If you're brave enough to fly

And onto the short stories!  Like the novelettes, I’m going to make these short and sweet.

“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, E. Lily Yu

Another author who I’m ashamed to admit that I hadn’t gotten around to reading yet.  I need to start reading more short stories again, or at least making a rule to read the Year’s Best anthologies and not just let them gather dust on my shelf.  This one just blew me away – it’s absolutely like nothing else I’ve ever read before.  Amazing.

“The Homecoming”, Mike Resnick

This one wins for making me cry.  I think that makes it a contender pretty much on the basis of this.  Clearly, I am a reader who is motivated by emotion (in case no one has figured that out before), and if you make me feel something, especially in a short story, you’re damn well doing something right.

“Movement”, Nancy Fulda

And another one that made me cry.  I don’t even have the words for how damn beautiful and heartbreaking and hopemaking this story is, all at one time.

“The Paper Menagerie”, Ken Liu 

And another one that produced tears, dammit.  I’d actually been meaning to read this one for ages and ages, since Jonathan Strahan talked it up on the Coode Street Podcast.  I even bought the hard copy of F&SF it was published in, and then it kind of got lost on my shelves.  I think I need to search out all of Liu’s fiction and mainline it for a while.  And probably cry a hell of a lot.  I am so glad that I got a supporting membership and the Hugo Packet, for nothing else than for making me read some of the authors that I’ve been meaning to read.

“Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue”, John Scalzi 

This is one that just isn’t for me, I think.  It’s well written and it’s clever and it deserves to be on the ballot, but I think against some of the emotional gut punches of the other stories, it fades a bit.

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I feel like the short story ballot is as strong as, if not stronger, than the novellas (which is saying something).  And I honestly don’t know where my vote is going to lie here.  I think maybe The Paper Menagerie, but I’m really not sure.  I see some rereading before I cast my vote here.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak.

Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.

This was another reread for me, and one that I happily undertook.  I love Mieville’s work in general, though none of his novels yet have really resonated enough with me that I can count them amongst my ultimate favourites.  Embassytown comes pretty damn close.

This was easier on a reread, mostly because I was more familiar with the world and its setup.  On first read, I found myself a bit overwhelmed by the world and its complexities (which probably says more for the fact that I tend to read too damn quickly than anything else).

I love so much about this.  I could go on for a very long time about how awesome Language is, and the Ariekei.  I love the idea of the Ambassadors in general (though they do remind me in some ways of the Paratwa from Christopher Hinz’s books, which are woefully underrread IMHO).

This is actually pretty close to being an excellent book for me, apart from a couple of things.  Avice as protagonist I found quite frustrating – she just seems to be there as a cipher for the plot to revolve around a lot of the time, and I actually found her actions fairly unbelievable near the end of the book. The ending of the book in general feels a bit all over the place to me, anyway – things seem to wrap up too quickly and it all just feels a little messy, even on a second read through.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.