Red as Blood and White as Bone by Theodora Goss

March 28, 2019 By Leave a Comment


Red as Blood and White as Bone by Theodora Goss
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Historical
Length: Short Story (35 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Red as Blood and White as Bone by Theodora Goss is a dark fantasy about a kitchen girl obsessed with fairy tales, who upon discovering a ragged woman outside the castle during a storm, takes her in–certain she’s a princess in disguise.

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Klara was such a brave and good girl. She’d lived a hard life, and she hadn’t always been treated kindly by the people who looked after her after her mother died. The fact that she remained so sweet and trusting despite her rough start only made me like her more than I already did.

One part of the plot never quite made sense to me. It involved how a punishment was dealt out at the castle where Klara worked. I expected the baron who lived there would behave one way, so when his reaction was completely different from that I was surprised. It would have been helpful to have more information about why he made that choice and why it didn’t seem to match what the readers knew about him.

There was a twist in the storyline that I thought was well done. Klara didn’t see it coming, and I was so wrapped up in her innocent approach to life that I nearly missed it as well. This only made it more interesting to explore once I realized that she didn’t have the full picture of what was going on at her place of employment. It was exciting to see if my last-minute predictions about this plot point were correct and what would happen to the characters next.

Red as Blood and White as Bone should be read by anyone who has ever wondered what it would be like to live in a fairy tale.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , ,

La beauté sans vertu by Genevieve Valentine

March 20, 2019 By Leave a Comment


La beauté sans vertu by Genevieve Valentine
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short Story (23 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

La beauté sans vertu by Genevieve Valentine is a vicious little swipe at the fashion industry as certain disturbing trends are amplified in the future and a famous fashion House prepares for an important show.

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No, this story wasn’t written in French. That was the first thing I assumed when I stumbled across it, but it was written in English. There were references to French culture, though, and I liked the way Ms. Valentine explained the most important parts of them to the audience without slowing down the pacing of the plot or making too many assumptions about what we might already know about that part of the world or the fashion industry in general. She did a good job of drawing readers into the setting and letting us come to our own conclusions about how France might be similar to or different from the societies we live in.

I would have liked to see a little more attention paid to the ending. There were some loose strings in earlier scenes that were never tied up as neatly as I would have liked to see. While I do enjoy open-ended finales in general, this one would have been perfect if it had provided just a few more answers for the audience.

Maria, the protagonist, confused me a little bit at first. She reacted so passively to all of the things that happened to her that I couldn’t help but to wonder why she never seemed to object to anything. There was an excellent reason why she was written that way, and I was glad the author gave me so much time to come up with my own theories about it in the beginning. It worked really well with

La beauté sans vertu was a thought-provoking tale that I’d recommend to anyone who has ever wished they could be as good-looking as a model.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , ,

The Destroyer by Tara Isabella Burton

March 11, 2019 By Leave a Comment


The Destroyer by Tara Isabella Burton
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short Story (23 pages)
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

In a futuristic, fascistic Rome, a brilliant, unstable scientist proves that she can transcend the human body’s limitations. The test subject? Her own daughter. A mother-daughter mad scientist story, THE DESTROYER asks how far we’ll go to secure our own legacies — and how far we’ll run to escape them.

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The relationship between the unnamed protagonist and her mother was incredibly complex. I enjoyed exploring the many different layers of their bond, from what the mom was hoping her daughter would be like to who the narrator actually turned out to be once she became an adult. This isn’t even to mention all of the science fiction elements of their lives and work that also influenced how they related to each other! Ms. Burton did a great job of weaving all of these parts of their relationship together in ways that both filled out their backstories and pushed the plot forward.

There were a few aspects of the scientific experiments the main character’s mother was doing that never quite made sense to me. She described medical procedures and other advancements that are impossible in our world. While I certainly wouldn’t have expected the narrator to go into full detail about these things, it would have been nice to know a little more about how her mother figured out the obvious problems in those parts of the plot. I can’t go into more detail than this without giving away spoilers, but it is something I wondered enough about that I didn’t feel comfortable choosing the five-star rating I would have otherwise wanted to give to this tale.

