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rivqa's review
4.0
After reading Jo's excellent novels, I approached this more horror-oriented short-story collection with some trepidation. Reading this only by day was a good decision; not only did it prevent nightmares, but it also prolonged my reading experience. There's good writing all the way down in this collection; wonderful, creepy characters, unusual settings and intriguing tech. Top notch.
michelle_e_goldsmith's review
5.0
http://www.vilutheril.com/?p=1531
The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories is the debut short story collection by talented upcoming author, Joanne Anderton. It contains thirteen stories in all, eleven of which have been previously published and two of which are brand new. All considered, it is an extremely impressive collection, and it did not contain a single story that I didn’t enjoy.
While I have enjoyed Anderton’s novels, in my personal opinion, her short stories have their own unique magic. They offer tantalizing glimpses into strange yet familiar worlds occupied by deeply and undeniably human characters. Without the need for elaborate explanation, Anderton draws you in and makes you believe in places where statues move, machines rule, or a wind chime made of bones tells its own tale. At times you can almost hear the crunch of desiccated grass underfoot or the rustle of skeleton animals stirring.
Most of the stories in The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories lean towards the darker side. Nevertheless, Anderton does not always paint a bleak picture, and as often as not the stories retain a strong sense of hope.
While each and every story in the collection is unique, all are consistently imaginative and compelling. I can’t help but agree with Kaaron Warren who, in her introduction to the collection, describes these stories as ‘transformative’
Many of Anderton’s stories defy categorisation into a single discreet genre mould. She expertly weaves genres together to produce what could be described as dark science fiction laced with horror, or psychological horror with a dash of fantasy, or any number of other things.
While I almost never reread books or stories (I have a very good memory for text which often makes it pointless past a few pages) I found myself rereading the stories I had encountered elsewhere purely for the beauty of the language. Doing so merely uncovered new layers and increased my admiration for the author’s skill. I could go on to describe the stories themselves, but in doing so I risk breaking the spell and ruining the experience for new readers. Furthermore, I cannot really pick a favourite story. By the time I finish writing this review it will probably have changed again.
For transparency’s sake I will admit that I have met Jo a number of times and very much like her. I think it would be hard not to. However, that is not the reason why I love this book so very much, nor why I’ve chosen to review it now. The simple fact is that these stories are good. Much more than good, in fact. Anderton has a beautiful way with words and an almost preternatural ability to draw the reader into her strange, wonderful and often disturbing imaginings.
All in all, I urge anyone who loves dark, strange and beautifully written stories to read this collection. You won’t regret it. Furthermore, I imagine this collection and the previously unpublished stories within it will be hot contenders for the Ditmar and Aurealis awards next year. Personally, I can’t wait to read whatever Joanne writes next.
The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories is published by Fablecroft Press and can be purchased here.
Note: As an added recommendation, my partner, who doesn’t read much fantasy, picked up the book while I was in the shower and read Sanaa’s Army. Then he wouldn’t give it back or stop reading until he’d finished it. He really enjoyed it and now we both want a ‘Cat Box’ for a pet (read the story for that to make sense).
The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories is the debut short story collection by talented upcoming author, Joanne Anderton. It contains thirteen stories in all, eleven of which have been previously published and two of which are brand new. All considered, it is an extremely impressive collection, and it did not contain a single story that I didn’t enjoy.
While I have enjoyed Anderton’s novels, in my personal opinion, her short stories have their own unique magic. They offer tantalizing glimpses into strange yet familiar worlds occupied by deeply and undeniably human characters. Without the need for elaborate explanation, Anderton draws you in and makes you believe in places where statues move, machines rule, or a wind chime made of bones tells its own tale. At times you can almost hear the crunch of desiccated grass underfoot or the rustle of skeleton animals stirring.
Most of the stories in The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories lean towards the darker side. Nevertheless, Anderton does not always paint a bleak picture, and as often as not the stories retain a strong sense of hope.
