2014 online short fantasy and science fiction recommendations, part 7

[psocoptera]

Subterranean Online, which stopped publishing this year, alas.

The Scrivener, Eleanor Arnason. Definite callback here to "The Grammarian's Five Daughters", but that seems like a fine thing to revisit.

Hayfever, Frances Hardinge. About the team that makes the final meal for condemned fantasy villains.

The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile, Aliette de Bodard. This didn't entirely work for me but she's a hella powerful writer even so.

The Last Log of the Lachrimosa, Alastair Reynolds. Didn't love where this went, but some quality space-adventure-horror in getting there. Novelette.

Grand Jete (The Great Leap), Rachel Swirsky. Novella. An amazing, powerful story about personality copying. Warning for child death. I will almost certainly nominate this for novellas since a) IT'S A NOVELLA and b) it's really good. (Okay, I have come across a few other novellas here and there in my reading, but none I've particularly liked.)

West to East, Jay Lake. I'm not sure this would have grabbed me so much under other circumstances, but as one of Jay Lake's final stories I thought it was really poignant and neat.

Comments

[aryky.livejournal.com]

Of the Hardinge books I've read, I really enjoyed Fly by Night,although I was less enthusiastic about Verdigris Deep and Cuckoo Song (maybe the latter just because the body horror in the first few chapters was so intense that the rest of the book was bound to fail to live up to it). But I've never really gotten the "heir to DWJ" comments that so many DWJ fans have made about her; the similarities just didn't seem that significant to me. But I'd never read any short stories by her before. "Hayfever" actually did remind me a lot of DWJ short stories, probably her adult sex pollen story (well, sex worms) "Mela Worms" that I read recently in particular. I mean, obviously there's the sex worms/revolutionary pollen thing, but I also saw similarities in the way the non-human species were described, the focus on pilgrimage that's more justifiable than it initially seems and something about the flavors of the resolutions. So thanks for sharing the link - I thought finally getting a better grasp of what other people are talking about was helpful :)

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Cool! Always very glad if one of my recs is useful/interesting to someone. I'm the other way round on Hardinge - I liked Well Witched (US Verdigris Deep) a lot and couldn't get into Fly By Night at all. I admit I'm SUPER CURIOUS now about DWJ writing a sex pollen story, I can't picture that at *all*. I may have to see if the library has that anthology.

[aryky.livejournal.com]

Wonder what you'd think of Cuckoo Song then. Man, was I disturbed by the first few chapters, though.

Not sure how readily available "Mela Worms" is, but if you actually want to read it and can't find it otherwise, let me know. It is very possible for me to help you with this :)