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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
least favorites: schrödinger's cathouse, names for water, ponies, spar
favorites: the empress jingu fishes, 26 monkeys, fox magic, the cat who walked a thousand miles, the man who bridged the mist
there were a few in here I didn't enjoy at all (see: least favorites) but most of them good enough to merit five stars--most of my favorites were towards the beginning, though. the whole collection seems very focused on the idea of duality and the tension between two states, esp. in fox magic, schrödinger's cathouse, and the titular story, which made for an interesting through line.
favorites: the empress jingu fishes, 26 monkeys, fox magic, the cat who walked a thousand miles, the man who bridged the mist
there were a few in here I didn't enjoy at all (see: least favorites) but most of them good enough to merit five stars--most of my favorites were towards the beginning, though. the whole collection seems very focused on the idea of duality and the tension between two states, esp. in fox magic, schrödinger's cathouse, and the titular story, which made for an interesting through line.
i was really close to giving this 4.5 stars, but with anthologies, some work for you, some don’t, and so inherently they’re always going to be a mixed bag. i really liked the opening story in particular, the titular one, the cat who walked a thousand miles, the brief horror of ponies, but i found the penultimate story boring and dragged on two long and the last one left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Repeatedly comparing people with dogs to masters and slaves, like i just don’t think that’s how most people view dogs? they view them as part of the family. animal abuse is horrific and some people should never be allowed near a dog but I just don’t think that many people would get rid of their dogs if they could talk. also like, animals can talk, and you mention that pigs can too, but you’re focusing on dogs? i just feel like this story could have had way more to say if it focused on the farming industry, like how would society be forced to change if the animals we kill could scream and beg to not be killed? instead it kept repeating that humans prefer our slaves mute which could have been really interesting if it focused on the systematic abuse of animals for meat, not on how most people who have loving relationships for animals and would do anything to save suddenly hate them and drive them away just because they can talk.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I've read "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" before, and this collection is as technically well-crafted as I had expected based on that story. However, the quality of the content, IMO, is a lot more varied. I honestly like this collection a whole lot less than I had expected to.
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"26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" ~ I wasn't sure where this story was going at first, but once I stopped trying to find an answer to that question I enjoyed it very much. Great pick of an opener for this collection.
"Fox Magic" ~ I didn't enjoy this one much; it was a neat concept but seemed off somehow. I suspect this one is just a personal preference issue.
"Names for Water" ~ neat concept, but there were lots of unanswered questions. Still, I enjoyed the journey even if I'm not really sure what happened.
"The Bitey Cat" ~ Less about the cat, and more about the way a family breaks during a messy divorce. But seen through the eyes of a young child, so that makes it about the cat.
"The Horse Raiders" ~ CW formurder and animal death . I really didn't like this one.
"Dia Chjerman's Tale" ~ Rather dystopian story, but due to the storytelling style I felt no connection to any of the characters. CW formentions of rape, though nothing is shown .
"My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire—Exposition on the Flaws in My Wife's Character—The Nature of the Bird—The Possible Causes—Her Final Disposition" ~ This was a highly amusing story. I loved the choice of narrative style and how oblivious the husband was throughout.
"Schrödinger's Cathouse" ~ Interesting thought experiment, though ultimately a boring story.
"Chenting, in the Land of the Dead" ~ Enjoyable short story, though the ending is predictable.
"The Empress Jingu Fishes" ~ I couldn't finish this one. The narrative style and weird almost-but-not-quite-real Asia just grated on me and I was not enjoying the experience.
"At the Mouth of the River of Bees" ~ Finally a story that caught me up and didn't let me go until the end. I really enjoyed this one; it was the kind of quality I'd been expecting given my prior experience with the author. Very touching, especially as someone who has dealt with the decline of an elderly pet.
"Story Kit" ~ I think only other writers will enjoy this one. I thought it was both humorous and sad, though it's also more than a bit meta.
"Wolf Trapping" ~ Interesting look at a (non-POV) character presumably with mental illness.The ending did not surprise me; the part I found most interesting was the way the narrator handled the situation.
"Ponies" ~ This is the kind of horror story that I don't find scary, or chilling, or anything except gross. Did not like. Nebula winner in 2011.
"The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles" ~ Really cute, sweet story. Feels like it's written for a young audience.
"Spar" ~ Weird human + non-humanoid alien sex. Gross & pointless. Nebula winner in 2010.
"The Man Who Bridged the Mist" ~ One of the highlights of this collection. Good characters, an interesting plot, and a fascinating setting. Won the Hugo and the Nebula in 2012.
