Monica Valentinelli

This book was a bit of fresh air to read. A lot of books have become a bit predictable lately, and while not the authors fault as it seems the only the cliche-ish of books seem to get popular (at least to me). I really did enjoy this, but I am really happy that it was short stories as opposed to one long story. I like that I was not able to predict what was going to happen. I was also eager to check out every new story to see where the author would take it.

Of course you know that when you have a anthology filled with stories not all of them could be great and I did not like every single one of them. I wont list them here but I will list a couple of my favorite stories

On Loving Bad Boys: A Villainelle by: Valya Dudycz Lipescu
Single, Singularity by: John Hornor Jacobs
Chosen by: Anton Strout
Santa CIS (Episode 1: No Saint) by: Alethea Kontis
The First Blood of Poppy Dupree by: Deliah S. Dawson

While there were much more I like, these were the stories I wish the author would expand upon. I would love full books on this especially the Santa CIS. The stories I did like far out-weighed the stories I didn't like. I recommend this book for anyone who is tired of the everyday fairy tale and needs something new… (mehr)

This book was a bit of fresh air to read. A lot of books have become a bit predictable lately, and while not the authors fault as it seems the only the cliche-ish of books seem to get popular (at least to me). I really did enjoy this, but I am really happy that it was short stories as opposed to one long story. I like that I was not able to predict what was going to happen. I was also eager to check out every new story to see where the author would take it.

Of course you know that when you have a anthology filled with stories not all of them could be great and I did not like every single one of them. I wont list them here but I will list a couple of my favorite stories

On Loving Bad Boys: A Villainelle by: Valya Dudycz Lipescu
Single, Singularity by: John Hornor Jacobs
Chosen by: Anton Strout
Santa CIS (Episode 1: No Saint) by: Alethea Kontis
The First Blood of Poppy Dupree by: Deliah S. Dawson

While there were much more I like, these were the stories I wish the author would expand upon. I would love full books on this especially the Santa CIS. The stories I did like far out-weighed the stories I didn't like. I recommend this book for anyone who is tired of the everyday fairy tale and needs something new… (mehr)

Upside Down is a collection of short stories intended to subvert common tropes in storytelling and essays discussing trope usage. The vast majority of the collection is short stories, and wow are there a lot of stories. Like in any collection, there were stories that impressed me and stories that didn’t. However, on the whole I found the collection to be on the weaker side.

Going into the collection, I wasn’t aware of most of the contributing authors. I picked it up mainly for Delilah S. Dawson, Alyssa Wong, and Nisi Shawl. I found Shawl’s story to be all right if not exceptional, but I did love both Wong and Dawson’s work. Alyssa Wong took on Yellow Peril in her short story “The White Dragon,” about a girl with the ability to see curses. I loved how magic was described here! Alyssa Wong never disappoints. Dawson twisted First Period Panic in her story “The First Blood of Poppy Dupree,” creating an intriguing mix of Southern Gothic and Greek mythology.

There were other stories I enjoyed as well. Micheal Choi’s “Those Who Leaves” centers on the relationship between a girl, her mother, and the sea. He manages to make a heartrendingly beautiful story out of the Asian Scientist trope. In another #ownvoices story, “Seeking Truth,” Elsa Sjunneson-Henry tackles Blind People Are Magic in her tale of a blind criminal interrogator who always finds the truth.

Other stories had some interesting ideas at their heart. In “The Tangled Web,” Ferrett Steinmetz crafts a tale of a race of insect people where the males’ greatest desire is to find true love and be devoured by eggs a female lays in him. It was the strangest version of Love at First Sight I’ve ever encountered. “No Saint” by Alethea Kontis uses the trope of The Retired Pro’s “Last” Job, but the “pro” in this instance is none other than Santa Claus!

“Super Duper Fly” by Maurice Broaddus had a shaky start but ended up being a hilarious parody of the Magical Negro trope and The Green Mile. On the flip side, Michael Underwood’s “Can You Tell Me How to Get to Paprika Place?” was hands down the most depressing story of the collection. Yes, I know the ending’s optimistic, but still.

