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Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Ew. I hate books that make me regret paying for them.
It's an anthology. It's an anthology, about cats, from Daw, reminding you to read the Catfantastic books on the inside-front-cover area. It has cover art which matches Catfantastic. It has a back-cover blurb that includes "...have once again risen to the challenge...."
It has stories by: Mary Jo Putney, Andre Norton, Jody Lynn Nye, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Karen Haber, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Diane A. S. Stuckart, Janet Pack, Bill McCay, Pamela Luzier, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and Von Jocks.
With that background, it should rock...but it didn't. I am not familiar with the editor, Denise Little, but I am told she has edited good anthologies before. All I can say is, either she was overawed by her contributors, she was under severe time pressure, or they had her edit it while doped up on pain killers post-apendectomy.
I'm going to cut here. No spoilers of plot, but the rest of this dissects what I didn't like about the stories I didn't like - as well as the couple exceptions. For each story. One at a time.
And the authors should be smacked. The stories range from "oh my god this sucks" to "why the hell did I read that?" to "blah", with most in the "blah/why did I bother" range. One ranked as high as "decent" and one other is an "ooo!"
The story I labelled "decent" is Von Jocks' "Ecliptic" (last in the book!), which has as its main problem the fact that it is either the intro to or the ending of a longer story, which, as it is not mentioned in the intro-to-story blurb, probably does not exist and never will. I like this story; I like this world; I would like to see more of it. As a standalone piece, it wants to be shorter or have a bit more meat; as part of a larger work, it might do as-is.
The "ooo!" was Bill McKay's "Death Song". This one really didn't grab me the first time through, but that's because it's in the middle of the book and I was very put out with the entire affair by the time I reached it. That was unfortunate, because it's a nice little gem with no problems I can find; it's a complete story in and of itself. I'd love to see more of the world, but I don't feel like it was floundering or wanting to be something else.
I must say, I had never, personally, heard of either of those authors before this. Yes, that's right, the big names who inspired me to buy the book? Blah'ed out. Which would be why I'm so pissy at this book. Even with Death Song, and the promising Ecliptic, the book was not worth its price-tag as a new paperback. USED, it might be.
There were a number of good premises in the book, mind! They just, sadly, needed to be thwapped and told to edit, edit, edit. Or just "take it away and bring it back when you have a better story to go with your inspiration".
Apparently this is one of those "I'm famous enough that I can put a bland story and everyone will oo and ah anyway". I'm not ooing or ahing at them. :P
Mary Jo Putney gave us "The Stargazer's Familiar". It had two sins, in my opinion: the pacing was off, and the plot was predictable. Especially because the pacing was off, the point where you realize how it has to end, and the point where it actually ends, are dismally distant from each other. The "clue" is way, way, way too obvious. I usually overlook these, but this one whapped me in the nose several times, and then waggled its bare butt at me while I waited to see it actually happen.
Andre Norton gives us "Three-Inch Trouble", a science-fiction story which has an improbable premise which is never explained how it came about...something some people, I realize, tolerate far better than I do. Worse, it seems to have been written predominantly to smack you with a pun as the very last sentence. For a 4-page or less story, that would be grand. This is 22 pages. Looking at the page count, I'm trying to figure out how the heck she took that story and made it 22 pages. Ugh.
Jody Lynn Nye gave us "Purr Power". Some people might like this; my problem was that I found it over-the-top and lacking in, well, interest or challenge. Much as I like this author in some things, however, I've found she tends to inspire me to that reaction in others.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch gives us "Star". This story has two problems, one of which didn't bug me, but did bug another person I talked to. That one is, it's not really fantasy; the events of this story are something that could happen in real life, and in fact (not necessarily in this exact combination) all of them have happened in real life. This is really a "feel-good" story with a vaguely fantastical but entirely really-happens-ish element. My other objection is that it needed to be attacked with a hacksaw. The story takes up 26 pages. It is not, alas, actually a story that NEEDS that many pages. It's woefully overwritten and, to get in a sappy little twist unrelated to the main plotline of the story or the cat, continues for (depending on how you count it) 2-5 pages after the real ending.
Karen Haber gives us "Under the Sign of the Fish". Umm. It's 16 pages long, the human main character is an idiot, the rest of it is predictable, and it's yawningly boring. I don't care about it. I especially don't care about it after being brained violently with the "well, DUH!" moral at the end of it. Which is spelled out, explicitly. Go away, woman. Go away, and take your story with you.
Mickey Zucker Reichert, "Every Life Should Have Nine Cats". This isn't a horrible story. The title doesn't make sense to me, in light of the story. The story is boring, it plods; it wants two more rounds of editing. It's too long for what it tells you; it's too predictable; it's too..."the hand of God has ended this story". And it's absolutely lacking in action, which might improve the length issues and make the "here is your answer on a silver platter" ending less jarring. As it is, my response is "that's nice but I don't really care" by the time I get to it....
