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Ann VanderMeer - Community Reviews back

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capriceum
capriceum rated it 7 years ago
I heard about this book from a Q&A episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Archive 81. I started reading in January and set a goal to read 100 pages a month. Eleven months later, I've finally finished it. And what a great book to keep me company in different cycles of growth through this year! There...
Portable Magic
Portable Magic rated it 9 years ago
I wanted to like this steampunky-themed book of short-stories, but it tried too hard at cleverness and told essentially uninteresting stories. The text does not deliver on what the fascinating illustrations promise. I gave it 78 pages, 18 beyond my minimum 50, and gave it up.
Sarah's Library
Sarah's Library rated it 11 years ago
5/6 - This book is wacky. And I mean WACKY with a capital W!! It's like a 'choose your own adventure' books crossed with a non-fiction full of footnotes. Every paragraph or so I'm flicking to the contents to find the page number for the correct section that further describes the occult item that was...
Casual Debris
Casual Debris rated it 11 years ago
For my full-length review, and reviews of individual stories, please visit Casual Debris.Guest-edited by illustrious editor Ann VanderMeer, the eighteenth Shimmer is to this date my favourite, featuring an eclectic octave of superior modern genre fiction. As though taking my comments on Shimmer 17 i...
altheaann
altheaann rated it 12 years ago
Average of 2.68 stars for all the items rounds up to 3, I suppose. Overall, rather disappointing. There are two truly excellent stories; I'd read them both before.*** Introduction - The 19th-Century Roots of Steampunk - Jess Nevins. Makes an interesting and informative connection between steampunk ...
Randolph "Dilda" Carter
Randolph "Dilda" Carter rated it 12 years ago
For those of you that feel a need to put this in a slot, let us call this Gothic horror surrealism. Like all good surrealism the reader is going to want to assign meaning and connection to things that are meant to be meaningless and unconnected. On the other hand there is definitely somewhat of a li...
Dan Guajars
Dan Guajars rated it 12 years ago
Lo mejor del libro es, sin dudas, la historia del género Steampunk, que viene justo después de la introducción.Todo lo demás, me decepcionó horriblemente. Clichés y más clichés unos sobre otros, anteojos polarizados, globos dirigibles y cultura victoriana. Tal vez mi idea del steampunk quedó demasia...
wealhtheow
wealhtheow rated it 12 years ago
Carrie Vaughn's "Harry and Marlowe and the Talisman of the Cult of Egil": in the midst of a war, a lady and an airship pilot are the British Empire's best hope of getting an Aetherian artifact that might defeat Prussia. Introduces an interesting set of characters and hints at a cool alternate world...
Thief of Camorr
Thief of Camorr rated it 12 years ago
I don't really see the point to this short. Was this written for a certain theme? Without knowing it, the short falls flat because there's seemingly no plot, very little in the way of characterisation, no world building, no message... it's a little bit of dialogue, then 'oh, that thing I saw earlier...
Bibliophilic Monologues
Bibliophilic Monologues rated it 12 years ago
Steampuk III: Steampunk Revolution is an anthology brimming with glimpses of lives and worlds as diverse as reality. While all the stories have substance to them, I will review the ones that spoke to me in some way or other.“Mother is a Machine” by Catherynne M. ValenteAs is Valente’s style, this sh...
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