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Title: Catopolis
Editor: Martin H. Greenberg and Janet Deaver-Pack
Genre: Fantasy short stories about cats
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: A collection of fantasy short stories. About cats. What it says on the tin, folks.
Thoughts: I have a dear friend in publishing, who shall go nameless unless she decides to out herself (not that it's that difficult to figure out), who likes to bring home random stuff to give to me to read. She knows I read like the wind, and thus am often willing to risk total dreck because it's not that much of a time commitment. She's given me some really awesome stuff on purpose, and some really awful stuff by accident, and some really awful stuff on purpose because she thinks it's hilarious.
Which is how I ended up with a short story collection about cats. (I would like to point out that I own no cats, nor am I particularly interested in cats.) I think she picked it mostly because the cover design is quite pretty and clever.
Unfortunately, most the stories are not nearly so clever. They're not bad, mind you. Some are reasonably entertaining. "Old Age and Sorcery", about an elderly cat wizard, has an entertaining tone if not a particularly brilliant plot. "After Tony's Fall" features a feline mob enforcer after a surprising prize. "Ink and Newsprint" and "The Scent of Death" were somewhat charming, and I'll admit "The Persian, The Coon, and Bullets" was more clever at the end than I thought it would be.
But the overall impression is just...meh. Most of the stories are pretty lifeless and lacking in much originality at all. I'm not sure if it's surprising or not how many of them feel exactly the same as the one you just read. I guess if you were totally obsessed with cats, which is who this book is aimed at, you'd love reading them just because they're about cats. Unfortunately, I'm not cat-crazy enough to overlook lackluster writing. Go read through the Strange Horizons archive or something if you want some good short stories. For that matter, I vaguely remember some of the Catfantastic collections being stronger than this, and there's at least four of those.
Editor: Martin H. Greenberg and Janet Deaver-Pack
Genre: Fantasy short stories about cats
Thingummies: 2.5
Synopsis: A collection of fantasy short stories. About cats. What it says on the tin, folks.
Thoughts: I have a dear friend in publishing, who shall go nameless unless she decides to out herself (not that it's that difficult to figure out), who likes to bring home random stuff to give to me to read. She knows I read like the wind, and thus am often willing to risk total dreck because it's not that much of a time commitment. She's given me some really awesome stuff on purpose, and some really awful stuff by accident, and some really awful stuff on purpose because she thinks it's hilarious.
Which is how I ended up with a short story collection about cats. (I would like to point out that I own no cats, nor am I particularly interested in cats.) I think she picked it mostly because the cover design is quite pretty and clever.
Unfortunately, most the stories are not nearly so clever. They're not bad, mind you. Some are reasonably entertaining. "Old Age and Sorcery", about an elderly cat wizard, has an entertaining tone if not a particularly brilliant plot. "After Tony's Fall" features a feline mob enforcer after a surprising prize. "Ink and Newsprint" and "The Scent of Death" were somewhat charming, and I'll admit "The Persian, The Coon, and Bullets" was more clever at the end than I thought it would be.
But the overall impression is just...meh. Most of the stories are pretty lifeless and lacking in much originality at all. I'm not sure if it's surprising or not how many of them feel exactly the same as the one you just read. I guess if you were totally obsessed with cats, which is who this book is aimed at, you'd love reading them just because they're about cats. Unfortunately, I'm not cat-crazy enough to overlook lackluster writing. Go read through the Strange Horizons archive or something if you want some good short stories. For that matter, I vaguely remember some of the Catfantastic collections being stronger than this, and there's at least four of those.
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Date: 2011-08-17 04:51 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2011-08-17 04:57 pm (UTC)From: