Reviews

Moss Witch and Other Stories by Sara Maitland

alcyon_alcyon's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny hopeful informative mysterious reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

John McPhee meets AS Byatt? Hard to describe - completely captivating brief tales that elegantly illustrate a wide variety of scientific factoids and science history. Very artistically crafted, as well.

sarahjjs's review against another edition

5.0

I think these stories need to be taken as a whole from the story and the context from the consulting scientist. As a short story collection by themselves, then yeh it may sometimes seem tedious like lots of reviews say but she needs to give you a little bit of context when talking about matter and antimatter etc for the story to make any sense. I loved it. I thought she did something really special here and she made me read up on some areas that I'm not well versed in.

late_stranger's review against another edition

3.0

I'm just not a short stories person; some of these were amazing but I couldn't quite get into any of them particularly except the very last, Dark Humour, which was incredible.

dansumption's review against another edition

2.0

The premise of this book is very enticing - a collection of short stories inspired by science (everything from botany to quantum physics), with each story followed by an afterword by a scientist who specialises in that field. In practice, however, most of the stories felt like they'd been forced to accommodate the scientific element, and some of the afterwords (though very informative) felt like they were praising the story a little unwillingly.

rmtbray's review

3.0

This collection had an interesting premise and it was cool to learn about different scientific theories after each short story... However the stories did feel a little forced to fit at times, especially when the characters would suddenly go off into complex-ish technical talk for what seems like little reason!

rogerb's review

5.0

Outstanding! If I could give 6 stars I would.

Maitland writes very well and that's a good start. There is no "sameness" between any pair of stories so the ingredients are good to begin with.

But her triumph is wining proper science and feminism in each one of them, and if there's any doubt about veracity it's dispelled by a postscript from a high-ranking practising scientist in each chosen area. Blimey, she must have learned a lot in doing this.

Fantastic.