Kelly RobsonRezensionen

A short foray into a very alt-Britain, in which fairies, repelled by wars have held Europe in peace for 250 years, subject to the Low Parliament. Which has stopped being able to reach decisions and which the fairies will drown Lena, newly seconded as a scribe for the Parliament, doesn't want her girl chasing ended by drowning and bestirs herself, as no one else seems to be doing, to understand and prevent this.
An unusual facet of the world building is that there are no men or male fairies.

Una lectura muy entretenida y sencilla. Quizá el final es un pelín acelerado pero normal en una novela tan corta.

Versalles, una criatura fantástica acuática y una relación paternal. My kind of jam.

I really liked this story. It reminds me a bit of Neverwhere and other stories where someone slips through the cracks of the modern world, into a different version of reality. The characterization of the protagonist is really good. And I liked how things slowly got weirder over time, leading to the final shift in perspective.

Platsen är London i ett slags blandning av fantasy och alternativhistoria, i ett Europa som styrs av feerna, och de gillar inte de krigiska, besvärliga människorna. Huvudpersonen är Lana Baker, en skälm som lever på att lura till sig kyssar från söta och sexiga kvinnor i sin omgivning och att knapra lätta droger och dricka alkohol. Hon uträttar inte ett dyft mer än hon måste och väljer alltid att svika en plikt om hon istället får en chans att dricka och roa sig. Hennes yrke är skrivarens, och hon tar gärna betalt i kyssar för sina tjänster.

Men så skickas hon iväg från London av en fe med kort stubin, iväg för att arbeta som parlamentsskrivare vid det stora parlamentet någon dags resa från London. Där sitter kvinnor från hela Europa och stiftar lagar. Parlamentet inrättades av feerna som ett sätt att tvinga fram ett slut på de europeiska krigen som ödelade allt gång på gång. För att garantera att parlamentet fungerar hotar feerna med att dränka alla ledamöter om de inte kommer överens. Och just när Lana kommer dit har de inte lyckats bli ense om lagstiftningen på länge, och drunkningsdöden verkar vänta för dem alla bara några dagar bort ...

Tanken med den här berättelsen är uppenbarligen att den ska vara en lättsam och humoristisk historia om en halvt osympatisk men ändå mysig ung kvinna som gillar att ta för sig av livets goda, och de utmaningar hon tvingas bemästra när det blir allvar och faran hotar. Ett annat framträdande tema är vänskap och hur den ibland kan uppstå mot alla odds, och hur den är värd att kämpa för. Det London som målas upp är som en tillrättalagd Disneyvariant av det verkliga 1700-talets London (fast med sex och droger som Disney hade klippt bort). Det känns väldigt amerikanskt och påminner inte särskilt mycket om vare sig det verkliga London eller det verkliga 1700-talet. För all del, det är fantasy. Men allvaret till trots, som antyds här och där och tilltar mot slutet på boken, är det väldigt starka feelgood-vibbar över det hela.

Prosan är inte imponerande, det är ganska babbligt och jag lyckas aldrig bli intresserad av vare sig Lana eller hennes problem. Världen lockar heller inte till vidare utforskning. Nej, jag begriper inte hur den här boken nominerades till en Nebula. Den saknar helt alla de kvaliteter som jag förknippar med prisvinnande böcker.

En intressant sak med berättelsen är att inga män förekommer och att det manliga könet aldrig ens nämns. Det är uppenbarligen är värld där människan aldrig har förekommit i annan form än den kvinnliga. Det kändes lite kul. Men det kompenserar inte särskilt mycket för bokens brister.

The plot was a little plain and didn't draw me in, though the writing style and fun descriptions of every little detail kept me engaged. Overall a very casual read that is enjoyable.½

Literally an adult fairy tale, Robson is apparently using determined whimsy as a mode of political satire. For me anyway, this sort of thing gets old quickly, though if I had been in a better frame of mind I probably would have liked it better. Your mileage may differ.

"I'll try to find you a better copy."
"Won't need it," said the fairy. "You're all drowning soon."
The librarian stuck her fingers in her ears.
"La la la," she sang. "I can't hear you."

This is a very weird book, but it's got compelling world building, the kind of characters who grow on you, and a bad attitude about government, so there’s a lot to recommend it. I also really enjoyed that every character, from lusty layabout to faerie tormentors to dancing parliamentarian had female pronouns. It’s a world of women, where mothers have power, and respectful address is beauty — a story that doesn’t take itself too seriously, I think, but has a lot of things to say.

