Calissa

Published: December 2018 by Queen of Swords Press
Format reviewed: E-book (epub)
Genres: Fantasy, sci-fi, historical fiction, LGBTQIA
Source: Publisher
Available: Publisher (print and electronic) ~ Amazon (AU, CA, UK, US) ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Book Depository ~ Booktopia~ Indiebound ~ Kobo ~ Smashwords

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Outlaws. Lovers. Heroes. Villains.

With their peg legs, their parrots and the skull and crossbones flying from the mastheads of their ships, classic pirates are some of the worlds best-known and easily recognizable outlaws. Or are they? These fifteen stories spin new tales of pirates crossing dimensional barriers for revenge, fighting terrible foes in outer space and building new lives after the Trojan War. Travel to the South China Sea, then on to New York City after a climate apocalypse, then roam the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy and voyage to distant and fantastical worlds. Go with them as they seek treasure, redemption, love, revenge and more. Raise the Jolly Roger and sharpen your cutlass (or recharge your raygun) and climb aboard for some unforgettable journeys.

Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) is a wonderfully varied anthology of short stories that was a delight to read. As the title suggests, it covers a range of time periods and genres, from ancient history through to future Earth and into entirely different worlds. Overall, it leaned towards fantasy and pirates of the sea, but there was enough of a mix to prevent boredom.

Queen of Swords Press has historically been very supportive of diverse work, and it shows in this anthology. A number of stories featured f/f romantic elements and one particularly memorable story (Serpent’s Tale by Mhari West) features a poly triad set in Viking times. It also includes characters from a range of backgrounds, with some of the real-world stories being set in the Caribbean, South-east Asia and Colorado. This inclusivity not only reflects the state of the world, but served to keep the stories interesting.

In addition to the variety of settings, there was also a reasonable variety of tone. It ranged from the fun and wacky to darker stories of revenge and those that embraced the grimmer parts of pirate history. However, on the whole it tends towards the lighter end of the spectrum and threats of sexual violence are distant where present.

One trope that I saw a little more often than I would have liked was the exceptional woman–the one woman on an otherwise all-male crew. By and large, it was handled well, but it was an uncomfortable default, particularly in stories with fantasy settings.

I was unsatisfied by a few stories that felt like a chunk of a larger story and lacked proper closure. This is something of a personal bugbear and will not be true for all readers. However, other stories in the collection also felt like they were part of a larger story but still managed to give proper closure to the tale they were telling. A particularly good example of this was the closing story Search for the Heart of the Ocean by A.J. Fitzwater, in which Captain Cinrak the Dapper, capybara pirate extraordinaire, goes on a quest to retrieve a jewel to replace the one she set free from the Queen’s tiara in a previous story.

The overall quality of the stories was good, though there were one or two that weren’t at the same standard as the others. A couple of my favourites were the opening story Treasured Island by Ginn Hale, in which a pirate is marooned on a sentient island and finds peace in living close to nature, and Andromache’s War by Elliott Dunstan, which tells of what happens to Hector’s wife after the sack of Troy–a fierce story about a woman no longer willing to be powerless in the face of men’s war.

All in all, Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) is an anthology with heart and was a welcome read in stressful times.

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.

Published: May 2017 by Meercat Press
Format reviewed: E-book (mobi)
Genres: Science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction
Source: Publisher
Available:Abbey’s ~ Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Book Depository ~ Booktopia ~ Dymocks ~ Kobo

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Behind the Mask is an exciting collection of short stories about the everyday lives of superheroes. Ranging from laugh-out-loud funny to deliciously dark, these stories are about the ordinary day-to-day challenges facing these extraordinary individuals growing up, growing old, relationships, parenting, coping with that age-old desire to fit in when, let’s face it, they don’t.

Behind the Mask is a solid collection of short stories that nevertheless left me feeling ambivalent. Since I’m not much of a short story reader, this could definitely be more a reflection of my reading taste than the anthology itself. However, I didn’t find myself hurrying back to it.

