This Month's SF Reads Online (So Far)

Strange Horizons Fiction: R3, by Dennis Danvers

I raved about the ideas in this one from part one. I still like them, but I felt that the plot kind of meandered in part two and didn't really resolve in the way that felt satisfying and in agreement with the middle parts of the story. I expected the reindeers to do something for the poor people. Felt like a missed opportunity, given what was going on in the story.

Strange Horizons Fiction: Still Living, by J. J. Irwin

Another death-themed piece from Strange Horizons. Short and to the point, with some nice touches here and there. I found it to be an odd length, and while it does have a narrative completeness to it, and the situation is very touching, I wanted more meat on the skeleton. Still, not every story has to be a novella. I should put some more thought into the leanness of this piece, and how it achieves a sense of overall satisfaction, despite being so short.

Fantasy Magazine » Painting Walls in the Town of Nâ??

This felt like a pastiche of early Kelly Link to me. That's both good and bad. The speculative elements didn't grab me, but I liked the writing at the prose level in several places. Other places, it felt a bit forced, a bit too precocious. I'll be watching the writer to see how she develops in the future. This feels like someone who is going to write stories I really enjoy, and this one just didn't hit the sweet spot for me.

Clarkesworld Magazine ? The River Boy by Tim Pratt

I'm not a huge Tim Pratt fanboy. To be perfectly honest, I have a hard time getting over my jealousy of him, because he's written several ideas I wish I had first. He's one of those writers whose level of success I want, some day. This story was good at what it did, although it didn't resonate mythically with me in the way I wanted it to. The odd choice of having the river become the son and then turn back was unusual, in my opinion. It's kind of a "this is how things came to be" story, but usually, those involve one transformation, and not a transformation back and forth. So that part felt "wrong" to me in some fundamental way. Really, though, it's a nice story, and I admit to smiling at the dedication. I'm not all bad.

Clarkesworld Magazine ? Debris Ensuing from a Supervortex by Brian Ames

Cracking writing here. Good narrative voice that grabbed me early on, but lost me in the pyrotechnics later on. The prose is a little too frentic in places for my taste. I like a good description of a tornado, really, but I like my subtext a little closer to the surface. Things felt a little too opaque, or maybe not. Maybe things were as simple as they appeared? Still, the best thing I've read so far this month online, despite the fact that I am left with the feeling that I am missing something fundamental here.

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This marks a change in policy for me. Up until now, I was only blogging about things that I really liked. But I have decided that I need to put thought into everything I read, whether I like it or not, and try to figure out why they don't work for me when they don't. Just part of my process in helping myself become a better writer. These comments are meant for me, and I put them here so I can find them later. If you find some use in them, great, but I certainly don't expect you to take my opinions seriously, and I kind of hope you don't.