Strange Horizons Reviews

[coalescent]

Having pimped Vector, it's time to pimp the Strange Horizons reviews section (sh_reviews). This week so far: Martin Lewis reviews Life on Mars:

This has to be the Doctor Who effect: you wait ages for the BBC to produce a science fiction programme and then two come along at once. As well as Hyperdrive, a Red Dwarf-aping sitcom, they are also currently showing Life On Mars, a genre spin on the format that's the bread and butter of networks the world over: the police procedural. It's safe to say, though, that Doctor Who never contained the phrase "I don't give a tart's furry cup."

More controversially, yesterday Liz Henry reviewed Touched by Venom:

From the snarking frenzy that consumed the blogosphere in the wake of last year's World Fantasy Convention, I expected Janine Cross's first novel, Touched by Venom, to be a badly written, laughable book. Something on the order of Slave Women of Gor, perhaps, or at best, those trashtastic Sharon Green soft-porn books about blood-drinking Amazonian women who ride around on giant lizards and rape men in their spare time. My reaction to the bad reviews went a bit like this: "OMG, sex with dragons, guys with dragon-viagra hardons, probably so bad it's funny, I must read it!"

So I did. To my surprise, I found a thoughtful, enjoyable work of feminist speculative fiction. It is a woman's hero-tale, the story of a survivor; a true dystopian fantasy, and one written with an awareness of non-Western cultures.

Responses to that one so far spotted here, here (Cheryl Morgan, who thinks it's a thoughtful review), and here (Nick Mamatas, who thinks reviews has hit a new low).

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Yep, sex with horses. The books (there are four of them) are quite serious and quite good. It helps that the sex with horses is not introduced until about halfway through the second book, when the reader is already thoroughly invested in the reality of the characters and their world.