With that being said, I adored the ending. The scientific possibilities it hinted might be part of our even more distant future made my brain tingle. I wished for just one more scene so that I could see how many of those hints might actually come true. It’s always fun when a story both wraps up satisfactorily and makes the audience crave more. This story struck that balance perfectly, and this is one of the biggest reasons why I gave it such a high rating.

The Destroyer was a creative vision of one possible version of humanity’s future that I’d recommend to anyone who loves wondering what the future might hold for our species.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , ,

Dune Time by Jack Nicholls

March 8, 2019 By Leave a Comment


Dune Time by Jack Nicholls
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Paranormal, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (31 pages)
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Isolated in the desert with his brother, Hasan learns that there is more to the legends of the dunes than he initially believed.

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The sibling relationship between Hasan and Tariq was well done. Despite growing up in the same environment, they’d turned out to be two completely different people in almost any way I could imagine. I find it interesting to see how siblings respond to each other when they’ve taken such divergent paths in life, and these two brothers definitely fit that bill.

I would have liked to see more attention paid to the ending. There wasn’t a lot of foreshadowing for it earlier on in the plot, so I was a little caught off guard at how it was all wrapped up. It would have been helpful to have a more detailed description of what the characters really experienced while they were out in the desert and so far removed from the rest of the world.

Mr. Nicholls spent the exact right amount of time describing what it’s like to live in the desert. Unlike many other climates, this one can be incredibly dangerous for even the most healthy and fit individual. It’s so hot there that dehydration is a constant concern, and it can happen much faster than the average person who isn’t acclimated to that kind of heat might assume. Luckily, Hasan and Tariq knew what to do to keep themselves safe, but I still enjoyed reading about all of the precautions they took in order to keep the job they were hired to do from being their last one.

Dune Time should be read by anyone who loves stories that can be interpreted in more than one way.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Terminal by Lavie Tidhar

February 21, 2019 By Leave a Comment


Terminal by Lavie Tidhar
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short Story (27 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Terminal by Lavie Tidhar is an emotionally wrenching science fiction story about people, who, either having nothing to lose or having a deep desire to go into space, travel to Mars via cheap, one-person, one-way vehicles dubbed jalopies. During the trip, those in the swarm communicate with each other, their words relayed to those left behind.

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Mei, the main character, was well written and likeable. Due to the fact that she seemed to be an incredibly private person, it took a while for her to begin opening up to the audience. Not knowing her reasons for volunteering to move to Mars only made me more curious to find out why she’d decided to never see any of her friends or relatives again. It was such a drastic decision that I couldn’t wait to discover her motivations for it.

The ending was so ambiguous that I didn’t find it satisfying. While I do enjoy stories that ask their readers to put effort into figuring them out, it is nice to have at least a couple of hints about what the narrator thinks might happen in the end. The fact that the plot suddenly stopped was jarring to me. I sure would have appreciated a little more assistance in figuring out if my guesses about what would happen next were the correct ones.

Keeping someone alive on a trip from Earth to Mars is no easy task. One of the things I liked the most about this tale was how much attention it gave to describing Mei’s accommodations on the jalopy. She was enclosed in a very small space during this journey, but all of her basic needs were taken care of. Seeing how she managed to come up with ways to amuse herself was nearly as interesting as reading the descriptions of how she kept herself fed and safely disposed of her waste products.

I’d recommend Terminal to anyone who likes poetic science fiction.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , ,

Nine Last Days on Planet Earth by Daryl Gregory

February 19, 2019 By Leave a Comment


Nine Last Days on Planet Earth by Daryl Gregory
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Historical, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (42 pages)
Rating: 4.5 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion–or something else entirely. How much time do we have left, and do we even understand what timescale to use? As a slow apocalypse blooms across the Earth, planets and plants, animals and microbes, all live and die and evolve at different scales. Is one human life long enough to unravel the mystery?

