimes you just don't want to read that. But hey, maybe you in particular do.
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