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A review by gerhard
And the Burned Moths Remain by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
2.0
I read this after finishing Scale Bright, as I was interested in seeing what Benjanun Sriduangkaew would do with an SF setting. Alas, I encountered the same problem: the writing is a tad overwrought for this type of story, which kind of bends under the weight of its own ostentation.
The end result is not a singularity, but rather a curious blankness of affect: again, I could find no emotional connection here.
Kudos to Tor.com though for continuing to publish authors like Benjanun Sriduangkaew. This has really turned into a fantastic platform for edgy genre fiction (the annual Tor.com story collections are becoming as indispensable as the Gardner Dozois anthologies).
Again, I feel Sriduangkaew is a writer to watch. One of the interesting features of this short story is how she plays with gender, replacing ‘her’ with ‘eir’. At first I thought this was a typo; another problem is that ‘eir’ is applied inconsistently. (A much more successful attempt at gender inversion is the recent space opera by Ann Leckie).
There are also some logical gaps in this story; and it is not nearly as polished as Scale Bright. I think it would be interesting to see what rabbit Sriduangkaew can pull out of the hat by expanding this to novella length.
The end result is not a singularity, but rather a curious blankness of affect: again, I could find no emotional connection here.
Kudos to Tor.com though for continuing to publish authors like Benjanun Sriduangkaew. This has really turned into a fantastic platform for edgy genre fiction (the annual Tor.com story collections are becoming as indispensable as the Gardner Dozois anthologies).
Again, I feel Sriduangkaew is a writer to watch. One of the interesting features of this short story is how she plays with gender, replacing ‘her’ with ‘eir’. At first I thought this was a typo; another problem is that ‘eir’ is applied inconsistently. (A much more successful attempt at gender inversion is the recent space opera by Ann Leckie).
There are also some logical gaps in this story; and it is not nearly as polished as Scale Bright. I think it would be interesting to see what rabbit Sriduangkaew can pull out of the hat by expanding this to novella length.