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What if the alien invaders humans have long worried about turned out to be plants instead of anything humanoid like us?

I adored the premise of this story from the very first second I read it. Even though I’m an avid reader of science fiction, it’s been a very long time since I read anything about alien species that come to Earth being plants. This isn’t a concept that seems to given a lot of attention in this genre, so I was thrilled to find out how the author would approach it. What made it even better was that the plot itself was somehow more interesting than the blurb! The more I read, I more I wanted to know.

There were a couple of short sections that talked about how the alien plants might have been affecting human’s bodies in certain cases. This was a minor criticism of something I really loved, but I sure would have liked to know more about how this worked and why not everyone seemed to be susceptible to it. The plants were growing so quickly in general that I didn’t quite understand how these parts of the plot fit into their evolution as a whole.

LT was such a well-developed protagonist. Since the audience was able to watch him grow from a child to an adult through all of his various interactions with the alien seeds and plants, we saw many different sides of him. His maturation process was an interesting one. He was so young when the seeds first landed on the Earth that his understanding of what that event meant for human history< and possibly even our survival as a species, was nothing at all like how his parents or other adults would have described it. I deeply enjoyed getting to know this character as he tried to figure out what the intentions of these plants might be.

Nine Last Days on Planet Earth is a fantastic choice for anyone who loves alien stories.

Filed Under: Mystery/Suspense, Other, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Freedom is Space for the Spirit by Glen Hirshberg

February 13, 2019 By Leave a Comment


Freedom is Space for the Spirit by Glen Hirshberg
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (54 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

“Freedom is Space for the Spirit” by Glen Hirshberg is a fantasy about a middle-aged German, drawn back to Russia by a mysterious invitation from a friend he knew during the wild, exuberant period in the midst of the break-up of the Soviet Union. Upon his arrival in St. Petersburg, he begins to see bears, wandering and seemingly lost.

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There’s nothing quite like reconnecting with old friends after being apart from them for many years. One of the things this tale did really well was capture all of the different and sometimes conflicting emotions someone can feel in that situation. Thomas, the main character, seemed to feel everything from excitement to a vague sense of disappointment over how all of their lives had diverged since they last met and who everyone had become now that they were well into adulthood. Seeing him reminisce about old times and create new memories was definitely a highlight for me.

It felt like there was a metaphor in this story that I didn’t quite have enough information about to understand. The thought of bears wandering around calmly in a city that seemed to have to accepted their presence grabbed my attention immediately. I couldn’t wait to find out why so many folks were comfortable around such large and potentially dangerous animals, so it was disappointing when the answers to my questions about this plot twist were hard to find. I would have really liked to have more clues about what the bears represented and why most folks didn’t seem surprised by them at all.

Mr. Hirshberg’s close attention to detail was what made the setting and characters come alive in my imagination. He did a very good job of describing what Russian society was like and why the unusual bears that began wandering around St. Petersburg were so unique. While I can’t go into details about these things without giving away spoilers, I did appreciate the fact that he spent so much time showing the audience what they were like.

If you love science fiction that’s open to many different interpretations, Freedom is Space for the Spirit might be right up your alley.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , ,

AI and the Trolley Problem by Pat Cadigan

February 7, 2019 By Leave a Comment


AI and the Trolley Problem by Pat Cadigan
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Contemporary
Length: Short Story (29 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

A provocative story about the relationship between the humans on a British airbase and the AI security system that guards that base. When a group of humans are killed, the question is who is responsible and why. Find out in AI and the Trolley Problem, Pat Cadigan’s Tor.com Original story.

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While the cast of characters was a bit bigger than I’d normally expect to see in a story of this length, I was pleased by how much attention the narrator gave to explaining who everyone was and what role they served on the airbase. I was always able to keep everyone straight in my mind, and that was an important thing to do once tragedy struck.