While each and every story in the collection is unique, all are consistently imaginative and compelling. I can’t help but agree with Kaaron Warren who, in her introduction to the collection, describes these stories as ‘transformative’
Many of Anderton’s stories defy categorisation into a single discreet genre mould. She expertly weaves genres together to produce what could be described as dark science fiction laced with horror, or psychological horror with a dash of fantasy, or any number of other things.
While I almost never reread books or stories (I have a very good memory for text which often makes it pointless past a few pages) I found myself rereading the stories I had encountered elsewhere purely for the beauty of the language. Doing so merely uncovered new layers and increased my admiration for the author’s skill. I could go on to describe the stories themselves, but in doing so I risk breaking the spell and ruining the experience for new readers. Furthermore, I cannot really pick a favourite story. By the time I finish writing this review it will probably have changed again.
For transparency’s sake I will admit that I have met Jo a number of times and very much like her. I think it would be hard not to. However, that is not the reason why I love this book so very much, nor why I’ve chosen to review it now. The simple fact is that these stories are good. Much more than good, in fact. Anderton has a beautiful way with words and an almost preternatural ability to draw the reader into her strange, wonderful and often disturbing imaginings.
All in all, I urge anyone who loves dark, strange and beautifully written stories to read this collection. You won’t regret it. Furthermore, I imagine this collection and the previously unpublished stories within it will be hot contenders for the Ditmar and Aurealis awards next year. Personally, I can’t wait to read whatever Joanne writes next.
The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories is published by Fablecroft Press and can be purchased here.
Note: As an added recommendation, my partner, who doesn’t read much fantasy, picked up the book while I was in the shower and read Sanaa’s Army. Then he wouldn’t give it back or stop reading until he’d finished it. He really enjoyed it and now we both want a ‘Cat Box’ for a pet (read the story for that to make sense).
tsana's review
5.0
The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories by Joanne Anderton is, as the title suggests, a collection of short stories. For those of you who've read Debris and/or Suited, these stories were very different in tone, surprising me a little with just how macabre they were.
Overall, I was very impressed with Anderton's worldbuilding in all the stories. Each story read like a glimpse into a complete and carefully constructed world. Just because the stories are short, Anderton in no way skimped on the thought put into them. Even for the stories set in some approximation of the modern world, careful details made them stand out.
I've included some thoughts on each story below, but I'm afraid they're not as coherent as I'd like them to be. Each story blew me away and, quite frankly, I think we're lucky I managed to say anything coherent at all, immediately after reading.
Anderton's stories in this collection can be loosely grouped into three categories: macabre fantasy world stories, macabre more-or-less real world stories, and macabre post-technological science-flavoured stories. (There may be a common thread running through them.) All the stories involve dead things and/or death, and often constructions from dead things. My favourite of the bunch, "Sanaa's Army", falls into the latter category and has my favourite cat of the bunch in them.
I've said, repeatedly, that the stories are macabre and deal with death, but I didn't find it to be in a depressing way. Well, OK, some of them were a bit depressing. But generally, there were many stories about life coming out of death. Or art or solace something else constructive.
The more futuristic stories generally dealt with the struggle to live on in a world become more hostile. "Mah Song" deifies the vestiges of advanced technology in a world that's all but forgotten how it works. These stories brought to mind Arthur C Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Anderton takes it a step further at times, calling one of the AIs in "Out Hunting For Teeth" the Witch and her cyborg constructs Spells. (That was another of my favourite stories, in part for the ending.)
Ultimately,I was glad I didn't have a cat watching me while I read I really enjoyed this collection. Not all the stories were the kind of thing I would usually read, but it was mostly those which I ended up enjoying most. I'm not at all surprised that two of the stories have picked up award nominations and I wouldn't be surprised to see the collection itself shortlisted for next year's awards.
The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories is being launched at Conflux in Canberra on April 26, but in the meantime, you can already pre-order a copy from the publisher. I highly recommend this collection to spec fic fans who like their fantasy dark or who might want to venture out of their comfort zone and become a little more acquainted with dead things. But really, if any of the above or below piqued you're interest, I urge you to give it a go; it really is an excellent collection.
~
Some very brief reactions/descriptions of each story which I jotted down immediately after reading it:
The Bone Chime Song — (Ditmar shortlisted) Eerie, well imagined. A complete world glimpsed through a short story.