Diane A. S. Stuckert, "Once We Were Worshipped". Okay. To be fair, I'm not at all familiar with this author, under any of the pen names listed in her biography, and she doesn't have a body of work that I'm aware of that makes me expect stunning things. This story is on the interesting end of the "blah" scale, with a neat concept, a neat setup, and entirely too much black-and-white as far as the characters' abilities. If this were a roleplaying adventure, the players would walk out when the cattle prod was used to send them on their way. Neither did she particularly interest me in the characters, or flesh out the world. Pity, because she took 31 pages to do it in. This is a really nice concept, though. It just needs a new story....
Janet Pack, "Praxis". Blah. Just blah. Dammit, for a plot, I want to see the main character(s) faced with a challenge which they do something to overcome. Not which some outside force overcomes for them. This would make a cute little vignette to introduce a world or a longer story. As a standalone, for me, it's a flop. It does, in all fairness, have one very amusing moment near the end. It's less than a page long, and the dialog following it up is trite, but it is, briefly, amusing.
Pamela Luzier, "A Light In The Darkness". This is a nice feel-good story, and it's definitely fantasy. Alas, it's another story where you don't, really, feel like the main character did enough to merit the page-count. But don't worry! There's another moral horked up all over you when you read it.
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, "Mu Mao and the Court Oracle". This almost made the "okay" list. The problem is, it's Scarborough, and it's Mu Mao. This story is a little too long, a little too "ooo, ahh, Mu Mao is so cool", and rather bland for a Mu Mao story. Mu Mao is not my favorite, but has been done much better than this example. Still, I can't pan it entirely. I just won't be rereading it, either.
Nina Kiriki Hoffman, "Star Song". DAMMIT. I would have bought this book for this story alone, just because of the author, because she is excellent. And this story is not, and I am offended. It's not a horrible story; the pacing is right, the characters are interesting and real, and the characters are neither perfect nor smacked by the hand of god (or some equivalent) into the ending. However, I really must protest, the story starts well, but ends as if she just ran out of space. This absolutely begs to either go away and die, or become the beginning of a much longer story. It doesn't make me desperately want to read the story, however; it doesn't leave me breathless in anticipation. It just leaves me feeling sort of empty. I think because the ending, neatly tied with its bow, makes it fairly clear she's not really intending to go anywhere with it. "But...some interesting things happened...but nothing really, REALLY happened, you know?" sort of sums it up.
(Is the person who told me this editor is experienced and good REALLY sure? I'm seeing an AMAZINGLY common theme to the failings in these stories. They are, by and large, too long, not tightly-woven enough, heavy-handed with morals and slipshod with drawing you into the plot.)
It's an anthology. It's an anthology, about cats, from Daw, reminding you to read the Catfantastic books on the inside-front-cover area. It has cover art which matches Catfantastic. It has a back-cover blurb that includes "...have once again risen to the challenge...."
It has stories by: Mary Jo Putney, Andre Norton, Jody Lynn Nye, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Karen Haber, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Diane A. S. Stuckart, Janet Pack, Bill McCay, Pamela Luzier, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and Von Jocks.
With that background, it should rock...but it didn't. I am not familiar with the editor, Denise Little, but I am told she has edited good anthologies before. All I can say is, either she was overawed by her contributors, she was under severe time pressure, or they had her edit it while doped up on pain killers post-apendectomy.
I'm going to cut here. No spoilers of plot, but the rest of this dissects what I didn't like about the stories I didn't like - as well as the couple exceptions. For each story. One at a time.
And the authors should be smacked. The stories range from "oh my god this sucks" to "why the hell did I read that?" to "blah", with most in the "blah/why did I bother" range. One ranked as high as "decent" and one other is an "ooo!"
The story I labelled "decent" is Von Jocks' "Ecliptic" (last in the book!), which has as its main problem the fact that it is either the intro to or the ending of a longer story, which, as it is not mentioned in the intro-to-story blurb, probably does not exist and never will. I like this story; I like this world; I would like to see more of it. As a standalone piece, it wants to be shorter or have a bit more meat; as part of a larger work, it might do as-is.
The "ooo!" was Bill McKay's "Death Song". This one really didn't grab me the first time through, but that's because it's in the middle of the book and I was very put out with the entire affair by the time I reached it. That was unfortunate, because it's a nice little gem with no problems I can find; it's a complete story in and of itself. I'd love to see more of the world, but I don't feel like it was floundering or wanting to be something else.
I must say, I had never, personally, heard of either of those authors before this. Yes, that's right, the big names who inspired me to buy the book? Blah'ed out. Which would be why I'm so pissy at this book. Even with Death Song, and the promising Ecliptic, the book was not worth its price-tag as a new paperback. USED, it might be.
There were a number of good premises in the book, mind! They just, sadly, needed to be thwapped and told to edit, edit, edit. Or just "take it away and bring it back when you have a better story to go with your inspiration".
Apparently this is one of those "I'm famous enough that I can put a bland story and everyone will oo and ah anyway". I'm not ooing or ahing at them. :P
Mary Jo Putney gave us "The Stargazer's Familiar". It had two sins, in my opinion: the pacing was off, and the plot was predictable. Especially because the pacing was off, the point where you realize how it has to end, and the point where it actually ends, are dismally distant from each other. The "clue" is way, way, way too obvious. I usually overlook these, but this one whapped me in the nose several times, and then waggled its bare butt at me while I waited to see it actually happen.
