Depressing and almost unreadable

The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

DNF at 21%. I found this to be almost unreadable. It took me three attempts to just get past the opening paragraphs. Overly wordy and constructed.

I made the effort to find out more about the events that Bolander took and merged to make her own novelette. Links below. Utterly depressing and horrible.

That combined with the overblown prose results in this: Not my thing. Sorry.

Background of the real-life Radium Girls: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiu…

And details about the real-life elephant Topsy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy…

Check out the details at Tor.com: https://publishing.tor.com/theonlyhar…

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Vengeful foxes…

Lightspeed Magazine, February 2012 by John Joseph Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Review for “Her Words Like Hunting Vixens Spring“ by Brooke Bolander, ~14 pages

“The first fox to come clawing up and out of her throat is a sleek gray thing with enormous ears and eyes like drops of crude. (…)
The Day My Beau Tried To Kill Me, September 17th, 1880.“

A story of revenge, Old Wild West style. With the help of a bruja, Rosa has unusual assistants on her hunt for her serial-killing ex-fiancé.

Bolander seems to like mixing her heroines with fantastical beasts.

Enjoyable, easy read. Nothing too surprising. Nice visuals.

Can be read for free here: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fic…

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Good riddance for some…

Uncanny Magazine Issue 23: July/August 2018 by Lynne M. Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Review for “The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat“ by Brooke Bolander

Entertaining take on fairytales, with unusual protagonists.

“Once upon a time, long, long, long, long, long, long, ago, there were three raptor sisters, hatched beneath a lucky star. They lived in a wood together, they stole sheep and cattle together, and all in all, there was no tighter-knit hunting pride of matriarchal dromaeosauridae between the mountains and the sea.“

Nothing too surprising, an easy read. Enjoyable.

Can be read for free here: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/t…

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