Mah Song — Cyborg technology, a future world where computers are alive and revered as gods and people depend on them for food and heeling. The main character desperate to take her brother's place as cyborg sacrifice. Technology mixed with mysticism.
Shadow of Drought — Nothing like the first two stories. A story of modern rural teenagers in a horror movie scenario who are aware of the fact.
Sanaa's Army — (Aurealis and Ditmar shortlisted) Another set in the real world. Another about bones, in a different way to "The Bone Chime Song", but not that different. Interesting that these two should be the Ditmar shortlisted stories.
From the Dry Heat to the Sea — A strange story of drought, of industrial poison, of water, of being an outsider.
Always a Price — Short, contemporary, magic and a cat.
Out Hunting for Teeth — Not what I expected from the title, although making things our of human remains comes up again. A science fiction story of the "sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic" variety, somewhat literally.
Death Masque — Eternity in an afterlife or a final death? This is the choice a grieving father makes for his son.
Flowers in the Shadow of the Garden — Floating gardens in a desert. This is another story that particularly impressed me with its worldbuilding.
A Memory Trapped In Light — Another post technological world with scraps if technology left behind. A girl protecting her younger sister from dystopian forces.
Trail of Dead — Zombies, the ones who fight them and the one who summoned them.
Fence Lines — Post-apocalyptic, but that wasn't the point. A sugarcane plantation as a safe outpost, guarded by ghosts.
Tied to the Waste — Post-apocalyptic, making things out of dead things. Cats.
4.5 / 5 stars
You can read more of my reviews on my blog.
Overall, I was very impressed with Anderton's worldbuilding in all the stories. Each story read like a glimpse into a complete and carefully constructed world. Just because the stories are short, Anderton in no way skimped on the thought put into them. Even for the stories set in some approximation of the modern world, careful details made them stand out.
I've included some thoughts on each story below, but I'm afraid they're not as coherent as I'd like them to be. Each story blew me away and, quite frankly, I think we're lucky I managed to say anything coherent at all, immediately after reading.
Anderton's stories in this collection can be loosely grouped into three categories: macabre fantasy world stories, macabre more-or-less real world stories, and macabre post-technological science-flavoured stories. (There may be a common thread running through them.) All the stories involve dead things and/or death, and often constructions from dead things. My favourite of the bunch, "Sanaa's Army", falls into the latter category and has my favourite cat of the bunch in them.
I've said, repeatedly, that the stories are macabre and deal with death, but I didn't find it to be in a depressing way. Well, OK, some of them were a bit depressing. But generally, there were many stories about life coming out of death. Or art or solace something else constructive.
The more futuristic stories generally dealt with the struggle to live on in a world become more hostile. "Mah Song" deifies the vestiges of advanced technology in a world that's all but forgotten how it works. These stories brought to mind Arthur C Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Anderton takes it a step further at times, calling one of the AIs in "Out Hunting For Teeth" the Witch and her cyborg constructs Spells. (That was another of my favourite stories, in part for the ending.)
Ultimately,
The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories is being launched at Conflux in Canberra on April 26, but in the meantime, you can already pre-order a copy from the publisher. I highly recommend this collection to spec fic fans who like their fantasy dark or who might want to venture out of their comfort zone and become a little more acquainted with dead things. But really, if any of the above or below piqued you're interest, I urge you to give it a go; it really is an excellent collection.
~
Some very brief reactions/descriptions of each story which I jotted down immediately after reading it:
The Bone Chime Song — (Ditmar shortlisted) Eerie, well imagined. A complete world glimpsed through a short story.
Mah Song — Cyborg technology, a future world where computers are alive and revered as gods and people depend on them for food and heeling. The main character desperate to take her brother's place as cyborg sacrifice. Technology mixed with mysticism.
Shadow of Drought — Nothing like the first two stories. A story of modern rural teenagers in a horror movie scenario who are aware of the fact.
Sanaa's Army — (Aurealis and Ditmar shortlisted) Another set in the real world. Another about bones, in a different way to "The Bone Chime Song", but not that different. Interesting that these two should be the Ditmar shortlisted stories.