"The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" ~ I'm guessing this is the same Linna from the title story; nice touch. Neat story and concept, but a little heavy-handed with the moralizing. I liked the stories of One Dog the best.
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"26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" ~ I wasn't sure where this story was going at first, but once I stopped trying to find an answer to that question I enjoyed it very much. Great pick of an opener for this collection.
"Fox Magic" ~ I didn't enjoy this one much; it was a neat concept but seemed off somehow. I suspect this one is just a personal preference issue.
"Names for Water" ~ neat concept, but there were lots of unanswered questions. Still, I enjoyed the journey even if I'm not really sure what happened.
"The Bitey Cat" ~ Less about the cat, and more about the way a family breaks during a messy divorce. But seen through the eyes of a young child, so that makes it about the cat.
"The Horse Raiders" ~ CW for
"Dia Chjerman's Tale" ~ Rather dystopian story, but due to the storytelling style I felt no connection to any of the characters. CW for
"My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire—Exposition on the Flaws in My Wife's Character—The Nature of the Bird—The Possible Causes—Her Final Disposition" ~ This was a highly amusing story. I loved the choice of narrative style and how oblivious the husband was throughout.
"Schrödinger's Cathouse" ~ Interesting thought experiment, though ultimately a boring story.
"Chenting, in the Land of the Dead" ~ Enjoyable short story, though the ending is predictable.
"The Empress Jingu Fishes" ~ I couldn't finish this one. The narrative style and weird almost-but-not-quite-real Asia just grated on me and I was not enjoying the experience.
"At the Mouth of the River of Bees" ~ Finally a story that caught me up and didn't let me go until the end. I really enjoyed this one; it was the kind of quality I'd been expecting given my prior experience with the author. Very touching, especially as someone who has dealt with the decline of an elderly pet.
"Story Kit" ~ I think only other writers will enjoy this one. I thought it was both humorous and sad, though it's also more than a bit meta.
"Wolf Trapping" ~ Interesting look at a (non-POV) character presumably with mental illness.The ending did not surprise me; the part I found most interesting was the way the narrator handled the situation.
"Ponies" ~ This is the kind of horror story that I don't find scary, or chilling, or anything except gross. Did not like. Nebula winner in 2011.
"The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles" ~ Really cute, sweet story. Feels like it's written for a young audience.
"Spar" ~ Weird human + non-humanoid alien sex. Gross & pointless. Nebula winner in 2010.
"The Man Who Bridged the Mist" ~ One of the highlights of this collection. Good characters, an interesting plot, and a fascinating setting. Won the Hugo and the Nebula in 2012.
"The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" ~ I'm guessing this is the same Linna from the title story; nice touch. Neat story and concept, but a little heavy-handed with the moralizing. I liked the stories of One Dog the best.
It’s hard to review a collection of stories, especially as strange and diverse and beautiful as this one. So I will stick with the review of its longest story, its heart as I see it - The Man Who Bridged the Mist, the Le-Guin-esque novella that stole my heart back in 2014 when I first read it, the reason why I bought this book. Just skip right to it, read it - and then go on to read the rest, but let it be your first taste of this book.
To me it’s perfect.
————
”The Man Who Bridged the Mist”: 5/5 stars:
Every beginning is the end of something, but every ending is also the beginning of something new. Change will come everywhere, eventually. Bittersweet and hopeful and, more than anything else, inevitable.
It is an unusual story. It lacks the extensive worldbuilding we assume from the beginning it will bring us. It lacks the conflicts and the unexpected turns of events that we are so used to when thinking of a plot. Instead, it slowly but surely glides along in its own river of narrative, focusing not on the obvious that we can expect - the vast Empire, the strange mist and the ominous creatures it harbors, the potential conflicts between the bridge makers and the ferry drivers, the old and the new - but instead, through the bridge and its construction, it focuses on people and 'the invisible web of connections' they form when they slowly, through small and big actions change the world in millions of little ways.
Kit Meinem, an engineer and an architect, comes from the capital of Empire to bridge the mist river on the sides of which, hidden by very tall levees, are the small provincial towns (villages, rather) of Nearside and Farside. We don't know what exactly the mist is - except that it's a strange pearly white corrosive substance that flows in the deep riverbed into an ocean just like water, and hidden in its depth are the 'fishes' and the 'Big Ones' (or, as a local joke has it, maybe just Fairly Large Ones). From the bits and pieces we hear, it's clear that the mist is dangerous, and the Big Ones are a clear source of well-deserved fear. The mist river, splitting the Country in half, is only crossed by select few in the ferries, each time setting on a journey on which they know they can perish any time, guided by little else but courage and a gut instinct that on this particular day they can cross the mist and live to see another sunrise.
