Short story collection, all about time traveling and falling in love. Some authors took the assignment literally (Theodora Goss’s A Letter to Merlin, in which time-traveling agents, sent to influence the behavior of historical figures, try to communicate with one another); others take a more roundabout route (Zen Cho’s The Past Life Reconstruction Service, in which people get to relive their past lives in search of answers for their present lives). Other standouts were Sam J. Miller’s Unabashed, or: Jackson, Whose Cowardice Tore a Hole in the Chronoverse, a poignant and unforgettable wail of pain; and Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages, which creates one of those beautiful perfect cause-and-effect time-travel loops while also pulling in themes of feminism, gay rights, and found family. Really great collection overall.
Tag: author-theodora goss
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, by Theodora Goss
Riffs on the fact that a lot of classic monster stories involve the creation, and subsequent destruction / abandonment, of a monstrous woman. After the death of her parents, Mary Jekyll digs into her late father’s affairs and discovers not just a previously unknown sister named Diana Hyde, but other women who were brought into being by famous fictional mad scientists. The women band together to make their way in the world, helping Sherlock Holmes and Watson solve a string of murders along the way. The writing was perfectly decent, but the plot felt really more like a way to string together all these related stories, and there were so many characters that none of them felt particularly fully-realized.