How Long 'til Black Future Month? in Our Shared Shelf

Jul 22, 2020 Barbara rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, short-fiction, library, fantasy-scifi, book-club, 2020, 2022

I usually find it difficult to review collections of short stories, because they’re often too varied or too hit-or-miss for me. This one contains a wide variety in style and setting, but very little variation in quality—very few misses here. From urban fantasy to apocalyptic futures and an alternate steampunk post-Civil War South, I thoroughly enjoyed this.

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Dec 20, 2018 Xanthe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: adult-fiction, magical-realism, sci-fi, historical-fiction, fantasy, urban-fantasy, dystopian, horror, space-shenanigans, alternate-history

So, I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I suck at short stories. While reading a collection, I will start out with the best of intention, read the first, maybe the second, then put the whole thing down because I’m overwhelmed by crowding of ideas and worlds (especially with sf/f collections.) Or, alternately, I find the stories so underdeveloped and unsatisfying, that it’s hardly worth getting invested in a character or a concept because it ends before I feel they’ve been fully explored So, I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: I suck at short stories. While reading a collection, I will start out with the best of intention, read the first, maybe the second, then put the whole thing down because I’m overwhelmed by crowding of ideas and worlds (especially with sf/f collections.) Or, alternately, I find the stories so underdeveloped and unsatisfying, that it’s hardly worth getting invested in a character or a concept because it ends before I feel they’ve been fully explored. But who cares about me and my hang-ups, NK Jemisin is a superstar in sf/f now, the author of The Fifth Season (which I’m still working up the courage to read) and I was lucky enough to check my library’s Overdrive collection at perhaps the exact minute this collection was added, which allowed me to snap it up ahead of the now-lengthy wait-list.

So how were the stories? They were fantastic – imaginative and sharp, exploring different dimensions of humanity in the ways that only speculative fiction allows. I don’t know much about the order chosen for the collection or the order these stories were written in, but there were only a couple of stories at the beginning where I felt I was being beaten over the head (lightly, very lightly) with an agenda. The rest were enthralling and exciting (even the ones that where I could hear the messaging gears creaking were very good.) “L’Alchimista” about a methodical cook with a challenge was a delight. “City Born Great” about cities waking up and acquiring guardians to battle the dark forces trying to devour them was also a thrill. “The Effluent Engine” had a lot of similar elements with the novella The Black God’s Drums which I am totally okay with because both had fresh alternative historical takes on New Orleans with steampunk and spies. There were dragons and AIs and parasites and creepy stuff and all of it was intense and completely absorbing to the point that I found myself doing what I never do with short story collections: being unable to stop reading after just one. Instead of reading a story at a time and putting it aside with relief, I plowed through several stories at a time after only flipping a page to read the first line of the next story. Perhaps it doesn’t sound like much, but to me, short-story deficient as I am, this is the highest compliment I can pay.
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Jul 25, 2020 Julianne Dunn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

If you have read any of N.K. Jemisin's world-building series, you will recognize quite a few of the worlds in these short stories. She wrote many of them to start the eventual series. There are some really great ones that aren't connected to her other books and I hope she does spend some time expanding them. I listened to this and the narrators were great and helped to make these stories real for me. ...more

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