Reviews

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 6, by Jonathan Strahan

emilykval's review

3.0

Like most anthologies, this book had stories that grabbed me and stories that were more of a slog to get through. Overall i enjoyed this book and had fun poking around at all the current tips of stories.

chan_fry's review

2.0

As with any anthology, the reader won't connect with every story; some will seem like space-fillers and others will be gems enjoyable to discover. For me, this one contained too few gems and too many that I simply didn't enjoy. There are 31 stories in this 589-page book. For a handful, I couldn't even tell why they were included -- there seemed to be zero elements of either science fiction or fantasy. Quite a few others, either I never understood what was happening, or nothing ever happened. Some, it seemed, were simply poorly written. I'm surprised this book won awards.

The stories I did enjoy include: All That Touches The Air, by An Owomoyela; The Server And The Dragon, by Hannu Rajaniemi; Malak, by Peter Watts; The Paper Menagerie, by Ken Liu; and Digging, by Ian McDonald.

reallifereading's review

3.0

The Case of Death and Honey - Neil Gaiman
I'm a bigger fan of Gaiman's graphic novels than his fiction but I really enjoyed this story of Sherlock Holmes in China - and there are bees!

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees - E. Lily Yu
This was one fantastic story. A kind of fable. And written by an undergraduate student to boot. I am so looking forward to reading more by Yu.

Tidal Forces - Caitlin R Kiernan
After two great - and bee-related - stories, this one's scifi/fantasy component was a bit more subtle. But it was interesting. And complicated.