#ReadShortStories that are technomagical (16 to 20)

This batch includes the last piece from Meet Me at the Intersection, which I have already reviewed in full, but I didn't want to skip including the last story in my roundups. I also have for you this week the first three stories from a new anthology, New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color edited by Nisi Shawl. Then I accidentally started reading the John Chu story when I was having a look at the new epub format Tor.com is using to put out bimonthly groups of their published short stories (for example, January to February is here). And that's the story of how I came to read these stories.

Border Crossings by Rebecca Lim — Another autobiographical essay, this morning me focusing on our interactions and reactions to the world, especially with respect to language. Source: Meet Me at the Intersection edited by Rebecca Lim and Ambelin Kwaymullina

The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex by Tobias Buckell — What if a lot of different aliens all decided that Earth was a perfect tourist destination? Find out how mere humans live on the edges of a society that mainly relies on tourist income to Manhattan. Interesting parallels as well as interesting aliens. Source: New Suns edited by Nisi Shawl

Deer Dancer by Kathleen Alcalá — A story about a collective living arrangement in some sort of post-apocalyptic future (climate change I think). It was mostly slice-of-life, interesting but lost me a bit towards the end. Source: New Suns edited by Nisi Shawl

The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations by Minsoo Kang — I originally started reading this story on the second of two long-haul flights and it transpired that I was far too tired to take the story in. When I restarted it later, better rested, I realised I had had no idea what it was about from the first attempt. It doesn’t help that it’s written in a very dry style, in the manner of a non-fictional historical essay, and that the story itself emerges gradually. Once established it was a very interesting and amusing read, if not exactly an exciting one. Source: New Suns edited by Nisi Shawl

Beyond the El by John Chu — A story about crafting food (technomagically?) and the scare family can leave us with. And moving on. A gorgeous story, as I have come to expect from John Chu. Source: https://www.tor.com/2019/01/16/beyond-the-el-john-chu/

Meet Me at the Intersection edited by Rebecca Lim and Ambelin Kwaymullina

Meet Me at the Intersection edited by Rebecca Lim and Ambelin Kwaymullina is an anthology filled with intersectional Australian voices. The idea being to highlight all sorts of marginalised writers. Taken as a whole, this results in a very broad and diverse anthology. Although I am familiar with the two editors from the spec fic books they've authored, most of the stories did not have a speculative bent, although there were a few.

Meet Me at the Intersection is an anthology of short fiction, memoir and poetry by authors who are First Nations, People of Colour, LGBTIQA+ or living with disability. The focus of the anthology is on Australian life as seen through each author’s unique, and seldom heard, perspective.

With works by Ellen van Neerven, Graham Akhurst, Kyle Lynch, Ezekiel Kwaymullina, Olivia Muscat, Mimi Lee, Jessica Walton, Kelly Gardiner, Rafeif Ismail, Yvette Walker, Amra Pajalic, Melanie Rodriga, Omar Sakr, Wendy Chen, Jordi Kerr, Rebecca Lim, Michelle Aung Thin and Alice Pung, this anthology is designed to challenge the dominant, homogenous story of privilege and power that rarely admits ‘outsider’ voices.

Some of the stories were fun to read, some were intentionally uncomfortable, other fell somewhere in between those two extremes and made me think. Note that I use "stories" here in a generic sense to refer to all the pieces in the anthology, even though it included poetry and memoir. My two favourite stories gained that status for very different reasons. ‘Stars in our Eyes’ by Jessica Walton was a delightful celebration of geek culture, while including queer and disabled characters and refreshingly supportive characters. ‘The Last Stop’ by Alice Pung was not at all what I expected from the opening and is a story that firmly fell into the "made me think" category. It tells of the journey of a teen boy who starts off ignorant of Chinese culture but ends up learning that Chinese teenagers are just like him (but live in China). His experiences were starkly contrasted with those of various people around him.