The stories often focused on the domestic and the personal, which I rather enjoyed. They’re less about the big, flashy battles–though those make the occasional appearance, such as in Seanan McGuire’s story Pedestal. Instead, the stories use their superheroes as lenses to examine themes such as memory, chronic illness, celebrity, and family dynamics and legacies. These stories are often quite poignant, such as Destroy the City with Me Tonight by Kate Marshall.

It also means this isn’t the most up-beat of anthologies. The tone tends towards the melancholy, and while there are notes of hope throughout, they tend to be muted.

I’d like to make special mention of Stephanie Lai’s The Fall of the Jade Sword. The story provided an excellent contrast to the fare of standard Western superheroes. Instead, it offers a historical fantasy about a young Chinese immigrant living in Melbourne. Chafing under the confines of social expectations, she sneaks out and attempts to emulate the local superhero–a figure the Chinese community recognises as a skilled practitioner of Wushu. It provided a breath of fresh air in an anthology otherwise fairly uniform in tone.

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.

Published: May 2016 by Twelfth Planet Press
Format reviewed: E-book (mobi)
Genres: Science fiction
Source: Editor
Reading Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge 2016
Available: Publisher (print and electronic) ~ Amazon ~ Barnes & Noble ~ Book Depository

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
A few of the contributors are friends. I have done my best to give an unbiased review.

Teens form an all-girl band in the face of an impending comet.

A woman faces giant spiders to collect silk and protect her family.

New friends take their radio show on the road in search of plague survivors.

A man seeks love in a fading world.

How would  you  survive the apocalypse?

Defying Doomsday is an anthology of apocalypse fiction featuring disabled and chronically ill protagonists, proving it’s not always the “fittest” who survive – it’s the most tenacious, stubborn, enduring and innovative characters who have the best chance of adapting when everything is lost.

In stories of fear, hope and survival, this anthology gives new perspectives on the end of the world, from authors Corinne Duyvis, Janet Edwards, Seanan McGuire, Tansy Rayner Roberts, Stephanie Gunn, Elinor Caiman Sands, Rivqa Rafael, Bogi Takács, John Chu, Maree Kimberley, Octavia Cade, Lauren E Mitchell, Thoraiya Dyer, Samantha Rich, and K Evangelista.

I often have trouble with short story collections. I’ll read a story, then put the book down and wander off for a while. It takes me forever to get through an entire anthology, no matter how good the stories are.

I was surprised to find that wasn’t the case with Defying Doomsday. Robert Hoge’s introduction hooked me right from the start by providing an insightful context for the anthology and setting the tone. Corinne Duyvis then took over with an earth-shaking story that managed to be both angry and hopeful, confronting the casually discriminating attitudes that occur in most apocalyptic fiction and everyday life by examining the difference between equality and equity. It made for an epic start to the anthology.

Not all of the apocalypses featured in this anthology arrived with a bang. While some of them came out of nowhere (Did We Break the End of the World? by Tansy Rayner Roberts and I Will Remember You by Janet Edwards), others were a long time coming and seep in around the edges (Something in the Rain by Seanan McGuire). Some were brought on by aliens (In the Sky with Diamonds by Elinor Caiman Sands) and some humanity inflicted on itself (Five Thousand Squares by Maree Kimberley).

What the stories have in common is the characters’ need to survive. However, survival has no ending except one–and this is not that kind of anthology. How the stories manage this challenge was interesting. In some cases, the characters completed just one small step of their journey, survived one day that reflects the many other days ahead. Sometimes the characters managed to complete a bigger step–find a more permanent place of safety or a way to survive in numbers. Some even thrived, seeking out a way of overcoming their apocalypse for good. I’m not really a fan of open endings, so I was pleased to find the stories generally delivered a sense of resolution without needing to tie up every loose end.