The inevitable movement of change of history, the progress propelled by people with the vision, the subtle and not-so-subtle changes moving forward creates in the community, the good and the bad and the unstoppable that comes with it, and the thought that every end is a beginning of something new, and every beginning is the end of something old.
------------
The rest of this collection of stories is rather good. It’s not a cohesive collection — the stories are strikingly different in structure and tone and feeling, from strange and fascinating vignettes (Names of Water), to pink and sparkly horror (Ponies), to whatever the hell creepy delirious alien sex-a-thon Spar is, to the 19th-century-style witty hilarity/comeuppance (My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire), to a hollow apocalyptic dread of Dia Chjerman's Tale, to a meta-fiction about the pain of loss (Story Kit), to the shimmery magical realism of The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles.
It’s strange and captivating and memorable.
Love it.
Don’t always “get” it, but love it nevertheless.
5 stars.
To me it’s perfect.
————
”The Man Who Bridged the Mist”: 5/5 stars:
Every beginning is the end of something, but every ending is also the beginning of something new. Change will come everywhere, eventually. Bittersweet and hopeful and, more than anything else, inevitable.
"But it will still have been a wonderful thing, to cross the mist."I can't promise you that you will love this story. All I can say - I loved it completely, but I've always been a strange kid.
It is an unusual story. It lacks the extensive worldbuilding we assume from the beginning it will bring us. It lacks the conflicts and the unexpected turns of events that we are so used to when thinking of a plot. Instead, it slowly but surely glides along in its own river of narrative, focusing not on the obvious that we can expect - the vast Empire, the strange mist and the ominous creatures it harbors, the potential conflicts between the bridge makers and the ferry drivers, the old and the new - but instead, through the bridge and its construction, it focuses on people and 'the invisible web of connections' they form when they slowly, through small and big actions change the world in millions of little ways.
Kit Meinem, an engineer and an architect, comes from the capital of Empire to bridge the mist river on the sides of which, hidden by very tall levees, are the small provincial towns (villages, rather) of Nearside and Farside. We don't know what exactly the mist is - except that it's a strange pearly white corrosive substance that flows in the deep riverbed into an ocean just like water, and hidden in its depth are the 'fishes' and the 'Big Ones' (or, as a local joke has it, maybe just Fairly Large Ones). From the bits and pieces we hear, it's clear that the mist is dangerous, and the Big Ones are a clear source of well-deserved fear. The mist river, splitting the Country in half, is only crossed by select few in the ferries, each time setting on a journey on which they know they can perish any time, guided by little else but courage and a gut instinct that on this particular day they can cross the mist and live to see another sunrise.
"The mist streams he had bridged had not prepared him for anything like this. Those were tidy little flows, more like fog collecting in hollows than this. From this angle, the river no longer seemed a smooth flow of creamy whiteness, nor even gently heaped clouds. The mist forced itself into hillocks and hollows, tight slopes perhaps twenty feet high that folded into one another. It had a surface but it was irregular, cracked in places and translucent in others. The boundary didn’t seem as clearly defined as that between water and air."Kit Meinem comes here with the plans to undertake a massive construction project - a suspension bridge that will cross the mist river, connecting the parts of the country, making crossing the river a mundane activity instead of a daring and often doomed feat of courage, eliminating the need for ferry crossing, and - as everyone knows - put an end to the world as it used to be, bridging it to a different future.
"After a while, Kit noticed that a large part of the pattern that made a bridge or a tower was built entirely of people."And so the story flows through the five years Kit spends slowly but surely planning and overseeing the construction of the bridge - a feat thought almost impossible and yet inevitably progressing to its completion. Kit forms the 'invisible web of connections' with the towns and their inhabitants - especially with Rasali Ferry, a woman for whom the perilous crossing of the mist river in a ferry boat is both a curse and exhilarating destiny, whose work will be made obsolete when the bridge is finished and the dreaded 'Big Ones' are little but the creatures occasionally glimpsed from the towering height of the bridge, left behind in the wake of progress.
”He had a sudden vision of the bridge overhead, a black span bisecting the star-spun sky, the parabolic arch of the chains perhaps visible, perhaps not. People would stride across the river an arrow’s flight overhead, unaware of this place beneath. Perhaps they would stop and look over the bridge’s railings but they would be too high to see the fish as any but small shadows—supposing they saw them at all, supposing they stopped at all. The Big Ones would be novelties, weird creatures that caused a safe shiver, like hearing a frightening story late at night.The entire story flows like a chronicle of sorts - a big feat to accomplish in a comparatively short novella. (It reminds me actually of the spirit of Nobel Prize laureate Ivo Andric's [b:The Bridge on the Drina|3140|The Bridge on the Drina (Bosnian Trilogy, #1)|Ivo Andrić|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1391505254l/3140._SY75_.jpg|6989], the underappreciated but fascinating chronicle of a real life bridge in Bosnia) . Through the narration that at times has almost a dreamlike quality to it, through brief glimpses of the construction over several years we see the surrounding towns grow and change, people change, new connections grow and form - the people and the bridge alike - and through all of this the growth and change even in Kit, the quietly unhappy precise and measured man who set out to alter the world.