I enjoyed a lot of the other stories too, but since I've written mini reviews of them all, I'll leave them for you to read below if you haven't already seen them in one of my #ReadShortStories posts. I will add, however, that I was a bit sad that the ebook I read didn't include the back cover art, since the (full) cover art is apparently also one of the intersectional pieces making up the whole. It wouldn't have been hard to include the full artwork inside the book (either near the start or at the back) and I'm disappointed that the publisher didn't bother.

Overall, this was a great read. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking to read more diverse voices or stories of Australia's chequered history. I liked how the anthology was structured, with stories grouped thematically, so that it opened with stories by indigenous people, and ended with stories of the migrant experience, with stories about characters who are queer and/or disabled (or overlapping with one of the other groups) in groups in the middle. The whole book is like a thematic rainbow, shading from one group to another, with overlapping stories in between.

~

‘Night Feet’ by Ellen van Neerven — A story about a teenaged girl playing soccer. And a bit how poverty and family circumstances are hurdles to that end. I expect the story would be more exciting for people who are into soccer, which I am not.

‘Dream’ by Graham Akhurst — A poem with formatting that didn’t work on my phone screen and was much more powerful when I was able to read it on the iPad. It’s also the kind of poem that becomes clearer with subsequent readings.

‘Dear Mate’ by Kyle Lynch — A distressing story, in some ways, about a young person who wants a job but has little idea how to get one. Although I didn’t realise how young he was until near the end, which did make it a bit less distressing.

‘Embers’ by Ezekiel Kwaymullina — A sad, short poem about dyslexia.

‘Harry Potter and the Disappearing Pages’ by Olivia Muscat — An essay/memoir about the author going blind at the start of high school and the frustrations of being disabled in modern society.

‘Fragments’ by Mimi Lee — The story of a young Chinese Australian dealing with her grandfather’s death and a difficult family situation. This was an interesting read but in some ways (the mental illness ways more than the grief ways) felt like it ily scratched the surface. I wouldn’t have minded it being longer but I can see why it made sense to leave it where it was. 4/5 30/12

‘Stars in our Eyes’ by Jessica Walton — A wonderful story about geeky teens and adults that made me laugh. Certainly the most fun story so far.

‘Trouble’ by Kelly Gardiner — A story of non-conforming girls in 1950s Melbourne. I enjoyed the local colour even if the end was not quite as I had hoped/shipped.

‘Sheer Fortune’ by Jordi Kerr — A more Australian story that I would have expected from a short summary of it, with some strong New Zealish elements thrown in via the second character. Shifters, lesbians, high school. A nice read.

‘Telephone’ by Yvette Walker — A timey-wimey story in which the main character receives a phone call from her teenage self. As she talks to this version of herself that had been trying to call and LGBT support hotline, she reflects on her life and how she got to where she is now (happily living with her wife). A sweet story, overall.

‘DNA’ by Melanie Rodriga — A story about a queer teenage girl and her interactions with her family and one of her teachers. I found it to be a slightly unusual story, full of direct questions and teen anger but not as many answers as I might have expected.

‘Almitra Amongst Ghosts’ by Rafeif Ismail — A kind of depressing story about not fitting in due to race, religion and queerness, all at once. Written in a lovely style.

‘The Other Son’ by Omar Sakr — An autobiographical story about a father’s death and meeting a half brother for the first time, told by the middle eastern author.

‘School of Hard Knocks’ by Amra Pajalic — A Bosnian girl moves to Australia and starts high school in a rough suburb, where she is bullied. Another autobiographical story.

‘Autumn Leaves’ by Wendy Chen — A nice, if bittersweet, story about a Chinese family in Melbourne around the time of Federation. I quite liked it.

‘How to Be Different’ by Michelle Aung Thin — An autobiographical essay about being different, especially as a young child in primary school.

‘The Last Stop’ by Alice Pung — This story wasn’t at all what I expected. Told from the point of view of a bogan or “feral” teenage boy who enters a competition for a laugh and wins a Rotary Club trip to China. Discovering that the ordinary high school kids in China are just like him significantly changes his world view and opens his eyes to racism. A really good read, in the end, though you had to get past some racism near the start to appreciate the change in the character’s perspective.