To be fair, I should note that I read this in February, which is a time of year when I am frustrated with lingering winter and impatient for change and generally find it difficult to find any kind of media satisfying. Maybe if I had read this at a different time of year, I would have a different opinion. If I hadn't just DNFed 3 or 4 other books, I definitely would not have finished this one, but I felt like I needed to finish something.

This is silly fantasy fluff, but it's not quite amusing enough to be fun. It's trying to be a satire about non-functional government, but doesn't really seem to have anything interesting or timely to say about government. The plot is very weak, the characters one-dimensional, the character development is trite.

Silly fantasy political satire with fairies, drugs, churish politicians, and an impending apocalypse.

Lana Baker just wants to make out with some beautiful girls, drink a lot, and get high. She funds her life by being a scribe. And then she is sent to Parliament.

Summer 2019 (Hugo Nomination 2019 -- Novella);

This book for me was a task in patience and juggling having so many questions about the novella that the novella never answer.

The world of the novella is a climate ravaged world which sent people deep below the surface for decades before life once again pushed upward. In an attempt to reclaim the world time-travel and rehabilitation of the past is being explored, which is where our characters come into play going back into the past to study rivers of the far back past.

I like that the beginning was interspersed with this confusion of absolutely opposite scenes we'd later to connect to being the primitive culture our characters go back to visit, which makes sense right at the middle of the book, when each finds the other. From there, the formatting falls badly off, though, because it suddenly starts giving us foreshadowing glimpses of what will happen about 25% of the story away from us, time-skipping the civilizations scenes without any warning.

While I could easily point to the fact the relationship heart was supposed to come from the relationship between Minh and Kiki, that only worked up until we were supposed to believe Kiki (who never took no for an answer even across several before, even to the point of amputating her own body to fit better into the future she so strongly wanted) wouldn't have once actually asked Mihn what was wrong across a single day and a half she'd left her mental intercom off. While they were present in the same physical spaces, too. Which just came down into it as way too convenient.

I'm still confused about what exactly our temporal business does, and what they'll do with the sorceresses/priestess they took back? What are hives, hells, plague babies, fat babies? What message exactly was supposed to be most taken out of this?

Not bad, but didn't really engage me. The vignettes at the beginning of each chapter gave away most of the story, so the ending was very meh...

After being conscripted to the low parliament through her own misfortune, skilled scribe and incorrigible flirt Lana Barker is swept away to a magical land of fairies under threat of imminent destruction. She has the strength of heart and high ideals of a traditional hero, but sets them against an unusual enemy: an out-of-touch and dispirited representative government. The ambiance of the setting and the charms of the main character carry this book. Lana is well-suited to a parliament defined by ritual, with her practiced methods of courtship mirroring the rules and traditions of lawmaking. Her attitude towards the parliament--a combination of desperate helplessness at a seemingly unsaveable world and a desire to do something about the failing government--feels timely and real, at least to the political climate in which I live. While that may make the book sound rather dark, more painful themes are balanced with a light-hearted and fairytale-like tone. Overall, it's a unique and interesting read.

A collection of stories of varying quality.
I skipped the poems and the stories that were part of a novel.
This collection of pulp literature also includes an interview with writer Kelly Robson.
Mel Anastasiou writes stuff I like. The story Stella Ryman and the locked room mystery is amusing and worth reading. Stella Ryman is 82, lives in a nursing home and is an amateur sleuth.
Disclaimer: I got this book in the Librarything Early Reviewers.

Creepy. Gruesome. Sinister. Weird. The creepy house-on-the-lake atmosphere was good. None of it made sense, though: not the behaviour of the characters, the things they said, nor what was actually going on nor why. After halfway, incoherent. Would probably work better on-screen.

Set in 18th century Angland, Lana Baker is a very good scribe even if she says so herself. After an escapade goes badly wrong, she is sent to be a scribe for Parliament. Once there, she learns that if the deputies on the floor don’t reach a consensus, the fairies in charge will have parliament flooded and all will be drowned, including Lana and her fellow scribes. As Lana takes down the words of the lawmakers, she realizes that no one wants to compromise. Since she is but a lowly scribe, she has no power. All the fairies are mean spirited and disgusted with humans because no amount of cajoling and threatening them will get them to a vote where a two-thirds majority wins the day. She makes friends with the fairy, Bugbite, who rules over the scribes. Bugbite ensures that they both stay stoned for most of every day. Lana seldom sees a woman she isn’t attracted to and successfully beds any of them she wants until she sees and meets Eloquentia, a deputy, and therefore, part of the endless arguments occurring on the Parliament floor. She tries her best moves of Eloquentia, but the woman seems impervious to her advances.

