Journal 1 - Year's Best and Templars

 

9/27/2000

Years Best Fantasy and Horror 13^th Collection  ed by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

[Note: I had been reading this series since #3].

“Darkness and Diamond” by Ursula K Le Guin

               Nice to read a story where the girl lashes out at the guy because he excepted her to wait quietly for him.  Rose’s response to him was especially enjoyable.

               But why is it always a choice?  You can’t have magic and love; it must be one or the other.  Rose didn’t feel that way, neither did Di’s mother.  Is she right, is it easier for women to multi-task then it was for a man?  Do years of having to oversee the children, cook, wash, and churn became genetically imprinted and past along to the daughters though their own mothers.  It would be nice to think so.  It would also explain a bit.

              

“The Chap Girl” by Ian R MacLeod

               This is a very sad story.  It is interesting how a woman’s magic conceals man’s (of course, we don’t know if he is truly dead).  Magic tale without the constant hitting of fantasy over the reader’s head.  It has the sense of realism about it.

               Woman’s magic is death but man’s magic is luck, not life.  Though luck and life are connected.  Walt is known for his luck.  

Good strong narrative voice, you can see it happen, as it possibly did.

               Were the woman actually unlucky in choosing the man or were they witches who based their bad luck on the men they chose to be with?

 

“The Girl Detective” by Kelly Link

               A rather strange story.  Is the girl detective is all of us?  Conclusion is priceless.  “She came over and stood under the tree.  She looked a lot like my mother.  ‘Get down out of that tree this instant,’ she said, ‘Don’t you know it’s time for dinner?” (54).

               Is the speaker merely having a fantasy?

 

“The Transformation” by N Scott Nomady

               This story doesn’t stick with me for some reason

 

“Carbosse” by Delia Sherman

               I’m not sure if I see the fairy tall in the same way.  How can you give one fairy git and yet another.  Poem becomes confused there.  The thought about briars seems to make sense.

               “A man who would be her mate,

               Not her mast” (59)

 

“Harlequin Valentine” by Neil Gaiman

                Harlequin gets his componence as well as  wish.  How did she know to eat it?  She seems more cruel  than Harle.  It works because we don’t see her in her true light, just though Harle’s eyes  of love.

 

“Toad” by Patricia A. McKillip

               Read before.

 

“Washed in the River” by Bechin Fitz Goldberg

               He’s perfectly correct.  Readers like fairy tales because they can identify with the heroes not those that are punished.  Every eldest child feels a little pain as the eldest children is punished in most stories.

 

“The Dinner Party” by Robert Girard

               I really didn’t get this story.  It seems to be that if a story is surreal it is considered great, which is always the case.

 

“Heat” by Steve Resnic Tam

               Okay.  Its possible but I didn’t like it.

 

“The Wedding of Esperanza” by Linnet Taylor

               Enchanting story.  The use of dancing to stop the fighting as opposed to song reads like one of those myths passed down from generation to generation.  Also the determination of the two women as well as the poor of faith.

 

“Redescending” by Ursula K Le Guin

               Finally a happy ending.  Better novelist than poet, I think.

“You Don’t Have to be Mad” by Kim Newman

               There is something about Newman.  He writes believable women.  This short story stuck me as PTL variation. [Note: I honesty have no idea what I meant here].

 

“The Paper-Thin Garden” by Thomas Wharton

               Theme of artificial versus reality.  What does make true beauty?  The emperor’s desire to have everything made possibly points to a desire to be control.  The leaf book he cannot control because he cannot control. He can’t pay for it like he does his workers.  He cannot shelve it like a book.

 

“The Anatomy of a Mermaid”

                Good

 

“The Grammarians Five Daughters” by Elenor Arnasr

               I love the lesbian second daughter.

               “trudging along wormfully” (136);  Love it.

 

“The Fru is my Hat” by Gene Wolfe

                Ick.

“Welcome” by Michael Marshall Smith

               This is a well done story but the ending seems weird because he is too accepting of things.

“Pathos of Genre” by Douglas E Winter

               Why do people think King is greatest writer in the world?