‘Border Crossings’ by Rebecca Lim — Another autobiographical essay, this morning me focusing on our interactions and reactions to the world, especially with respect to language.

4 / 5 stars

First published: 2018, Fremantle Press
Series: No
Format read: ePub
Source: Purchased from Apple Books

The Astrologer's Daughter by Rebecca Lim

The Astrologer's Daughter by Rebecca Lim was not the book I expected it to be. This is partly because I intentionally try to forget blurbs for ARCs after I decide to read them and partly because I didn't really have a clear idea of what to expect anyway, and also that purple cover.

Avicenna Crowe’s mother, Joanne, is an astrologer with uncanny predictive powers and a history of being stalked. Now she is missing.
The police are called, but they’re not asking the right questions. Like why Joanne lied about her past, and what she saw in her stars that made her so afraid.

But Avicenna has inherited her mother’s gift. Finding an unlikely ally in the brooding Simon Thorn, she begins to piece together the mystery. And when she uncovers a link between Joanne’s disappearance and a cold-case murder, Avicenna is led deep into the city’s dark and seedy underbelly, unaware how far she is placing her own life in danger.

I probably would have been less surprised by the book if I'd read the blurb, but on the other hand, the blurb is not entirely accurate either. Avicenna's mother disappears and the story opens with her calling the police. Most of the book is about her dealing — emotionally and practically — with her mother's disappearance. A few other things happen along the way, albeit mostly as a consequence of being left motherless.

The police in this book were helpful and did all the right things. I liked that they weren't just another set of antagonists and that Avicenna set up a rapport with her main liaison and came to think of him as a bit of a father figure. While Avicenna makes a few poor decisions, they're mostly of the not wanting to answer her phone variety, which was understandable and much less frustrating to read about than some YA protagonists.

Interestingly this book did not exclusively contain YA issues. Avicenna does have to deal with losing her mum at a young age but she also gets caught up in her mother's unfinished business, including a twenty-year-old unsolved rape and murder. Her sort-of friend, Simon, also has to deal with some pretty heavy issues, which I won't elaborate on because spoilers. It was a book that sucked me in straight away and one that I didn't want to put down, but it wasn't a fun book. That's not to say I didn't enjoy reading it, but it's not a book I'd recommend for some light escapist reading. Just saying.

Also, it's set in Melbourne with Avicenna and friends in year 12 at a thinly-disguised well-known high school. She lives in Chinatown and the descriptions of the CBD were excellent. As someone who's spent most of their life living in Melbourne (albeit not in the CBD), I found it really easy to visualise exactly where she went, even when the precise place (like her home) was fictional. On a related note, it also brought up some racial issues in passing, which lent authenticity to the book from my perspective although I suspect some nuances might be lost on international readers not familiar with Australia's migrant history.

I really enjoyed The Astrologer's Daughter. It grabbed me even though I didn't realise I was in the mood for that sort of book. It's a nice mix of crime and contemporary fantasy and pretty light on the fantasy front (only the astrology, really). In many ways, I found myself thinking of it as a stealth crime novel. Avicenna doesn't set out to solve any crimes, only to deal with her own life problems, but the solutions find her anyway.

I highly recommend The Astrologer's Daughter to fans of YA of the contemporary, speculative and/or crime genres. It was a gripping book and certainly my favourite of Lim's that I've read.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2014, Text Publishing (US edition June 2015)
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via Netgalley
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge

Exile by Rebecca Lim

Exile by Rebecca Lim is the second book in the Mercy series. You can read my review of Mercy here.

Exile continues the story of Mercy, an angel who for reasons unknown to her is cursed/sentenced to briefly possess different humans, constantly jumping around and never knowing where she’s going to end up next.