Andre Norton gives us "Three-Inch Trouble", a science-fiction story which has an improbable premise which is never explained how it came about...something some people, I realize, tolerate far better than I do. Worse, it seems to have been written predominantly to smack you with a pun as the very last sentence. For a 4-page or less story, that would be grand. This is 22 pages. Looking at the page count, I'm trying to figure out how the heck she took that story and made it 22 pages. Ugh.
Jody Lynn Nye gave us "Purr Power". Some people might like this; my problem was that I found it over-the-top and lacking in, well, interest or challenge. Much as I like this author in some things, however, I've found she tends to inspire me to that reaction in others.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch gives us "Star". This story has two problems, one of which didn't bug me, but did bug another person I talked to. That one is, it's not really fantasy; the events of this story are something that could happen in real life, and in fact (not necessarily in this exact combination) all of them have happened in real life. This is really a "feel-good" story with a vaguely fantastical but entirely really-happens-ish element. My other objection is that it needed to be attacked with a hacksaw. The story takes up 26 pages. It is not, alas, actually a story that NEEDS that many pages. It's woefully overwritten and, to get in a sappy little twist unrelated to the main plotline of the story or the cat, continues for (depending on how you count it) 2-5 pages after the real ending.
Karen Haber gives us "Under the Sign of the Fish". Umm. It's 16 pages long, the human main character is an idiot, the rest of it is predictable, and it's yawningly boring. I don't care about it. I especially don't care about it after being brained violently with the "well, DUH!" moral at the end of it. Which is spelled out, explicitly. Go away, woman. Go away, and take your story with you.
Mickey Zucker Reichert, "Every Life Should Have Nine Cats". This isn't a horrible story. The title doesn't make sense to me, in light of the story. The story is boring, it plods; it wants two more rounds of editing. It's too long for what it tells you; it's too predictable; it's too..."the hand of God has ended this story". And it's absolutely lacking in action, which might improve the length issues and make the "here is your answer on a silver platter" ending less jarring. As it is, my response is "that's nice but I don't really care" by the time I get to it....
Diane A. S. Stuckert, "Once We Were Worshipped". Okay. To be fair, I'm not at all familiar with this author, under any of the pen names listed in her biography, and she doesn't have a body of work that I'm aware of that makes me expect stunning things. This story is on the interesting end of the "blah" scale, with a neat concept, a neat setup, and entirely too much black-and-white as far as the characters' abilities. If this were a roleplaying adventure, the players would walk out when the cattle prod was used to send them on their way. Neither did she particularly interest me in the characters, or flesh out the world. Pity, because she took 31 pages to do it in. This is a really nice concept, though. It just needs a new story....
Janet Pack, "Praxis". Blah. Just blah. Dammit, for a plot, I want to see the main character(s) faced with a challenge which they do something to overcome. Not which some outside force overcomes for them. This would make a cute little vignette to introduce a world or a longer story. As a standalone, for me, it's a flop. It does, in all fairness, have one very amusing moment near the end. It's less than a page long, and the dialog following it up is trite, but it is, briefly, amusing.
Pamela Luzier, "A Light In The Darkness". This is a nice feel-good story, and it's definitely fantasy. Alas, it's another story where you don't, really, feel like the main character did enough to merit the page-count. But don't worry! There's another moral horked up all over you when you read it.
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, "Mu Mao and the Court Oracle". This almost made the "okay" list. The problem is, it's Scarborough, and it's Mu Mao. This story is a little too long, a little too "ooo, ahh, Mu Mao is so cool", and rather bland for a Mu Mao story. Mu Mao is not my favorite, but has been done much better than this example. Still, I can't pan it entirely. I just won't be rereading it, either.
Nina Kiriki Hoffman, "Star Song". DAMMIT. I would have bought this book for this story alone, just because of the author, because she is excellent. And this story is not, and I am offended. It's not a horrible story; the pacing is right, the characters are interesting and real, and the characters are neither perfect nor smacked by the hand of god (or some equivalent) into the ending. However, I really must protest, the story starts well, but ends as if she just ran out of space. This absolutely begs to either go away and die, or become the beginning of a much longer story. It doesn't make me desperately want to read the story, however; it doesn't leave me breathless in anticipation. It just leaves me feeling sort of empty. I think because the ending, neatly tied with its bow, makes it fairly clear she's not really intending to go anywhere with it. "But...some interesting things happened...but nothing really, REALLY happened, you know?" sort of sums it up.
(Is the person who told me this editor is experienced and good REALLY sure? I'm seeing an AMAZINGLY common theme to the failings in these stories. They are, by and large, too long, not tightly-woven enough, heavy-handed with morals and slipshod with drawing you into the plot.)
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Either I'll really enjoy them, which seems likely from what I've heard (the person who knows and likes this editor did not like this anthology either), or I'll have to come back here and put a note on saying that it appears that she and I have differences of opinion. :)
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