S. C. Butler

*3.5 (or something)

Rating anthologies can be hard: do you look at the "average" or the stories that made an impression on you?
In this case, the average outweighs the stories I really liked. Fourteen stories: 3 of them I did not even bother finishing, 4 were just meeeh, 5 were fine, 2 really excellent.
The excellent ones were:
"Dogs of Babylon" by Alan Smale - it's interesting that there were two stories in this collection that featured Alexander the Great :). This one is an exercise in alternative history, but it is really about two people that did not manage to cross the divide between them, even though they could have. Excellent stuff. (By the way, I highly recommend Alan Smale's alternative history trilogy about the Roman Empire trying to conquer North America (yes, indeed!). Start with Clash of Eagles and see what you think.)
"Eight Mile and the City" by Steven Harper - a pair of private detectives (who are married) are trying to find a child gone missing. One of them is a "Mowgli" raised by aliens and he is definitely autistic. I swallowed this one whole, falling in love with the characters in just a few pages. Can I have a novel about Andy and Sebastian, please? Or at the very least, more stories...… (meer)

My friend Paula really liked this book, so I stuck with it even though I was having a lot of trouble getting into it. I can see how a lot of people who aren't me will love this book. It's not horrible, it's just not my cup of tea. The setting parts of the book are really well done, but I'm not so sure about the characterization. The author also does some stuff that annoys me, like the shmeerps. I'm also not sure about his gender roles; the only non-mommy is Ferris, who's feisty but seems to spend a lot of time complaining about needing a bath. I'm giving the book three stars anyway because the setting stuff is so good.

I wish there were separate stars for good writing and for positive or negative reader buttons being pushed. This book has evil wizards, dwarves, and talking animals in a pseudomedieval setting. I fear that my personal reader buttons are pro-wizard, anti-pseudomedieval, and I'm apparently dwarf-neutral at best. I also apparently like talking animals (especially talking shmeerps) less than I would expect.… (meer)