There is nothing typical about this book. Robson has obviously unleashed her imagination and it knows no bounds. The politicians are loosely based on the worst of today’s politicians, fairies rule the roost, the world is populated by women (ensuring that some will be upset that a woman-ruled world is no better than a male-dominated one). However, readers who can set aside pre-conceived notions about fairies and worlds dominated by women will undoubtedly enjoy this book.

My thanks to Tordotcom and Edelweiss for an eARC.

DNF @ 12%

The idea sounds interesting, but there's just a lot of talk about the bid.
Most engaging parts were the Mesopotamian snippets.

Don't care enough to slog through to the end.

A lot going on in this short book. It felt like a prologue to a longer story, and given the way it ended, I think it probably is. It took me a bit to get into it because there is so much going on here--the long-term effects of climate change resulting in different survival-based habitats, a critique on economics and banking, interactions between the generations reminiscent of today's generational clashes, lots of biopunk, and of course, time travel. Once the characters did travel back in time to early Mesopotamia and the story was a bit more compacted, I got a lot more invested. I would like to see how these characters handle their situation given that they were stranded in ancient history--although if the rules of time travel established in this world hold, I guess it's all kind of moot. I don't think it's that cut and dried, though; that would be disappointing.

This is a must read after you read the story (actually I recommend you read it first):
Ten Questions with Kelly Robson About “A Human Stain” Jan 22 2019 by Richard Thomas https://whatdoesnotkillme.com/2019/01/22/kellyrobson/?fbclid=IwAR2HAl6R4jr3F3TA3.......

I tore through the novelette. She writes very well and kept it suspenseful. But all is not clear by the end which seriously effects my enjoyment and my interest in reading anymore by this author.

The Q&A I linked above explains so much. That information, so crucial to the story's understanding, should have been worked into the story. I assumed the wires were to hold the damaged jaws closed. But no... mind control wtf!!! And to find out Peter is in a metamorphosis stage. I am not smart enough to figure that out while reading the story. It is genius in hindsight but I'm pissed that I had to find that out, outside the story.

Definitely more of a 3.5.

The author plunges us deep in the middle of this post apocalyptic world and it took me a while to gather my bearings. And while it’ll probably take me a long while to ever get comfortable with all the scientific terminology associated with these kinds of sci-fi books, I was able to get the general idea and emotion behind it all. The dual timeline with the current and the ancient Mesopotamian civilization was a master stroke to make us feel invested in everyone’s lives, the discussion about the ethics of time travel as well as a very short term focused banking economy on the development of the world was fascinating, and the best part was the clash of cultures we could witness - not just between the timelines, but also within the present between the generation who survived the plagues and the younger ones born in the aftermath. That cliffhanger ending though equal parts wonderful and frustrating, because I can’t even guess what happens next.

Good premise, but the writing is unengaging; it’s hard to give a damn about any of the characters or the world itself. Also, the ending is just lazy.

Whenever humans encounter the uncanny, the unexplainable, the magical, their first thought is "how can I use this?" The best among us finish that thought with "to make things better"; the worst, "for my own benefit"; and most of us, "to make a buck."

Author Robson's 2015 novella isn't her first publication (her books are listed here); it's a very assured work, told well, thought through thoroughly, and of a length sufficient to set her scene, convey her tale, then leave us wishing for a bit more to enjoy. It feels *right* that Sylvain, her PoV character here, should be an arriviste at the Court. He, like Author Robson with her reader, has left even his own social cronies without the miracle of his plumbing and flush toilets! Saying "no" is dangerous, and denying someone who has your secrets what they ask for is even more foolish.

But logic dictates that even a magical creature have limits, and the nixie Sylvain has forced into his service isn't able to do everything. The more pressing question for him now is why does the nixie appear to be doing the *opposite* of what needs doing?

Never, in the history of human endeavor, has a system based on scarcity and uniqueness failed to fail. And here is Sylvain re-learning that lesson for the many-bazillionth time albeit his first. And, in the end, the world's delights are as ephemeral as we should all have learned that they are never not by now. What begins badly ends sadly. Again and again and again and again and again.

Kelly Robson’s Alias Space and Other Stories takes you on a Queer-friendly journey through speculative spaces and showcases Robson’s evolution as a writer from her first published story to the Nebula Award-winning “A Human Stain”. If this collection is anything to go by, where she is in another five years will be something to see. Starting off with my favorite tale, the ending of the eponymous “Alias Space” felt a bit abrupt, but the truth is that it was the best kind of disappointing because it leaves a reader wanting more of the lush and evocative characters and their artistic world. For a story set in a futuristic Toronto about a famed burlesque troupe and a very special ‘bot named Petunia, it could not be more appropriate to leave the audience always wanting more and this entire collection will do just that.

