De Lint has about had it with Newford and is taking a break. I don't blame him, this story collection was swept up from the past decade and contains a few ghost stories and a strange cross-over. There's almost always music.
Dystopia becomes concentrated on a generation ship. Amy is mistakenly woken up from cryogenic sleep to a strange society still a long way from a new planet. It's creepy and interesting and a little bit over the top. I preferred the female narrative voice to the male, but I still liked the effect of two narrators.
Fangirl
Ha - this might have been a little too easy to relate too - a teenage twin, a bit lost in a fantasy world of fan fiction goes off to college and struggles with anxiety while her father and sister go off the rails in other ways. She makes some lovely friends despite herself and finds out that college is not so bad. It's a very charming story and I was immersed in it from the beginning.
Good, but depressing (of course) - it made me think of other stories, one by Kress herself where the aliens kill most of the humans, another novel by John Varley with the time travel piece and a little bit of Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis series.
I think this one was more disturbing than it was intended to be. Pat is in his mid-thirties and is just moving in with his parents after a long stint in a psych ward. There's a hidden past, obscured by Pat's delusions, child-like mind, and bursts of anger that keep others from talking about what's really going on. He is set up with a friend's sister in law, Tiffany, who has also lost her independence due to a breakdown. In her own strange way, she tries to draw him out. There's a quirky cast of characters lending a cutesy tone to the story that jars with the sadness. There is also an amazing amount of football going on.
A missing girl turns up 20 years later and only 6 months older. No one believes her story about being spirited away (though it's an old one in that part of the world) The points of view range from the people she left behind to her psychiatrist to a nephew who's got his own troubles. It makes for an entrancing patchwork.
When it's time for the four genetically altered boys in the basement lab to escape in a bloody shoot out, what's a girl to do except join in the flight? Another galley loner from a co-worker, it was a serviceable thriller that moved quickly with chaste romance and lots of killing.
Several years later we get a story from the point of view of the Godling, Sieh. Still as demented and violent as godlings in the previous stories, he just wants a friend... The ruling family that used to enslave him has come down a bit, though still living in Sky, and everyone is out to get them. Sieh's got a few enemies also. Apocalyptic hi-jinks ensue.
I recently read in a review that one way to relate to the length of the series is to see it as a bunch of tall tales. That works for me! Jacky is embroiled in the Peninsula War, Goya's studio, and a little time out in a Romani camp. The usual... Kellgren is great at voices and is a decent singer also.
-about a 2 1/2 - The premise was interesting with the intersecting timelines, but the story was on the banal movie star/ivy league student destined to have a soulmate side.
This was the most cheerfully gruesome ghost story I'd ever listened to. The narrator sounded young despite all the f-bombs and was not good at all the voices. It was like an episode of Supernatural, which I also find fluffily entertaining. Points for location - Thunder Bay Ontario.
Mostly anecdotes about building community to fight the oil pipeline through Nebraska. (I hope they win!)