Other stories felt contrived or one note. Some of these it was clear what trope the author was using, others it wasn’t. Kat Richardson’s “Drafty as a Chainmaille Bikini” felt simplistic and didn’t add much new to criticisms of female characters in chain mail bikinis. I think it was intended to be funny, but it left me cold. Alex Shvartsman tries to work with all of epic fantasy in “Noun of Nouns: A Mini Epic,” but it never feels more than juvenile. And is epic fantasy even a trope? I think of it more as a genre. Another story that never felt more than surface level was “The Refrigerator in the Girlfriend” by Adam-Troy Castro. He never engages with the criticisms of Woman in the Refrigerator and does little more than flip the words to create an absurd scenario.

I found other stories more confusing in what tropes they were using, but there’s a section at the end of the book connecting each trope to each story. Rati Mehrotra attempts to take on Gendercide in “Real Women Are Dangerous,” but ends up with a very gender binary story focused around men. I could tell while reading it that “Chosen” by Anton Strout was trying to do something with the Chosen One trope, but it felt rather aimless and confusing.

There’s twenty-six short stories in this collection. I’ve only gone over fourteen here, but the other twelve felt completely forgettable and not even worth getting into. I did have hopes for the nonfiction section, but I ended up disappointed there as well. Most of the essays felt incredibly boring. The only one I made it all the way through was Keffy R.M. Kehrli’s “Tropes as Erasers: A Transgender Perspective,” which I actually did like.

There were stories I liked but they felt largely outweighed by stories I didn’t care for. This isn’t a collection I’ll be recommending in the future.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

I received an ARC of Upside Down from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for a free and honest review.… (mehr)

To be honest once I started Queen of Crows was a hard sell, mainly because I knew this blond woman was telling the story of an aged and respected Navajo shaman on the eve of a major historical tragedy for the tribe. But by the second page I was sunk. Ms. Valentinelli’s talent won me over. I’ve been known to crack open a Tony Hillerman book for a little light reading. This was particularly true during my teenage years. But I also delighted in Sherman Alexie’s thorough skewering of him in Indian Killer. An anglo writing about the indigenous has a tenuous path as far as tone and respect without making their characters too perfect and false. What’s brilliant is that Valentinelli managed this with grace in a short story medium.

I adore short stories particularly in the speculative fiction genre because of their limitations. You’ve got to get in there do some quick and memorable world-building and character sketches and then BAM! You’ve got to get out again after telling some kind of a story ark. This makes for affective storytelling when done right. A good short story should be like a honed diamond right to the midbrain.

The main character Tse reflects about his life and the hard choice he must make to which he has already committed but dreads. He has collaborated with a corpse-witch in learning a forbidden spell for the good of his people and has sent them away ahead of a foreseen calamity at the hands of a U.S. Army moving west now that the Civil War is over. Knowing a tiny bit about the cleanliness beliefs of Navajo in general and particularly shamans this tells me all I need to know about how desperate is his gamble. He is compelled to summon an entity who has been communicating with him, but is it a savior spirit or a force of great evil?

Valentinelli provided enough cultural flavor show us her tale is well-researched and well-intentioned but not to an elaborate S.M. Stirling-like degree what would have seen excessive. One unremarked quirk was how quickly white men barged into Tse’s hogahn, this is a terrible breech of hospitality but she already told us what kind of a guy Tse is an it would have slowed the story down a notch. Also on a personal note as someone who stutters I was impressed by the treatment she gave Captain Maynard who stuttered in a realistic manner. Not many authors get it right and the list of actors who do pretty much starts and ends with Michael Palin.

I liked the facts that the antagonists of the piece were not, aside from one real bastard portrayed as evil bigots. Two of them were merely soldiers doing their unseemly bloody duty and all of them reacted in different three-dimensional ways to the weird bloody conclusion of the story.

I really appreciated the extras such as the artwork and author’s afterward. To be honest I didn’t read the first draft of the story, since Valentinelli had already warned us that is was “a jumble of words” that needed to be rewritten. I’ll leave the polished version fresh in my memory, thank you and await more stories about Mahochepi if you please. And please do.… (mehr)