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Title: Paper Cities
Editor: Ekaterina Sedia
Genre: Fantasy anthology
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: An anthology of fantasy short stories, (very) loosely themed around "cities". Very.
Thoughts: I'm not going to declare that a lot of the stories in this collection that I didn't care for are bad--they all seem to be competently written. I think this is just more of a situation where the editor and I had a disagreement of taste.
A lot of these stories are intensely image-based, wandering, almost plotless--virtuoso displays of surreal world-building. It's really not my thing. I'd been meaning to read Catherynne M. Valente's "Palimpsest" for some time, and while it's got some lovely prose, it just didn't do much for me. I had some similar issues with "The Age of Fish, Post-Flowers", "The Title of the Story", and "The Tower of Morning's Bones". The worst offender is "Alex and the Toyceivers", which is apparently the latest in a series of stories and the beginning of a novel and makes basically no sense by itself.
On the other hand, for near-Halloween reading, there were some nicely creepy pieces here. "Courting the Lady Scythe" is somewhat predictable but nonetheless enjoyable. "Ghost Market" involves the search for stolen souls. "Down to the Silver Spirits" questions how far people would be willing to go to conceive a child while "The One That Got Away" does the same for a good story. "The Somnabulist" features a woman who is so much more competent in her dreams than she realizes.
Overall, it's an ok collection, but I don't think it's quite my style.
Editor: Ekaterina Sedia
Genre: Fantasy anthology
Thingummies: 3
Synopsis: An anthology of fantasy short stories, (very) loosely themed around "cities". Very.
Thoughts: I'm not going to declare that a lot of the stories in this collection that I didn't care for are bad--they all seem to be competently written. I think this is just more of a situation where the editor and I had a disagreement of taste.
A lot of these stories are intensely image-based, wandering, almost plotless--virtuoso displays of surreal world-building. It's really not my thing. I'd been meaning to read Catherynne M. Valente's "Palimpsest" for some time, and while it's got some lovely prose, it just didn't do much for me. I had some similar issues with "The Age of Fish, Post-Flowers", "The Title of the Story", and "The Tower of Morning's Bones". The worst offender is "Alex and the Toyceivers", which is apparently the latest in a series of stories and the beginning of a novel and makes basically no sense by itself.
On the other hand, for near-Halloween reading, there were some nicely creepy pieces here. "Courting the Lady Scythe" is somewhat predictable but nonetheless enjoyable. "Ghost Market" involves the search for stolen souls. "Down to the Silver Spirits" questions how far people would be willing to go to conceive a child while "The One That Got Away" does the same for a good story. "The Somnabulist" features a woman who is so much more competent in her dreams than she realizes.
Overall, it's an ok collection, but I don't think it's quite my style.