The diversity of disabilities mirrored the diversity of apocalypses. There were characters who were blind or deaf. Some were missing limbs or had Crohn’s disease or were on the autism spectrum. Whatever the case, the characters were always more than their disability and were shown as fully realised people. In some stories, these disabilities posed additional obstacles to survival–such as ongoing treatment for cystic fibrosis or navigating an unfamiliar environment while blind. However, my favourite stories were the ones where the character’s disability was the reason for their survival, such as Emm’s missing legs allowing her to confuse the spiders in Samantha Rich’s Spider Silk, Strong as Steel.

I’d like to give a special mention to John Chu’s Selected Afterimages of the Fading. Written in second person, it tells the story of a genius who suffers from body dysmorphia, continually perceiving himself to be smaller and weaker than he actually is. This results in a compulsion to workout near constantly. I appreciated the way the character was both a genius scientist and a body-builder. I think the choice of second person illustrated his misperception well. And I adored that the story also manages to be a rather sweet gay romance.

There are a few stories that I felt were a little weaker than the rest, but overall it was a strong anthology and I enjoyed it even more than I enjoyed Kaleidoscope.

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.

Published: August 2015 by Tachyon Publications
Format reviewed: E-book (mobi)
Genres: Speculative fiction, fantasy, magical realism, LBGTQIA
Source: NetGalley
Available: Publisher (print and electronic) ~ Abbey’s ~ Amazon ~ Book Depository ~ Booktopia ~ Dymocks ~ Kobo

Disclaimer: I was provided with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, Skin Folk) has been widely hailed as a highly significant voice in Caribbean and American fiction. She has been dubbed “one of our most important writers,” (Junot Diaz), with “an imagination that most of us would kill for” (Los Angeles Times), and her work has been called “stunning,” (New York Times) “rich in voice, humor, and dazzling imagery” (Kirkus), and “simply triumphant” (Dorothy Allison).

Falling in Love with Hominids presents over a dozen years of Hopkinson’s new, uncollected fiction, much of which has been unavailable in print. Her singular, vivid tales, which mix the modern with Afro-Carribean folklore, are occupied by creatures unpredictable and strange: chickens that breathe fire, adults who eat children, and spirits that haunt shopping malls.

I’ve been meaning to read Nalo Hopkinson’s work ever since she was the Guest of Honour at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention in 2013. This collection of short stories was the perfect starting point. It showcases the breadth of her talent through a wide variety of stories. Genres range from fantasy and magical realism to soft sci-fi and alternate history.

Diversity is a strong feature of this collection; the characters are even more varied than the genres. The protagonist of the very first story is a young disabled black girl and the rest of the stories contain all sorts of characters. Some are people of colour, some are queer, some are both. Occasionally this diversity is the point of a story. For example Shift reworks Shakespeare’s The Tempest into an interesting meditation on perceptions of black masculinity. However, more often diversity is incidental. I was particularly delighted by Emily Breakfast, which throws in casual mentions of queerness and kink into a story of fantastic domesticity.

Hopkinson has a way with language and this was particularly noticeable in her descriptions of bodies. She throws away narrow cultural definitions of beauty in favour of showing how bodies of all shapes and sizes can be desireable.

As is usual in any collection or anthology, not all of the stories appealed to me. In the introduction, Hopkinson mentions the bleak outlook she held on humanity when she was younger. This perspective definitely shows up in some of the stories, particularly the earlier ones, and didn’t especially appeal to me. I prefer optimistic stories and fortunately still found plenty to delight. Along with the two mentioned above, some particular favourites were:

The Smile on the Face: A teenage girl comes to terms with the cruelty of adolescence and her feelings about her body with a little assistance from her mother’s favourite myth.

Old Habits: A shopping centre is haunted by the ghosts of those who have died within and who are forced to relieve their death daily. A moving story about human dignity.

A Young Candy Daughter: The Christmas spirit manifests in a young girl with extraordinary abilities.