From the Dry Heat to the Sea — A strange story of drought, of industrial poison, of water, of being an outsider.
Always a Price — Short, contemporary, magic and a cat.
Out Hunting for Teeth — Not what I expected from the title, although making things our of human remains comes up again. A science fiction story of the "sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic" variety, somewhat literally.
Death Masque — Eternity in an afterlife or a final death? This is the choice a grieving father makes for his son.
Flowers in the Shadow of the Garden — Floating gardens in a desert. This is another story that particularly impressed me with its worldbuilding.
A Memory Trapped In Light — Another post technological world with scraps if technology left behind. A girl protecting her younger sister from dystopian forces.
Trail of Dead — Zombies, the ones who fight them and the one who summoned them.
Fence Lines — Post-apocalyptic, but that wasn't the point. A sugarcane plantation as a safe outpost, guarded by ghosts.
Tied to the Waste — Post-apocalyptic, making things out of dead things. Cats.
4.5 / 5 stars
You can read more of my reviews on my blog.
daveversace's review
5.0
Beautiful, dark stories of humanity on the fringes of normality or the verge of extinction. Jo Anderton's characters occupy the most tenuous corners of vivid, imaginative and often terrible worlds, struggling to hold on to their past as calamity approaches (or recedes into dim memory). These are stories about living in the wake of great calamity – fighting to survive, hunting for meaning in dying worlds, coming to the acceptance that things will never return to what they were. But Anderton’s stories are far from fatalistic. Despite the horrors that she visits upon her poor characters, they have cores of steel; beaten down and tormented by their arduous circumstances, they go on regardless. Weary but resolved.
The title story is one of the first pieces of Joanne Anderton’s that I read, and it’s still among my favourites. The story of Zvonimir the chime-maker, who is called upon by an estranged friend to turn the gruesome evidence from a massacre into a magical windchime, is a strange and sad one, a small personal tale in the midst of a much larger story barely hinted at. It’s an intricately textured story that stays with you.
“The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories” is made up almost entirely of stories that would be highlights in any collection: ‘Sanaa’s Army’ recounts a creepy , beautiful encounter between Sanaa, an artist who works in taxidermy-magic, and something that preys on the children who bring her new bones; ‘Mah Song’ is a sweet tale of sibling loyalty in the face of bleak survivalist exploitation; ‘From the Dry Heart to the Sea’ explores the social fragility of the outsider; “Out Hunting for Teeth” and “A Memory Trapped in Light” are about micro-societies developing after disaster, and the horrors that highly constrained communities can inflict on their members.
This is a collection of thirteen amazing stories; all fantastic, many horrific, all imaginative and disturbing. Of all the many short story collections I read in 2013, “The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories” stands out as one of the best.
The title story is one of the first pieces of Joanne Anderton’s that I read, and it’s still among my favourites. The story of Zvonimir the chime-maker, who is called upon by an estranged friend to turn the gruesome evidence from a massacre into a magical windchime, is a strange and sad one, a small personal tale in the midst of a much larger story barely hinted at. It’s an intricately textured story that stays with you.
“The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories” is made up almost entirely of stories that would be highlights in any collection: ‘Sanaa’s Army’ recounts a creepy , beautiful encounter between Sanaa, an artist who works in taxidermy-magic, and something that preys on the children who bring her new bones; ‘Mah Song’ is a sweet tale of sibling loyalty in the face of bleak survivalist exploitation; ‘From the Dry Heart to the Sea’ explores the social fragility of the outsider; “Out Hunting for Teeth” and “A Memory Trapped in Light” are about micro-societies developing after disaster, and the horrors that highly constrained communities can inflict on their members.
This is a collection of thirteen amazing stories; all fantastic, many horrific, all imaginative and disturbing. Of all the many short story collections I read in 2013, “The Bone Chime Song and Other Stories” stands out as one of the best.
alanbaxter's review
5.0
A fantastic collection from one of Australia's best writers. This is dark, surreal and wonderful from start to finish.
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