REVIEW: “i shall remain” by Kai Cheng Thom

Review of Kai Cheng Thom, “i shall remain” in Gwen Benaway, ed., Mother, Maiden, Crone, (Bedside Press, 2019): 97-107 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This was a rich, sensual story full of old myth and modern realism, and threaded through with a gruesome interpretation of Christianity (I don’t know if this was intended or not, but it certainly read that way to me). It was distinctly different from the rest of the stories in the anthology, not only in content and in choice of trans characters, but also in its literary style, with a systemic eschewing of capitals except for proper names and phrases, and sometimes (but not always) “I”. I think this was my favorite story of the volume.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Undoing Vampirism” by Lilah Sturges

Review of Lilah Sturges, “Undoing Vampirism” in Gwen Benaway, ed., Mother, Maiden, Crone, (Bedside Press, 2019): 92-96 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Vampire stories have been so overdone in recent years that whenever I come across another one, I admit, I sigh a bit.

But there were NO SIGHS whatsoever in this hilarious (“but I realized even then that the desires to be a girl and to eat them are unconnected” p. 94), unpredictable, unexpected take on modern-day vampires. I absolutely loved it.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “The Knighting” by Alexa Fae McDaniel

Review of Alexa Fae McDaniel, “The Knighting” in Gwen Benaway, ed., Mother, Maiden, Crone, (Bedside Press, 2019): 83-91 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Daphne has long admired Sir Thais — the first woman of Epirus to ever have been knighted. Now, two more women have become knights, but female knights are still the minority. Part of Daphne longs to be what Sir Thais is, but another part of her knows she could never be what Sir Thais is; not because she’s a woman, but because she’s a transwoman.

The focus of this story was Daphne’s grappling with the difficulties of being a transwoman in a male dominated field. As a cis woman, I realised I would probably make many of the same arguments that Sir Thais did, to persuade Daphne to take up the accolade; so it was important for me to read Daphne’s arguments in return. Now, I’m not so sure which choice Daphne should make, or even, at the end of the story, which choice she did make.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Freeing the Bitch” by Ellen Mellor

Review of Ellen Mellor, “Freeing the Bitch” in Gwen Benaway, ed., Mother, Maiden, Crone, (Bedside Press, 2019): 65-82 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content warning: Explicit misgendering and some internalised transphobia.

It’s funny the little things that can catch you out when reading a story: I was so distracted by the fact that two of the MCs started a forest fire and then proceeded to do nothing about it (including showing remorse) that I could hardly pay attention to the rest of what was going on.

That distraction aside, I enjoyed the multi-species cast (all varying flavors of queerness!), and can’t help but approve of a story that tells us: “There is nothing we can’t do because we are amazing women” (p. 72).

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Potions and Practices” by gwynception

Review of gwynception, “Potions and Practices” in Gwen Benaway, ed., Mother, Maiden, Crone, (Bedside Press, 2019): 50-64 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

I’m not sure if this story suffered from a lack of thorough proofreading, or if the duplicated phrases and weird sentences that felt like they were missing words were intentional, but whichever is the explanation, I found the prose of this story difficult to read; quite a bit of the time, I really wasn’t sure what was going on. Then again, the same is also said by Violet, the MC: “I’m sorry I’m not sure if I know what you’re talking about” (p. 52), so maybe the gappy and repetitive writing was intentional. I’m afraid, though, that this wasn’t a story for me.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Forest’s Edge” by Audrey Vest

Review of Audrey Vest, “Forest’s Edge” in Gwen Benaway, ed., Mother, Maiden, Crone, (Bedside Press, 2019): 26-38 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Denya’s daughter, Eliya, is ill — caught in the clutches of a fairy chill that only fey broth can cure. For that, Denya must go into the woods that are the gateway to Fairy, into the very forest that her wife Bren went into three years ago and never came back out of.