“A Study in Oils” is set in the traditional and pastoral world of the Miao people of southern China where Robson spent time in 2018. A criminal on the run from the Moon is hoping for redemption as he learns about the culture of the Miao. Zhang Lei stumbles at first as he is cut off from all he knows and expects of the world. His lessons in stillness and solitude bring out his old skills as a painter and that may just be the key to saving his life.

We need an Afterschool Special movie made from “La Vitesse”. It’s a perfectly ordinary story about a bus driver in rural Canada working out some issues with her rebellious teenaged daughter. Don’t worry about the unrelenting and ravenous dragon chasing the busload full of kids home from school. “Two Watersheds” follows along with a scientist using an avatar to place survey equipment out in the Athabasca River Valley while streaming her feed live to the internet in a post-climate-change world. It’s a remarkable story of dedication, hope, and faith for the future.

A comical scene of seduction opens the “Waters of Versailles” as we follow Sylvain who is eager to fit into the upper echelons of the aristocracy. He proudly engineers the fountains, pipes, and the first toilets for the palace, fights off leaks that seem to have a mind of their own, and strives to create more grandiose schemes to keep the fickle aristocrats amused and engaged. He’s keeping a secret hidden in the depths of the palace and sooner or later he’s going to be faced with a choice we all have to make eventually: to decide what is really important to us in this world.

Those are my personal favorites but there is a lot more to love in this collection. “Skin City” reads like a Black Mirror episode they haven’t gotten around to filming yet. I have little doubt Zane Grey would be delighted that Riders of the Purple Sage still exists 30,000 years in the future in “We Who Live in the Heart”. The roughest and darkest story is probably “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill” with elements of rape and murder. “What Gentle Women Dare” involves a quiet conversation in a 1763 churchyard in Liverpool between a down-on-her-luck whore and the Devil that questions senseless violence against women. In the author notes for that story, the reader is reminded that writing is often a means of trying to come to terms with unanswerable questions and that is what all these tales do in one way or another. Find your own favorites in this impressive collection and keep an eye out for what’s next from Kelly Robson.

** Thank you to Subterranean Press and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest, unbiased review **

A wonderfully fresh, inventive, lively and thoughtful read.



We are at some point in the future where humanity seems to be rebuilding itself following various disasters, largely ecological one of our on making. I say "seem to be" because Robson never states this, just has the characters allude to things in their history - or, rather, things in their present that hint at the history. This naturalism is one of the things I loves about the writing, the way the ordinary interplay of the characters builds a vision of the world for us. Which works, at least in part, as the characters are so well drawn.



The two main characters are Minh, an old-guard ecological systems designer who moves around on six tentacled prostheses instead of her 'natural' legs and is of the generation who have gone through the hardships of trying to recolonise the surface after decades of subterranean life and Kiki, a young, ambitious engineer who initially idolises the older woman.



One of the conflicts of the book is that the banks, who had made money through investing in recolonisation and the surface habitats (and seem to hold everyone in massive debt; an ongoing theme is how all the characters just seem to accept crippling levels of ongoing debt as part of existence, a comment on student debt in the US and elsewhere I assume) are turning their focus to the lucrative business of time travel.



Minh and Kiki are part of a team hired to travel back to the Tigris basin, around 2000 BC, to take environmental samples to bring back to the present. There is conversation that this real work of time travel is being minimised due to pressure to take tourists (critique of the distorting effect of commerce on pure science), but i was never quite sure what the end-game of the mission was. I had thought it was to find hardy specimens to help restore the ravaged planet, but there was later reference to changing history.



I loved the layout of the book, each chapter beginning with a short segment from the viewpoint of the king and priestess of the small civilisation of the Tigris as they begin to see changes brought on by the technology of the visitors - the new stars of communications satellites, for example - followed by the building of the main tale.



Very much worth a read, and I look forward to more from Kelly Robson

This is a delicious slice of Gothic weird horror fiction from Ms Robson, wherein a rather outre young Englishwoman is rescued from her Bohemian poverty in Victorian Paris by one of her louche friends. He employs her as governess for his orphaned nephew, at a remote Bavarian Schloss. Robson's writing is sublime, the language pitched perfectly for the mood and setting, and the horror nicely grotesque.


I particularly like that the protagonist's sexuality - in the manner of the era we should say she is (gasp!) a Sapphist - while it is part of her disreputability, is in no way a cause of her predicament, as it would once have been (and all to often still be) written; the sense is far more that she has been entrapped and her fate is very much in keeping with the kind of bleak inevitability found in all the best Gothic horror, and that we now associate with Lovecraft.