Paula Guran

Prelim Review: The interesting thing about this collection is that quite a few of the authors aren't normally YA authors. Amanda Downum for instance writes fantasy and John Shirley writes a lot of media tie-in fiction for games and movies. Also there's about twice as much LGBT fiction in here then any other anthology I've read in genre fiction (not specifically geared in that direction). In that, I found this worth reading.

It fails however in that yes its a dystopic future, but very few of the stories give us plausible reasons why, implausible but at least entertaining reasons why or even any reason why. "Otherwise" implies its because everyone began taking the drug (which may have been legal at one point?). "In the Clearing" likewise implies that its because of the drug...but we're only given a very small idea of this drug's effects on the population. Is everyone using this drug to keep the people docile? Is this a government thing or is it a corporation thing? Why?

Many of these stories fail to give a reason how the story got to be in a bleak (or at least strictly controlled totalitarian regime) future. And that's frustrating. I also wish there was a more unified approach to length of story. I read this on my Kindle, so I don't know the exact amount of pages, but some really seemed to drag on while others just abruptly ended (which may have more to do with the writing then the length).

Full review to be posted at Poisoned Rationality

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https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/mermaids-and-other-mysteries-of-the-deep-ed-paul...

Lots of good stories in this collection, with a number of different takes on the mythology of mermaids and the closely related selkies. I think my favourite story was the rather gruesome “Mermaid of the Concrete Jungle”, by Caitlin R. Kiernan, closely followed by “Somewhere Beneath Those Waves Was Her Home”, by Sarah Monette, but none of these were clunkers and I recommend the whole collection.… (more)