“Shatsi” by Peter Crowther

“Keepsakes and Treasures” by Neil Gaiman

               Couldn’t get though either of these.  Unusual because I usually like Gaiman.  Same is true with “What You Make It” by Michael Marshall Smith.

“The Parwat Ruby” by Delia Sherman

               Very Trollope in execution if not in plot.  But the turn of phrases seem very much like him.  “A horse in a flaxen wig” (225).

 

“Odysseus Old” by Geoffrey Brock

               Much gentler portrayal of an old Odysseus than Tennyson.

“The Smell of the Deer” by Kent Myers

               Can’t really see the connection to Diana and Acteon.  After all, Diana is not a slut, she is a virgin.  While the theme of revenge, esp. via the dog is good, the whole wood sequence seems very much out of place. Unclear who is Diana and who is not  The Huntress in the wood does not seem to be Diana, unless the deer are there who she is connected to.

“Charon and the Pleiades” by Sarah Can Arsdale

               Okay

“Crosley” by Elizabeth Engstrom

                Why are the foreigners, the mysterious ones, always seen as enchanting and desirable?  Crosley seems marked for death with his ship and clothing colored black.  It is not surprising hearing of his death, if he is ever truly died.  Francine seem to condescend to Winston.  Yet he seems to be overwhelmed by her.  This is getting to be cliched.  The same is true with Steve Millhouse’s “The Disappearance of Elaine Coleman” that idea has been overused since it was use in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

“Naming the Dead” by Paul J McUaley

               Rather depressing when you think about it.

“The Stork Man” by Juan Gaytisolo, and “Tanushi” by Jan Hodgeman

               Both animal fables, animals helping people with the problems of life.  Why no stork women?  “Tanushi” I liked better of the two, probably because of the female character.

 

“White” by Finn Leblan

               Couldn’t read it

 

“Dear Floods of her Hair” by James Sallis

               Just plain strange.

“Mrs. Santa Decides to Move to Florida” by April Silley

               Don’t we all question our own reality and what is reality or real to us?

“At Reparata” by Jeffrey Ford

                Wonderful language but characterization fails at some level.  I’m not sure how, but it does.  Lost interest halfway.

 

“Skin, so Green and Fine” by Wendy Wheeler

               Read already.

 

“Old Merlin . . . “ by Jane Yolen

               Not really sure why it is in this collection when other excellent stories seem to be there.  Yolen’s short stories are better than her poetry.

 

“Sailing the Painted Ocean” by Denise Lee

               Alice in Wonderland?

“Grandmother” by Laurence Snyder

               For some reason, I’m not surprised it was written by a guy.  It’s a good poem, but I don’t think a woman would write it.

“Small Song” by Gary A. Braunbeck

               Couldn’t finish it.

“The Emperor’s Old Bones “ by Gemma Tiles

               This is cross of Empire of the Sun with the short story in an earlier volume about the chef cooking a human meal.  Perhaps by the same author.  Do like the British line.

 

“The Duke of Wellington Replaces His Horse” by Susanna Clarke

               I want more Wall stories!  This one is too funny.

 

“Halloween Street” by Steve Resnic Tem

               Another story that seems to be a variation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

“The Kiss” by Tia V Frarris

               More of a mystery than anything else. I wonder if Frank Sinatra would like it.

“The Beast”  “The Hedge” by Bill Lewis

               Liked “The Hedge” much better.  He mentioned Angela Carter!

“Pixel Pines”

               Again a lose a little interest, but the ending, not many truer words then, “I hate computers . . . NO it’s when they seem to have a mind of their own.  The keyboard freezing for no apparent reason.  Getting an error message that you’re out of disc space when you know you’ve got at least a couple gigs free . . . Sometimes its enough to make you went to pick up the nearest component of the machine and fling it against the wall” (469).

“Falling Away” by Elizabeth Birmingham

               Another one I couldn’t get though.

 

10/1/2000

The Temple and The Stone  by Katherine Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris

               Couldn’t finish it.  It seems too cliché.  Too much a Dreyni book but using the Templars instead.  The only seemingly original idea is not having the Christian Church.  The Templars spend too much time telling us how good  they are as well.  World stage paints a different viewpoint.