Falling in Love with Hominids is a though-provoking collection and one that will linger with the reader for a long time.

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.

Published: April 2014 by coeur de lion publishing
Format reviewed: E-book (mobi)
Genres: Sci-fi, horror
Source: Free from the publisher’s website

Dimension6 is a new electronic publication that was launched this year by Keith Stevenson of coeur de lion publishing. There are three issues a year, each featuring three short stories. This inaugural issue contained Ryder by Richard Harland, The Message by Charlotte Nash, and The Preservation Society by Jason Nahrung.

Ryder is set in country New South Wales during World War 1. Sally has come from Sydney to stay with relatives in safety. However, she’s soon bored out of her mind and finds herself drawn to Ryder, the town’s mysterious bad boy. This story was the wrong way to start off the collection for me and was almost enough to make me put the whole thing down. Although the premise was interesting, I didn’t feel there was enough done with it to justify the story. I also found the characters thoroughly unlikeable and the implications of the ending rather uncomfortable, though the story itself was reasonably well-written. It was disappointing that the author loci included afterwards only related to the story in the most distant of ways.

Charlotte Nash’s The Message more than made up for this disappointment. Set in the post-apocalyptic future, it tells the tale of a hunter who is sent into the dangerous urban wilderness to deliver a message to the enemy. Again, it had an interesting premise and one that seemed distantly related to Ryder. The story’s twists and shifts kept me on my toes, creating excellent tension. It was definitely my favourite story of the collection. I notice that Nash also wrote Ghost of Hephaestus in Phantazein, one of my favourites in that anthology. The Message has confirmed she’s an author I’m going to be watching out for.

The Preservation Society was a bit of a change after the two sci-fi stories. Set in Queensland, a human woman is auctioned off to a group of vampires. Horror isn’t generally my thing, but The Preservation Society did such a great job of focussing on its characters that it never left me feeling out of my comfort zone. In fact, the last line had me chuckling a little. The ending wasn’t too difficult to spot, but well worth the ride. Australian vampires are a preoccupation for Nahrung and he does it well.

Based on this first issue, Dimension6 is a market to keep your eye on if you’re interested in dark, spec-fic short stories. All issues are available for free at the publisher’s website.

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.

To Spin A Darker Stair is a short chapbook that pairs two fairytale reworkings: A Delicate Architecture by Catherynne M Valente and The Oracle’s Tower by Faith Mudge. Valente’s story is a reprint, picked specifically to complement the story by Mudge.

Thematically, the stories are well-matched. Both carry a strong fairytale atmosphere and give the reader a sense that anything is possible. Both have a similar angle on their protagonist.

However, this similarity is a double-edged sword. A Delicate Architecture is a wonderfully deft tale, full of rich detail. Pairing it with The Oracle’s Tower serves to highlight the flaws in the latter–flaws that may have been overlooked if paired with a more contrasting story.

For example, A Delicate Architecture simply launches into the tale, drawing the reader along with a strikingly unique situation. The Oracle’s Tower, in contrast, follows a worn path wherein the narrator urges the reader to listen to her tale in a somewhat clumsy attempt to impart a sense of wisdom and urgency. This approach always tends to backfire a little for me; I rarely like being told what to do. The ending was framed likewise, setting out a possible conclusion to the story without being at all satisfying. It came across as a writer’s frantic attempt to wrap up the tale before the word count blew out.

The illustrations and cover art by Kathleen Jennings deserve a special mention. They tie the stories together beautifully and help strengthen the fairytale atmosphere.

Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Being only 51 pages, it is the perfect travel book and I devoured the whole lot in a single bus trip. With Fablecroft Publishing  scheduled to launch the anthology Phantazein at Conflux 10, it seems certain we can expect more along the same theme from them–especially with Mudge and Jennings making reappearances. However, I also hope that  FableCroft will produce more of these chapbooks in the future to help enliven future commutes.

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.