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kilroyPrint date: 2008 (20s: 1, 50s: 1, 60s: 2, 70s: 6, 80s: 5, 90s: 3, 00s: 8)
While I was reading this book, I kept being annoyed by a back portion of my mind. Most of the stories involve women who have three-dimensional personalities, skills and desires, and roles to play beyond romantic foil. This is of course awesome. But at some point my brain tagged this book as "feminist fiction" automatically. It's an accurate label, but the fact that having capable and interesting women was noticeable even on a subconscious level just kept bugging me. This should be standard practice, not something so far removed from normal that it has the power to startle me. Ah well, I'll get off my soapbox now.
The stories are universally fabulous. The comedy stories are deeply funny, particularly the Ladies' Aid and Armor Society ones-- and yes, that is a set of stories about a medieval women's support group staffed mostly by bad-ass sword-wielding members of the city guard. A few of them, like New World Symphony, had premises that I'd genuinely never seen before. A few of them, like Hand to Hand, I had to re-read to really understand. There's a lot of first-person narration throughout the book, but it does exactly what it's supposed to do-- it provides a lens through which to see the story, not a constant distraction from it.
Moon seems equally comfortable in fantasy and science fiction, and the book has a roughly equal quantity of both. The fantasy stories that aren't comic tend to be in the vein of original fairy tales; they have that sort of moralistic foundation. (Actually, thinking about it, all the stories do. Someone always learns something.) The science fiction stories are invariably character pieces that just happen to have spaceships, using the genre to get just far enough to tell the story and not lingering on the circuitry. Both of these things make me very happy.
Really, the book as a whole made me very happy. I was never bored, I was only disappointed (mildly) once, and every story brought me pleasure of one kind or another. The only reason the book doesn't have the "lend to as many people as possible" tag is because nothing in it knocked my socks off-- and really, that's a pretty small list. I'll be happily seeking out more of her work soon enough, and I'd be happy to lend this one to you if you want it. :-)
Verdict: Keep. (16.5/48 keepers)
Page count: 401 (9418 total)
Completed: 26 (13 female authors, 13 male authors)
Rejected: 22 (12 male authors, 10 female authors)
Next book due: 8/27
I have now met my goal for number of books read this year. :-)
While I was reading this book, I kept being annoyed by a back portion of my mind. Most of the stories involve women who have three-dimensional personalities, skills and desires, and roles to play beyond romantic foil. This is of course awesome. But at some point my brain tagged this book as "feminist fiction" automatically. It's an accurate label, but the fact that having capable and interesting women was noticeable even on a subconscious level just kept bugging me. This should be standard practice, not something so far removed from normal that it has the power to startle me. Ah well, I'll get off my soapbox now.
The stories are universally fabulous. The comedy stories are deeply funny, particularly the Ladies' Aid and Armor Society ones-- and yes, that is a set of stories about a medieval women's support group staffed mostly by bad-ass sword-wielding members of the city guard. A few of them, like New World Symphony, had premises that I'd genuinely never seen before. A few of them, like Hand to Hand, I had to re-read to really understand. There's a lot of first-person narration throughout the book, but it does exactly what it's supposed to do-- it provides a lens through which to see the story, not a constant distraction from it.
Moon seems equally comfortable in fantasy and science fiction, and the book has a roughly equal quantity of both. The fantasy stories that aren't comic tend to be in the vein of original fairy tales; they have that sort of moralistic foundation. (Actually, thinking about it, all the stories do. Someone always learns something.) The science fiction stories are invariably character pieces that just happen to have spaceships, using the genre to get just far enough to tell the story and not lingering on the circuitry. Both of these things make me very happy.
Really, the book as a whole made me very happy. I was never bored, I was only disappointed (mildly) once, and every story brought me pleasure of one kind or another. The only reason the book doesn't have the "lend to as many people as possible" tag is because nothing in it knocked my socks off-- and really, that's a pretty small list. I'll be happily seeking out more of her work soon enough, and I'd be happy to lend this one to you if you want it. :-)
Verdict: Keep. (16.5/48 keepers)
Page count: 401 (9418 total)
Completed: 26 (13 female authors, 13 male authors)
Rejected: 22 (12 male authors, 10 female authors)
Next book due: 8/27
I have now met my goal for number of books read this year. :-)