This time, she lands in Melbourne into the body of Lela a 19 year old girl who works at a coffee shop in the city and whose mother is dying of cancer.

She also has a vivid dream in which Luc, her angel love who is always beseeching her to find him, visits her. This time he has a plan for reuniting them.

Overall, I felt a bit ambivalent about this book. It wasn’t bad, in fact the writing was objectively fairly good. But the story, especially the angelic parts, completely failed to resonate with me. Which is more a comment on me than on the book. Compared with Mercy there were more magical dream-sequences which particularly didn’t do it for me. We do learn more about who and why Mercy is, but Luc has always seemed a bit creepy to me and if anything he seems more so after Exile. He’s her star-crossed lover and they’re being punished for some reason by being kept apart and he spends his time trying to stalk her down. On the bright side, it gives me someone to cheer against. Also the sort-of love interest from Mercy reappears and is a much more likeable prospect.

Unsurprisingly, as Mercy learns more, everything seems to get more complicated. If I have one complaint about the story structure it’s that it ends too soon for us to really get into to the meat of the mystery. However, it does end in a logical place and it’s not an unsatisfying ending. I do want to know more, but the sequels aren’t very high on my to buy list. Mostly, it’s just a little bit too goddy for my taste (but objectively, really not that religious).

One final note: I’m not sure this is terribly YA. The protagonist is on the cusp of the requisite age group but thematically this series hasn’t struck me as very YAish. I suspect the shortness of the books contributed to them being marketed as YA. It’s not that I think they’re inappropriate for young people, I just didn’t feel they quite fitted into the usual YA mould (but it sort of makes sense from a marketing perspective since they’re short and fantasyish it would be harder to sell them as adult fiction).

If you like YA fantasy with angels, then I highly recommend this book. If you like YA that’s lighter on the fantasy and more rooted in the real world than, for example, your standard vampire story, this is also a book you might like.

3.5 / 5 stars

Mercy by Rebecca Lim

Mercy by Rebecca Lim, is a YA book about Mercy, an angel (or something like that, it’s not entirely articulated, despite what the blurb says). She is forcibly thrust into random girls bodies and forced to take over their lives. She never knows where she’ll wake up, who she’ll have to be or why. This time, she wakes up as Carmen, a star soprano singer in a high school choir. The choir is visiting the town of Paradise for a concert and preparations and Mercy/Carmen finds herself billeted with the family of a girl who disappeared two years previously.

Although everyone else assumes the missing girl is dead, her twin brother believes she is alive and hasn’t given up searching for her. Mercy realised that he’s probably right and joins him in his search and attempts to work out who the culprit is.

Although this is a YA book, it reminded me a bit of serial killer books I’ve read in the past (Michael Marshal [Smith] springs to mind), but that’s possibly more a reflection of the dearth of crime novels I’ve read. Nevertheless, I found something appealing about Mercy’s attempts to work out who did it and try to get inside the criminal’s mind. That aspect of the novel was dark in a different way to, for example, YA dystopias. It was about the darkness inside one person than the darkness of an oppressive society or a war.

Lim has a more poetic writing style than most other YA books I can think of. Also, written in first person, Mercy spends more time philosophising than other YA characters that spring to mind (possibly because she’s not really a teenage girl). She also spends time wondering who and why she really is, who the mysterious probably-angels that she dreams about are and so forth. I didn’t find those parts as exciting as the who kidnapped the girl parts and at times they got a bit tedious.

On the other hand, I enjoyed the parts where she didn’t care what the bitchy girls thought of her/Carmen and didn’t respond as insecurely as Carmen would have. There was pleasure to be derived from watching the bitchy popular girl squirm. Oh, and Mercy isn’t a terribly kind person, which, if anything, added to her character, in my opinion.

Overall, Mercy is a well-written book. I’ll be picking up the sequel although my impression is that almost all the supporting characters will have changed. Hopefully Mercy’s character will be enough to carry off the dramatic change (according to the blurb and Shaheen’s review).

4 / 5 stars