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A review by broomgrass
The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear
3.0
Hmm, so...I liked it, in general, I guess. I might have liked it more if I had read other books by her, since the world seems interesting. This book did a good job of focusing on the Lotus kingdom, but it was mostly done in exposition-heavy scenes (and, uh, not sure how I feel about the use of Indian culture/rajas/henna/etc). I would have liked a bit more showing and a bit less telling. I did like the characters, though, and the playing with gender, etc.
In addition to the too-much exposition, the writing style was sometimes clunky or cliche. I'm thinking here of phrases such as "potent portents", sentences such as "You wouldn't think a doctor would be so fastidious of sensibility. You would be wrong," or "It was less like a sunrise as the Gage knew them and more like a beautiful woman lifting the gauzy edge of her veil, showing a soft and gold expanse of skin," or "Even as he knew her provincialism for naiveté, it filled him with a sense of kinship to her", and several terms that I had to look up but seemed more like use of a thesaurus than adding to the text (was fetor really needed in place of stench? or bight instead of bay?).
In addition to the too-much exposition, the writing style was sometimes clunky or cliche. I'm thinking here of phrases such as "potent portents", sentences such as "You wouldn't think a doctor would be so fastidious of sensibility. You would be wrong," or "It was less like a sunrise as the Gage knew them and more like a beautiful woman lifting the gauzy edge of her veil, showing a soft and gold expanse of skin," or "Even as he knew her provincialism for naiveté, it filled him with a sense of kinship to her", and several terms that I had to look up but seemed more like use of a thesaurus than adding to the text (was fetor really needed in place of stench? or bight instead of bay?).