There was never any doubt that this story would have a happy ending, but that doesn’t make the happy ending any less satisfying.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: “Mountain God” by Gwen Benaway

Review of Gwen Benaway, “Mountain God” in Gwen Benaway, ed., Mother, Maiden, Crone, (Bedside Press, 2019): 7-25 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

Content warning: A lot of death.

The mage Aoyas has three strikes against her: She’s a mercenary; she was born in Lerani, the most recently conquered and still not quite subjugated province of the Empire; and she is a Marked woman, someone who has changed her born gender. Her mercenary partner Rais isn’t that much better; he was born in the capital city but his father was an outlander who abandoned him and his mother when he was young. Neither Aoyas nor Rais set out to become mercenaries, but fate put them in each other’s paths and together they became lovers and survived their first — hardest — year of mercenarying.

It took five-and-a-half pages to set up all the history and backdrop for the story, rather a long in something only about 20 pages long; but I’m a sucker for good worldbuilding so the lack of action or activity didn’t bother me too much. I was surprised at how transphobic and misogynistic the setting was — it made me sad that Aoyas didn’t get a better story, a better life. While some people might say she got her happily ever after, I’m not entirely convinced.

Sara L. Uckelman1 Comment

REVIEW: Maiden, Mother, Crone edited by Gwen Benaway

Review of Gwen Benaway, ed., Mother, Maiden, Crone, (Bedside Press, 2019) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Recently I took a trip down to York to visit a friend, and she did what the good friends do and took me around the good bookstores. One of these was the Portal Bookshop, full of queer and SFF books. It’s been so long since I’ve been to a brick-and-mortar bookstore that has books in it that I actually want to buy, that I may have ended up buying more than I could carry…including this anthology.

I was not familiar with it before seeing it on the shelf, but it immediately appealed to me. Benaway in her editorial introduction says that she wanted the book to be

a space for other trans women and trans feminine folk to write fantastical short stories where trans folks were the main characters

and the collection bills itself as “the first anthology by trans femme authors to explore the realms of magic, supernatural beings, and alternative universes”. I can only hope that it won’t be the last, because collections like this are so rich and so valuable.

As is usual, we’ll review each of the stories individually, and link the reviews back here when they’re published:

I was surprised at how many of the stories reinforced the gender binary, or included structural misogyny. It made my heart sad for so many of these women, and for women reading this anthology who may be looking for more than just triumph-over-adversity, moving on to fantasy worlds where being trans is hardly worth commenting on. One of the powers of fiction is that it can provide us with models of ways the world can be, because sometimes it is easier to change the actual world into a more ideal world if we have an idea of what the more ideal world could actually look like, and I confess I had expected a bit more idealism and a bit less realism.

Sara L. Uckelman12 Comments

REVIEW: Intelligence, Artificial and Human: Eight Science Fiction Tales by Japanese Authors edited by Hirotaka Osawa

Review of Hirotaka Osawa, ed., Intelligence, Artificial and Human: Eight Science Fiction Tales by Japanese Authors, (AI x SF Project, [2019]) — More information here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I received a copy of this anthology at WorldCon 2019, after a very interesting, and too brief, post-panel conversation with the editor about academics who also write fiction. This collection is eight stories all originally published in Artificial Intelligence, the academic magazine of the Japanese Society of Artificial Intelligence, and translated into English here for the first time. They are written by authors with a wide variety of scientific and non-scientific backgrounds, from software development to electrical engineering to sociology and the arts and more, some of whom are well-known and highly-renowned Japanese SF authors, such as Motoko Arai and Kei Zushi.

The shorts were all quite short — 5 pages a piece — and with only eight stories in the collection it felt like a little gossamer bite. But the stories themselves had plenty to chew on, and I really enjoyed the playfulness that many of the authors adopted towards their hard science: none of the stories took themselves too seriously, while at the same time indulging in some of our deepest fantasies and desires. So many stories I read and came away feeling, “Oh, yes, this, I want this.”

I was also delighted that so many of the stories were written by women.

As is our usual practice, each story will be reviewed individually, with the review linked back here when it is published:

Sara L. Uckelman9 Comments