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A review by cuddlesome
Robots vs. Fairies by Navah Wolfe, Dominik Parisien
3.0
As always with anthologies, some hits and some misses. I love the theme for this one even my kneejerk reaction is to dislike fairies, hahaha. Ironically some of the stories themed around them were my favorites while some of the robot stories were too hard sci-fi for my taste. I've come to realize that I definitely like the Pinocchio-esque woo-woo "what does it mean to be real" Robocops and Android Kikaiders and Terminators and etcs of the world more than anything else with robots. On that note, I enjoyed how many of these stories were inspired by familiar literature like Pinocchio and Peter Pan and the like.
Build Me a Wonderland, Quality Time, The Blue Fairy's Manifesto, Bread and Milk and Salt, Work Shadow/Shadow Work, and Second to the Left, and Straight On were my favorites. Around 50/50 for stories I liked versus stories that weren't my speed, not bad odds at all.
Bread and Milk and Salt was my absolute favorite thanks to the tragedy of it all and the extremely vivid imagery that I'm going to think about for a while. Definitely managed to make me like fae for a hot second with that one especially. Work Shadow/Shadow Work was my favorite robot one thanks to it scratching that "what does it mean to be real" itch I mentioned liking as well as a portrayal of dementia that felt refreshing in that it wasn't just a drawn-out story about how horrible the woman's life is due to it but rather how she's still getting on despite it.
The only story that I thought was truly awful to the point of being entirely unreadable was, unfortunately, the last one, A Fall Counts Anywhere. It's formatted in this unbearable way where it's predominantly DOMINATED BY CAPITAL LETTERS for entire giant blocks of the page. I understand the style choice and the indications of tone but my brain just shut off when I saw it. It felt reminiscent of a fanfic I wrote when I was fourteen where I chose to do everything in bold. Yeesh.
Build Me a Wonderland, Quality Time, The Blue Fairy's Manifesto, Bread and Milk and Salt, Work Shadow/Shadow Work, and Second to the Left, and Straight On were my favorites. Around 50/50 for stories I liked versus stories that weren't my speed, not bad odds at all.
Bread and Milk and Salt was my absolute favorite thanks to the tragedy of it all and the extremely vivid imagery that I'm going to think about for a while. Definitely managed to make me like fae for a hot second with that one especially. Work Shadow/Shadow Work was my favorite robot one thanks to it scratching that "what does it mean to be real" itch I mentioned liking as well as a portrayal of dementia that felt refreshing in that it wasn't just a drawn-out story about how horrible the woman's life is due to it but rather how she's still getting on despite it.
The only story that I thought was truly awful to the point of being entirely unreadable was, unfortunately, the last one, A Fall Counts Anywhere. It's formatted in this unbearable way where it's predominantly DOMINATED BY CAPITAL LETTERS for entire giant blocks of the page. I understand the style choice and the indications of tone but my brain just shut off when I saw it. It felt reminiscent of a fanfic I wrote when I was fourteen where I chose to do everything in bold. Yeesh.