The pacing was quite slow. As interested as I was in finding out if the AI security system knew anything about the deaths that had taken place on this airbase, seeing things unfold so gradually made it hard for me to remain interested in what the final scene might reveal. There simply wasn’t enough going on in the plot to keep my attention.

I appreciated how relatively calm all of the characters remained after their colleagues were killed. They were obviously saddened and horrified by those deaths, but they were determined to figure out why the event that caused them happened. This struck me as something that was very sensible for a tale set among people who had military training. While their backgrounds weren’t explicitly talked about in the plot, I liked the fact that their training showed up in such practical ways even though they didn’t have time to discuss their pasts.

If you like philosophical questions, I’d recommend giving AI and the Trolley Problem a try.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Weather by Caighlan Smith

February 5, 2019 By Leave a Comment


The Weather by Caighlan Smith
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy, Horror
Length: Short Story (20 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

In the middle of a barren wasteland, a small town goes through the motions as if nothing’s changed. Lolly has school, a part time job, a senile grandmother that needs looking after. But everything has changed, and Lolly’s always one storm away from facing that.

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One of the things I always enjoy the most about science fiction set in the future is seeing how it imagines our current era might be thought of by people who were born long after it ended. This story had several scenes that made references to things that people living in the twenty-first century would easily understand but that folks in this era found mystifying. I’ll leave it up to future potential readers to discover the specific examples I’m talking about here, but all of them made me chuckle. They couldn’t have been written better.

There weren’t enough details included in this story for me to figure out exactly how the world had changed. Lolly and her family made multiple comments about some sort of dangerous thing that was coming for them, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what they were afraid of. Their references could have been interpreted in so many different ways that narrowing them down to the truth was just about impossible. As much as I loved the atmosphere of this one, I would have enjoyed it even more if it had been clearer about what sort of conflict they were facing.

The atmosphere was fantastic, though. I really liked seeing how Lolly’s completely ordinary shift at work was mixed in with her quickly increasing fear that something awful was about to happen to her and the people around her. There’s something appealing to me about characters whose lives are interrupted in this way, and there was a lot of that in this tale.

If you enjoy endings that are open to many different interpretations, The Weather might be right up your alley.

Filed Under: Horror, Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Sweetheart by Abbey Mei Otis

February 4, 2019 By Leave a Comment


Sweetheart by Abbey Mei Otis
Publisher: Tor Books
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Length: Short Story (8 pages)
Rating: 3 Stars
Reviewed by Astilbe

Paxton and the neighbor’s kid are inseparable—sweethearts, even, and Paxton barely six. He doesn’t mind her antennae and clicking mandibles at all.

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It isn’t easy to write an unlikeable main character that readers still want to learn more about, but this author did an excellent job of achieving that goal. As much as I vehemently disagreed with the protagonists thoughts about how aliens should be treated, I wanted to know so much more about where she came to those conclusions and who taught her to be prejudiced against non-humans.

I would have loved to see more world building and character development in this story. We didn’t even learn the main character’s name, much less why she disliked aliens so much or when she first began justifying her prejudices about them so strongly that she didn’t even have self-awareness of this part of her personality. The handful of hints about her past simply didn’t enough details to explain how she turned into the sort of person she did or when humans in general might have changed their minds about how they wanted to treat the aliens living among them.

By far my favorite part of this tale was how it demanded that the reader participate in it. Since it was written in the second person, every sentence almost sounded like a conversation with someone who knew you well instead of the continuation of a fictional plot. I found myself standing in the shoes of a character I didn’t like and seeing the world through her eyes. As uncomfortable as that experience was at times, it was also a great way to encourage this reader to wonder what I would do if I lived in a similar situation.

I’d recommend Sweetheart to anyone who is looking for something thought provoking.

Filed Under: Reviews, Science Fiction/Fantasy Tagged With: , , , ,
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