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expendablemudge's review
4.0
This review is only for "Beneath the Mask" by Aliette de Bodard.
There is no mercy in a god. They are creatures of Humanity's darkest and most insatiable selves. There is no sense complaining to a god. They are Want and Desire and Hunger in vaporous unbodies fashioned from fantasy, phantasms of ectoplasm that our mere protoplasmic corporae cannot encompass and the meat-wetware that runs them can't fully encompass.
Isn't it ever the way, fellow Frankensteins, our creations run away from us and live these odd, malformed "lives" of their own? They only hark back to us, their creators, when they need something, when they're running low on love, need, that certain something that only a creator can give.
Wait...am I still talking about gods or have we drifted onto the topic of children...?
At any rate, this second of three prequel stories of Acatl the priest of the god of death is as blisteringly original and as damningly real as the first one is, and if you read these two stories and don't spring for the Kindle editions of the books (only $7.49 each!), I will feel sorry for you for being broke or impatient with you for being obtuse.
“There is such a thing as forgiveness. Such a thing as ignorance.”
“Ignorance is not innocence. I will not be cheated, priest, whether knowingly or unknowingly.”
There is no mercy in a god. They are creatures of Humanity's darkest and most insatiable selves. There is no sense complaining to a god. They are Want and Desire and Hunger in vaporous unbodies fashioned from fantasy, phantasms of ectoplasm that our mere protoplasmic corporae cannot encompass and the meat-wetware that runs them can't fully encompass.
Isn't it ever the way, fellow Frankensteins, our creations run away from us and live these odd, malformed "lives" of their own? They only hark back to us, their creators, when they need something, when they're running low on love, need, that certain something that only a creator can give.
Wait...am I still talking about gods or have we drifted onto the topic of children...?
At any rate, this second of three prequel stories of Acatl the priest of the god of death is as blisteringly original and as damningly real as the first one is, and if you read these two stories and don't spring for the Kindle editions of the books (only $7.49 each!), I will feel sorry for you for being broke or impatient with you for being obtuse.
theknightswhosaybook's review
4.0
I read Held Close in Syllables of Light by Rose Lemberg in this collection, and liked it a lot, though as is often the case in short stories some aspects of the world were touched on too briefly to be as powerful as they could be.
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