2023 science fiction and fantrasy anthology of short stories and poetry…
An accompanist is asked to play a modern piece which is strangely
involving. Bluebeard, reversed. Liù, the slave girl in Turandot,
tries again and again to find a better ending for everyone…
Usually with an anthology I review individual stories, but I
don't feel I can do that here; read all together, as I did, the
overall effect is not of individual items but of separate fractured
views which one can add up to approximate something like a reality. A
couple of the stories here are set in the world of The Outside
series, but they all stand alone. Many of them, in the modern style,
are more about giving an impression than about providing a resolution;
some of them very much are not. They all speak to me, even the poetry,
in a way that many short stories don't.
Some themes recur: autistic overload, and the inability of Normal
People to see this as anything other than voluntary bad behaviour. The
peril of opening up to someone, and the need to do so anyway. The need
for other people to choose to heal themselves rather than having it
done to them.
Sometimes the allegories with the real world are on the heavy-handed
side, but I found that I very much enjoyed this collection. There is a
voice here saying things that feels as though they need to be said,
and aren't being effectively said by anyone else.