A strange Eritrean coin travels from lovers to thieves, gathering stories before meeting its match. Google becomes sentient and proceeds toward an existential crisis. An idealistic dancer on a generation ship makes an impassioned plea for creativity and survival. Three Irish siblings embark on an unlikely quest, stealing enchanted items via bad poetry, trickery, and an assist from the Queen of Cats. With these captivating initial glimpses into her storytelling psyche, Jo Walton shines through subtle myths and wholly reinvented realities. Through eclectic stories, subtle vignettes, inspired poetry, and more, Walton soars with humans, machines, and magic—rising from the everyday into the universe itself.
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Starlings
Jo Walton
I’m going to start this review with a little disclaimer. I don’t really like short stories. I enjoy large worlds with depth and descriptions and large plot lines. So I don’t get on with short stories often because they lack the immersion you get with full length novels. That’s not to say I hate short stories, and I do occasionally (like this one) pick up a set to read in between novels as they’re much faster to read, and it helps bring me out of the novel’s world.
Jo Walton has created some beautifully magical stories and quite a few of them made me want more. I would say this is both a good and a bad thing. Good, because the story is so well written that I wanted it to be expanded on, but bad because sometimes these stories needed to be expanded on. I don’t know if I’m making much sense? But there’s always a slight disappointment at the end of a book that isn’t finished enough and this is how I felt about the stories I did like.
There were also some stories that just didn’t catch my attention at all. The quality of the stories was mixed throughout, some could be a strong 4 stars but others are dipping into 2 star territory. This is an obvious outcome for any collection of short stories, so not a surprise for me. But similar to wanting the expansion of the stories, it would have been nice to have a common theme which makes the stories more similar than what they were as then they would automatically be more interesting (for me anyway!).
I still have not read all of the stories, some of them I skipped after a couple of pages and just didn’t want to read. Some I just haven’t gotten to as I’m reading them between novels. And some I probably won’t read as I’ve already seen other peoples thoughts on them, and the titles don’t intrigue me enough.
POSITIVES
+ Kept me wanting more
+ Magic
NEGATIVES
– Mix of quality
I received Starlings by Jo Walton from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an unbiased and honest review
