With the release date rapidly approaching, I’ve decided to finish the reviews of CP3 immediately. As always, if you’re wanting to order this book or the previous 2, you can check out the official site.
Lucyna’s Gaze by Gregory Frost
It’s a holocaust tale with barely enough sci-fi added to get it into this collection. Which isn’t a bad thing, but should be considered a fair warning to any who can’t stand stories etc in those settings.
I am one who will defend tooth and nail for the idea that books themselves can be works of art and spacing, margins, etc should be considered as much a part of the story as the canvas and paint used are considered with other artworks. However, I will admit that the flavor and style of prose can get out of hand and part of it is in here as well. Sometimes, in efforts to make their story almost like poetry (which I have nothing against), authors overshoot their marks and make something nearly nonsensical. An example would be this story’s ending. I was musing less on the impact of it than on trying to figure out what it was saying in the first place. Was it metaphorical or literal or a little bit of both? Making things just a little bit clearer would have worked for the story’s benefit. Unless you want things to be confusing and figuring out “what happened” is part of the story’s point.
So unhappy subject matter plus obscuring ending, I’m giving this one a minus, but that also seems to be the author’s goal.
Eyes of Carven Emerald by Shweta Narayan
Here we have a “retcon” of Alexander the Great’s story in a steampunk world with an additional tale interwoven through it. That other tale? A steampunk version of the Lady or the Tiger. Both are pretty enjoyable, though I do encourage you to brush up on your history before reading (I know I need to to really enjoy it).
One caution. Being one of the Old Ones of the internet, I have gotten used to typos and misprints to the point that I can usually tease out a writer’s original intent without much effort, thus, I rarely count someone’s typos against them. However, on page 170 of the PDF I have, there was a big typo that made the segment nearly unreadable until I was able to figure it out.
All in all, I’ll give this one a plus. Apparently the story involves a clockwork bird that is a repeating fixture of Shweta Narayan, so fans of her will probably definitely need to seek out this tale.
Dragons of America by S.J. Hirons
This story… I wasn’t very happy with, and I’m a sucker for dragons. It reads like a poorly done political cartoon, so immediately your like or distaste of it will rest on your like or distaste of America. What makes this even worse is that it’s pretty much unnecessary.
The story proper takes place in a world with not only a different history from ours, but apparently a completely different geography. Almost everything else in the world has invented and original names, but for some reason, this one particular country (which is occupying the protagonist’s nation), has a name matching a country in ours, oh and seems to have a lot of the same “features” about it (“hamburgers, hot dogs, buttered popcorn and beer” says one passage). Why? Apparently for no more reason than to rail against the current USA policies, which just gets tiresome (especially if you’re already hearing complaints about it all the time). I won’t ramble on and on, but have I mentioned how much I hate politics? Big minus on this story.
Shweta Narayan on 12 June 2010, 00:37 said:
Hello!
Just wanted to say I think I’ve caught all my typos, but it’s horribly easy to miss one’s own – so are you okay with telling me the big typo on page 170? There might be time to fix it.
Thanks :)
Shweta
Nate Winchester on 12 June 2010, 11:51 said:
Emailed to you.
S.J.Hirons on 13 June 2010, 21:40 said:
Hi,
Just wanted to say that I didn’t set out to write an anti-American story and still don’t believe that I have. Though some characters in my story do express such sentiments these are the characters who suffer the most, I believe. The Americans that the central character personally interacts with are all respectful, decent and well-intentioned. This (with the exception of one particular bus driver in San Francisco three years ago) has always been my experience too. Ultimately the story ends with the central character determining to travel to America, albeit with his sense of national identity somewhat ratified by the events of the story. To my mind this is no bad thing for him, nor will it be for the America he is travelling towards and, hopefully, the America he will contribute positively to. To my mind this is one of the most admirable principles that the nation is founded upon – an awareness that there is both strength in diversity and in rising above differences to recognise the basic commonality we all have as people in our needs, desires, hopes and aspirations. The reason I chose to use ‘America’ at all is that it is a word of such power and associations (like ‘Mordor’, or ‘Voldemort’ – kidding!) and because ‘Dragons of the Coalition of the Willing’ would have muddied the waters somewhat and taken the edge off what the story seemed to want to say. Anyway, sorry it didn’t engage you the way it might have done. Perhaps when I write a story that addresses my mortification for the fact that the ‘B’ in ‘BP’ stands for ‘British’ I’ll redress the balance!
S.J.Hirons
Nate Winchester on 13 June 2010, 22:26 said:
Pleasure to have you here, S.J.Hirons. =)
Hang on…. ah yes, an acquaintance of mine was just talking about this. Here’s the article he sent. Lovely bit of fun that is. Any wonder I like to use sci-fi/fantasy as escapism? ;-)
I had a feeling that might have been the goal, I just think you may have sabotaged it in places. It does have punch, yes, but when you keep bringing up how different it is in this world the impact evaporates by story end.
As an American that’s been to almost every one of the lower 48, I kept trying to figure out where all this was supposed to be happening in our world. Either the geography had to be better painted or maybe use an alias (I know we have more than a few) or alternate spelling (though obviously, don’t spell it with a ‘k’).
As it was, I kept getting side tracked with niggling questions, like how did this country get the name “america” in the first place? Why isn’t the protagonist’s home nation treated more like Puerto Rico? America also conjures up images of a young nation so I wondered why the (presumably) older, occupied nation didn’t already have a legion of dragons under its command. Remember, near parallel universes can backfire when the reader starts wandering off playing “spot differences” to the story instead of concentrating on the point.
There’s a lot of ways the story could have gone. I think it might have worked best if ‘america’ had remained completely a dream/illusion (one inspired or brought by the dragons). As is, would work better as a novel, too much for a short story.
If it’s any comfort, I won’t rank it as the worst story in this collection. (And it’s still a lot better than most of the stuff we read on this site so that helps too)
Mike Allen on 13 June 2010, 23:29 said:
I’ll just log in to say I respect Nate’s opinion/reading experience with regard to Stacey’s story and, of, course, completely disagree with it. Obviously, I’m biased, because I thought it worked well enough to write him a check. ;-)
Also, as for the typo in Shweta’s story, assuming we’re all on the same page (snerk) Shweta, myself and my copy editor all caught that one, at least, and it’s fixed in the final product.
Nate Winchester on 13 June 2010, 23:46 said:
“If we all agreed, quite a boring world it would be.”
Well I certainly don’t think it’s bad enough to ask for a refund (though now I know what’s the lowest rank for these). XD
Ouch! No need to get mean and invoke puns! Glad to know it’s fixed, I’ve been wondering if my copy was a little “out of date” so to speak.
S.J.Hirons on 14 June 2010, 02:49 said:
Well, I guess they’re the kind of questions that kept me interested in writing the story, so I can hardly complain!
Mike Allen on 14 June 2010, 11:44 said:
Heh. Sorry about pun-ishing you, Nate! Do carry on.
And, yes, you have a PDF copy of the Advance Reading Copy, which lacks final corrections. (If you want the updated version, let me know….)