Taste the Books: Review Morsels #31 Jonathan Strahan et al., Seanan McGuire, A.S. King

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear,  I'm NOT taking a break from writing long reviews - no such luck LOL (though for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/I don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis). But while I'm making up my mind about a new book I've read, I might as well give you the short version 😉. Just be warned - this feature will be VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance by Jonathan Strahan et al. (ARC Review)

★★★★

A varied bunch of time-travel stories spanning/mixing different eras and exploring the trope from a number of different angles, in which soul mates cross time and space and sometimes lose each other in their flow.

***

First off...DISCLAIMER: I requested this title on NetGalley. Thanks to Rebellion/Solaris for providing an ecopy. This didn't influence my review in any way.

Another anthology with Seanan McGuire in the line-up, plus centering around one of my favourite story devices...I briefly hesitated before I clicked on the "Request" button because the romance part scared me - now that is something I normally don't enjoy in my books - but ultimately, the time travel + Seanan McGuire combo won...and I'm pleased to report that I ended up liking this collection a lot. For one, the writing quality is very high overall, and most of the story premises/twists on the genre are a breath of fresh air. And just so you know, half the stories are queer (maybe even more, if you look at The Difference Between Love and Time, where the love interest is the space-time continuum, whose pronouns are "it/everything" 😁). Some of these tales are smile-inducing or heart-warming; some are melancholic or (at least in a couple of cases) tragic; some are open-ended, but mostly hopeful, since with time travel you (almost) always have a chance. Some have their characters travel with their bodies, others with their minds. Some are, well, not hard sci-fi, but more grounded in technology; some treat time travel like a kind of magical device; at least one of them equates time travel with memory, with a tragic but beautiful result. I must point out that I skimmed a couple of stories because I wasn't clicking with the style, and one didn't do much for me, but as I said, that's not me passing judgment on the book's quality. I genuinely think there's something for everyone in here, as long as time travel is even remotely your jam 🙂.

Note: definitive review (due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series).

Laughter at the Academy by Seanan McGuire

 

★★★★

From mad scientists to sentient dolls, from hybrid mermaids to alien plants, from Neverland to Oz, twenty-two imaginative, often trope-reversing tales (2009-2019) encapsulating Seanan McGuire's wild writing universe.

***

Rated 4.5 really.

This anthology is an excellent introduction to Seanan McGuire if you've never had the chance to read her books before, since it's a compendium of most (if not all) the themes, tropes and genres that form the bulk of her novels/novellas, and then some. But even if you're already familiar with her brand of writing, you'll have the pleasure to see her approach the same story ideas from a number of different angles, or give them different, unexpected outcomes. Also, her imagination - and her writing style - knows no bounds. In this anthology, she comes up with an explanation for the female habit to go to the bathroom in group, or in pairs at least, and ties it in with American history (though to be honest, it's pretty much a shared experience even outside the US). She gender-reverses Peter Pan and the Wizard of Oz and expands on the dark side of both stories (though her Oz reimagining is also full of dry humour, not to mention queerness) She crosses Pinocchio with Pandora's myth. She lets mad science go wild in more than one sense, creating monsters (or are they all?) that we come to love, or at least to empathise with. She plays with different mediums, like tweets and office memos (with completely different results, I have to say - I loved the first story, was pretty much bored by the second). The keywords here are "originality" and "variety".

I would have given this collection 5 stars if not for the aforementioned Office Memos, From A to Z in the Book of Changes (26 micro-stories whose titles follow the English alphabet, most of them missing the mark for me) and Driving Jenny Home (too emo - I love ghosts, but I can't get on board with suicide idealisation). However, even if you - like me - are usually vary of anthologies because short stories can never seem to fulfill your appetite, this might be the one that makes you change your mind.

(Small criticism: I was able to spot a couple of tiny editorial mistakes...).

Note: definitive review (due to time commitments, I've decided not to write full-length reviews anymore for short stories, novellas and anthologies, except in special cases or unless they're part of a series).

Switch by A.S. King

★★

In a reality where time stopped worldwide and is now measured artificially, a teenage girl tries to make sense of her broken family, while discovering she possesses the ability to throw a javelin farther than anyone ever has.

***

Rated 2.5 really.

Look, I've read four books by A.S. King previously, so I knew the deal when I started this one - and her peculiar brand of surrealism-meets-teen-issues usually works nicely for me. But for once, I had to throw the towel mid-book (though I skimmed it all through the end). It's not like I didn't understand the point the author was making about time being a construct that does nothing but limit/pressure us, unless we OWN it - though I have to say that, in this context, the ending didn't make total sense to me (...or, wait...was this novel supposed to be an allegory for how Covid has created a virtual "fold in time and space"? Probably that, too). It's not like I wasn't interested in the broken-family dynamics and the mysterious, titular switch (though I should have figured the secret behind it early on). But the writing style King chose for this one kept me at an arm's length from the story, and for the first time with her, I got the impression that the book was more interested in being clever than inspiring or empathetic. So, even if you're a fan of the author, maybe read an excerpt to be sure Switch will work for you...which I didn't do 😟.

Note: definitive review (I don't have enough to say to justify writing a full-length one later, and of course I don't plan to reread this book).

So, have you read/are you planning to read any of the above? And if you have, what do you think of them? Do you post mini reviews? Do you like to read them?