Mythlee > Recent Status Updates

So far, I liked "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" and "Exhalation" (though I kept trying to figure out whether these beings lived inside a known human-cerated machine).

But I found very little payoff for reading through all the twists and turns and complications of the 111 pages of "The Lifestyle of Software Objects."

"After the fourth [courtier] tripped off the royal dais because he couldn't stop staring, Mirnatius turned his own bewildered look at me. 'Are you enchanting them?' he demanded[...]. I leaned conspiratorially close. 'My mother had enough magic to give me three blessings before she died,' I said[...]. 'The first was wit; the second beauty; and the third–that fools should recognize neither.' He flushed."

Puddle glum: "And you must always remember there's one good thing about being trapped down here: it'll save funeral expenses."

'Now, none of that Nordic stuff, please!' groaned Frankley, who regards knowledge of his own language at any period before the Battle of Bosworth as a misdemeanour, and Norse as a felony.

"There is a proverb in Ireland," said Stephen, "to the effect that there is good to be found even in an Englishman - 'is minic Gall maith.' It is not often used, however."

There's some wonderful parent-child interaction in the rejected epilogues, esp. on pp. 120 and 116: 'Don't talk like that to me,' said Sam sternly. 'If it ain't fair for Ellie and Fro to sit up after supper it ain't fair for them to be born sooner, and it ain't fair that I'm your dad and you're not mine. So no more of that, take your turn and what's due in your time, or I'll tell the King.'

So far, I've especially liked Shruti Swamy's "Night Garden," in which a woman observes the confrontation between her dog and a cobra. It's well-told, but I was most fascinated by the shadow-tale of her personal life gleaned from margins. Mary LaChapelle's "Floating Garden" was also quite good, with a gradual and satisfying turn (if not O. Henry style).