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A review by anna_hepworth
Insert Title Here by Tehani Croft Wessely
2.0
I read this as a judge for the 2015 Aurealis Awards. This review is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of any judging panel, the judging coordinator or the Aurealis Awards management team.
Disclaimer: I'm working from offline notes, and I didn't make notes of all the story titles or plot lines. Which means that I'm not going to be very specific about some of the stories.
This anthology is uneven, tedious, the stories were poorly edited. There were several where I felt that there was the kernel of a fabulous story, but it hadn't got there. The opening story is lovely, but somehow promises a different anthology to the one that it opens -- might have been a great opening story in a different anthology. And many of the stories just left me uncomfortable, and not in the way that the story has asked me to go outside my comfort zone, but more because they were just icky.
Stand out stories
Empty monuments - This is the kind of story that I was hoping to have more of when I read the opening story.
Living in the light - this is the first real horror of the book. I was never sure whether it was metaphorically/allegorically about post-natal depression, but the finishing section made me uncomfortable from the strength of the writing, rather than the lack.
and a general complaint about Australian sf/f/h genre fic -- there seems to be a preponderance of ‰Ычcountry people are evil/nasty/bad‰ЫЄ. There are enough awful people in the cities, why do there have to be so many horrid stories set in the country. It might be better if I thought many of the writers were country folk, but rather, it feels like demonisation of the other.
Disclaimer: I'm working from offline notes, and I didn't make notes of all the story titles or plot lines. Which means that I'm not going to be very specific about some of the stories.
This anthology is uneven, tedious, the stories were poorly edited. There were several where I felt that there was the kernel of a fabulous story, but it hadn't got there. The opening story is lovely, but somehow promises a different anthology to the one that it opens -- might have been a great opening story in a different anthology. And many of the stories just left me uncomfortable, and not in the way that the story has asked me to go outside my comfort zone, but more because they were just icky.
Stand out stories
Empty monuments - This is the kind of story that I was hoping to have more of when I read the opening story.
Living in the light - this is the first real horror of the book. I was never sure whether it was metaphorically/allegorically about post-natal depression, but the finishing section made me uncomfortable from the strength of the writing, rather than the lack.
and a general complaint about Australian sf/f/h genre fic -- there seems to be a preponderance of ‰Ычcountry people are evil/nasty/bad‰ЫЄ. There are enough awful people in the cities, why do there have to be so many horrid stories set in the country. It might be better if I thought many of the writers were country folk, but rather, it feels like demonisation of the other.