Perhaps Rasali saw the same thing for she said suddenly, “Your bridge. It will change all this.”
“I know. You do care. But inside the framework of a project. Right now it’s your studies. Later it’ll be roads and bridges. But people around you—their lives go on outside the framework. They’re not just tools to your hand, even likable tools. Your life should go on, too. You should have more than roads to live for. Because if something does go wrong, you’ll need what you’re feeling to matter, to someone somewhere, anyway.”This short novella has mesmerized me, has spoken to something inside of me that both embraces and fears the change, the movement, the flow of history and life.
The inevitable movement of change of history, the progress propelled by people with the vision, the subtle and not-so-subtle changes moving forward creates in the community, the good and the bad and the unstoppable that comes with it, and the thought that every end is a beginning of something new, and every beginning is the end of something old.
“Did I change the world?” He knew the answer already.
She looked at him for a moment as though trying to gauge his feelings. “Yes,” she said slowly after a moment. [...] “These cables will fail eventually, these stones will fall—but not the dream of crossing the mist, the dream of connection. Now that we know it can happen, it will always be here.”
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The rest of this collection of stories is rather good. It’s not a cohesive collection — the stories are strikingly different in structure and tone and feeling, from strange and fascinating vignettes (Names of Water), to pink and sparkly horror (Ponies), to whatever the hell creepy delirious alien sex-a-thon Spar is, to the 19th-century-style witty hilarity/comeuppance (My Wife Reincarnated as a Solitaire), to a hollow apocalyptic dread of Dia Chjerman's Tale, to a meta-fiction about the pain of loss (Story Kit), to the shimmery magical realism of The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles.
It’s strange and captivating and memorable.
Love it.
Don’t always “get” it, but love it nevertheless.
5 stars.
It's so hard to give an entire book of stories one rating. There were several stories in this collection that were excellent, absolutely perfect. I sobbed at the end of the title story it was so bittersweet. The Man Who Bridged the Mists was breathtaking, both in the exploration of purpose and love and in the world building. But then there were others that were... just painfully bad. Spar was just awful, even though it garnered great reviews. So I have to give this 3 stars... though that might be a mistake, and 4 might be closer.
7/13/17: I've changed my rating to 4. It was too good for a 3.
7/13/17: I've changed my rating to 4. It was too good for a 3.
This was excellent. Not a quick read, many of the stories were long and intricate like books would be. That's not a complaint, just a heads-up.
My favorites were also probably the longest. Fox Magic, The Horse Raiders, The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles, and The Man Who Bridged the Mist. All of those I just named involved found families and defining yourself through experience and relationships. And, they were all exceptional in quality and craft.
These stories felt like there was a measurement taken. A weighing of just the correct amount of handling of an idea. No skimping, but not sprawling - even with the long and wandering (literally) of The Cat Who Walked story.
This was enjoyable, and it was kind of fun to recognize two of the stories from when I'd read them in their original printings.
My favorites were also probably the longest. Fox Magic, The Horse Raiders, The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles, and The Man Who Bridged the Mist. All of those I just named involved found families and defining yourself through experience and relationships. And, they were all exceptional in quality and craft.
These stories felt like there was a measurement taken. A weighing of just the correct amount of handling of an idea. No skimping, but not sprawling - even with the long and wandering (literally) of The Cat Who Walked story.
This was enjoyable, and it was kind of fun to recognize two of the stories from when I'd read them in their original printings.
One of the most powerful, memorable, and beautiful collection of short stories that I have ever read (and re-read). It easily makes my top 5 list of life-changing reads. Each story creates a believable and memorable universe. Some of the stories left me heartbroken and nostalgic as I finished them. I wanted to roll in their story forever. Her writing is both generous and terse, powerfully vivid. Her stories are writhing with life and imagination, hovering on the surreal and magical.
I keep waiting for Johnson to write another collection like this. It is truly a work of wonder.
I keep waiting for Johnson to write another collection like this. It is truly a work of wonder.
Great short story collection - really enjoyed dipping in and out of these stories. Of course there were some that I enjoyed more than others but overall I just really enjoy Johnson's writing.