I like Anders writing. This is based originally upon reading a short story in a dystopian anthology about the future of the US about a peculiarly split bookstore (the penultimate entry in this collection) and then Anders’ novel The City in the Middle of the Night. So I was excited to try out her short fiction, a format she claims to be her favorite.
She indeed does a good, occasionally great, short story. They are on the longer side of short and are always well rounded, meaning they read more like a mini novel than a slice of life scenes from a movie sort of things. They are lively, fun and wildly imaginative. They are pretty much exactly what you might want out of speculative fiction, but…here comes the but…they are also imbued heavily with messages (political, social, economic, you name it, it’s there) and messages can overwhelm the story and here at times do. Mind you, sometimes a message is what takes the story from good to great, but the thing is that purely depends of how relevant the readers finds the message and so when it comes to Anders’ writing, user mileage may vary. Drastically. With that said, for this reader some of the stories didn’t work and not because of the disagreement with the message, more because of how much message there were. The collection begins perfectly with what might have been my favorite story about surviving apocalypse with only a genie for company. It’s clever, cute and fun and demonstrates all of Anders’ effervescent charms as a writer perfectly. The next story is good too. And then it begins to meander. It stands to mention that Anders is a transperson and as such the subjects of gender, sexuality, etc. are obviously very important to her and these things are heavily featured in her writing. Her favorite story is one of three in this collection from a postapocalyptic queer wilderness of San Francisco. Those stories did nothing for me. I mean, everyone’s pansexual, queer and hip…yey, great, and then what. The pronoun juggle alone was exhausting. It’s almost as if the author took this opportunity to try out every pronoun there is and imagine some more. That’s the recurring theme in the book and with a lot of characters, their love lives are a rainbow colored mess, often in a way that steals focus from the narrative itself. It’s understandable for an author who considers themselves one of a marginalized minority to want to imagine words where it’s the norm, but it’s just so…overpowering. And I know, I know, I’m most definitely going to get accused of homophobic anger or transphobia or something, because these days political correctness has all but steamrolled any attempt at critical thinking and who would dare not to wave the flag right next to the person waving it. And I can assure you that isn’t the case. I’m hugely supportive of the queer community and I’m thrilled for Anders to have her literary platform. It just doesn’t quite work for me in fiction in these quantities. And having dared to say that…it stands to also mention that the general tone of the stories started to get tiresome after a while, the effervescence can only take you so far, the hip bubbly quality of youth and young hip characters who seem to be composed almost entirely of quirks…tiresome. This is far from YA, but there’s a certain underlying dearth of maturity in Anders’ characters. When she’s on, she’s on. Power Couple is such a clever story about the insanity of the unrealistic expectations our society paces on young people to have their entire life worked out by college. Or 6 months, 3 days, a story of a relationship between a man who can see the future and a woman who can see many possible futures. Very clever, indeed. Although the latter story does have that heavy quirk thing going for it. The time travel story is fun too. Overall, it’s very much a mixed bag. A wildly left of the center, quirky, rainbow coalition of queer punks of all stripes surviving the strikingly imagined speculative scenarios of Anders’ terrific hopped up imagination. There’s plenty of organic storytelling talent and genuine cleverness on display here. Context wise it’ll work differently for different readers. But celebrating diversity is kind of a theme here anyway. Thanks Netgalley.
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