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War Stories: New Military Science Fiction by Karin Lowachee and others
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
Usually when I read an anthology, I keep track of all the stories within it, then do a mini-review on each one. For some reason I didn't do that this time, but I wish I had.
While every story in this book wasn't a winner for me, the majority of them were. Of the maybe 20 stories, I didn't finish three of them. Maybe three more I finished but they didn't work for me.
Each story revolved around the theme of war, though few of them were directly about battles. Most of the stories were about relationships, which was a positive to me.
Sadly, the story I bought the whole book for (Karin Lowachee's Enemy State) was probably the worst one to me. She's the author who wrote one of the best books I've ever read (Warchild), but I'm starting to think that book was the exception. I haven't liked much of anything else she's written. The whole story was a stream-of-consciousness, first person narrative -- a person speaking to someone else who had gone off to war. That someone else wasn't there to hear it, respond to it, or react to it, so the first person was just speaking into nothingness. It just fell really flat for me, no connection to it at all. Sadly boring.
But man, there were some good stories in this book, too. Wardogs was especially interesting, about relationships and bonds. The last story, War 3.0, should have been a novel and I actually went "ARG!" out loud when it ended. There were a bunch of stories I wished had been longer.
Suits was good enough that I searched for and bought other books by the author (James L. Sutter). It was just so well written -- it did what I always say authors should do: Trust the reader. It dropped small hints here and there, slowly filling out the world setting and what was happening, without ever hitting us over the head with it. In it a tech (clone, so not considered a person), learns what the work he's doing is being used for -- he learns what war really is. Sutter writes for RPG games, and most of his work seems to be male/male stories, so I suspect his books should work for me.
All in all, even with the 'miss' stories, I recommend this book!
Note: The Amazon page is messed up. Apparently there's another book by this name, and the reviewed are mixed between the two books, and the Editorial Reviews section is for the other book.
Currently reading: Gilded Cage. I've been second-guessing myself about accepting it for review (I don't much like the responsibility that comes with that anymore), but it turns out that so far it's really good, so I made the right choice in accepting it. Set on a world where some people with magic, all the people without magic must act as slaves to the magic class for a period of ten years out of their life...
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)
Usually when I read an anthology, I keep track of all the stories within it, then do a mini-review on each one. For some reason I didn't do that this time, but I wish I had.
While every story in this book wasn't a winner for me, the majority of them were. Of the maybe 20 stories, I didn't finish three of them. Maybe three more I finished but they didn't work for me.
Each story revolved around the theme of war, though few of them were directly about battles. Most of the stories were about relationships, which was a positive to me.
Sadly, the story I bought the whole book for (Karin Lowachee's Enemy State) was probably the worst one to me. She's the author who wrote one of the best books I've ever read (Warchild), but I'm starting to think that book was the exception. I haven't liked much of anything else she's written. The whole story was a stream-of-consciousness, first person narrative -- a person speaking to someone else who had gone off to war. That someone else wasn't there to hear it, respond to it, or react to it, so the first person was just speaking into nothingness. It just fell really flat for me, no connection to it at all. Sadly boring.
But man, there were some good stories in this book, too. Wardogs was especially interesting, about relationships and bonds. The last story, War 3.0, should have been a novel and I actually went "ARG!" out loud when it ended. There were a bunch of stories I wished had been longer.
Suits was good enough that I searched for and bought other books by the author (James L. Sutter). It was just so well written -- it did what I always say authors should do: Trust the reader. It dropped small hints here and there, slowly filling out the world setting and what was happening, without ever hitting us over the head with it. In it a tech (clone, so not considered a person), learns what the work he's doing is being used for -- he learns what war really is. Sutter writes for RPG games, and most of his work seems to be male/male stories, so I suspect his books should work for me.
All in all, even with the 'miss' stories, I recommend this book!
Note: The Amazon page is messed up. Apparently there's another book by this name, and the reviewed are mixed between the two books, and the Editorial Reviews section is for the other book.
Currently reading: Gilded Cage. I've been second-guessing myself about accepting it for review (I don't much like the responsibility that comes with that anymore), but it turns out that so far it's really good, so I made the right choice in accepting it. Set on a world where some people with magic, all the people without magic must act as slaves to the magic class for a period of ten years out of their life...
