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Starlings Jo Walton 9781616960568 Books

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Starlings Jo Walton 9781616960568 Books

Jo Walton never ceases to delight. I am particularly taken with her poetry, which is perfection itself. This is a lapidary collection.


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Starlings Jo Walton 9781616960568 Books Reviews

This is a whimsical collection of short stories. If your aim is to get invested in one long story with same characters and background, this is not the right book for you. If instead, you want to jump into different scenarios, moods, points of view and characters, you are in the right place.

You can find fairy tales, sci-fi, magical realism, satire, mythology, exercises and poems. All these stories are imbued with fantasy and a wonderful writing style that carries you effortlessly from one page to the next. Each story is a world of their own. Their style, tone, narrative and POV also changes from story to story but they are all similar in that they posses an enchanting "out of this world" feeling to them.

The unpredictability when going from one story to the next made my reading experience even more enjoyable; I didn't know what to expect and needed to clear my mind so I could welcome the next story. It was exciting to speculate what kind of world would come next, would it be on earth? space? or inside a fairy tale?. I let myself be carried away by Walton's prose and poems and fully enjoyed it. Some stories felt perfect as they are, while others left me wishing there was more. At the end of each one, an afterword is included telling us about the author's inspiration or purpose on writing each piece and information about previous publications.
My favorite stories were
Three Twilight Tales 3 tales that take place in the same village, in a cozy inn warmed by a fireplace. The first one concerning a man made of moonshine, the second one a peddler selling wondrous items and the third, a king in search for adventure. I loved the atmosphere, the detailed descriptions of the place and the unexpected endings for each tale.
On the Wall related to a well known fairy tale, we get to know a new side of the story from the point of view of an unexpected secondary character.
The Panda Coin an science fiction exercise where a series of stories unfold in chains as a coin passes from hand to hand, thus allowing us to know the story of its handler and, as the story progresses, gives us a clearer picture of this bizarre world. I really liked the idea of a coin being the key that connects one character to the other and pushes the story forward. As with the other stories, you never guess how it will develop and end until it happens.
Since the beginning, Walton warns us that short stories is not her forte and that most of the stories are not even real short stories but, for example, exercises, first chapters or prose poems. I really didn't mind that, I found those apparently imperfect pieces to be full of wonderful ideas, worlds and emotions that left me smiling, dreaming and craving for more.

eArc provided by Tachyon Publications via NetGalley
I've not read much by Jo Walton, but even to use the word "much" is a bit of an exaggeration. Up until Starlings, the only work I've read from her is her Hugo award winning novel AMONG OTHERS. While I enjoyed the novel, I thought it had a few flaws. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it enough to know that I would be okay with reading more of Walton's work at some point in the future.

Starlings is a collection of short fiction and poetry. Walton is not known as a writer of short fiction; as she states in her introduction, novels came much more naturally to her than short fiction ever did. In fact, Starlings is her first collection of short stories, and the poetry that is included in the volume is, in her words, her fourth poetry collection. The stories and poetry collected here are as diverse in their subject matter as they are in their
style and technique. This was a different kind of book for me to read in more ways that one, not the least of which is the fact that it contains poetry. More on that a bit later on. However, one of the things I enjoyed about the book was that instead of an introduction before each story, Walton gives the reader a background for the story at the end, a sort of "now that you've read it, here's the deal with it". That kind of structure appealed to me and
I really enjoyed it.

The book contains a lot of pieces that Walton says aren't stories at all; they might be pieces that play with form, mode, or point of view. A good number of them defy description or summary. For example, "Parable Lost" certainly be read as a parable, but don't get lost in all the jellyfish. Then there's "Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction", a piece that's stitched together from newspaper, ads from various science fiction magazines (among other things), and story fragments. It certainly isn't a story, but it's fascinating in any event. There's a snippet of a narrative called "What Joseph Felt", a retelling of a portion of the circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus from the point of view of Joseph; I enjoyed this one quite a bit. There's a book review, written by an alien, of a novel that has humans as its central characters, entitled "The Need to Stay the Same". At one point the review complains, albeit gently, of the book being the eighth book in the sequence and the "themes are staring to feel familiar" - there's something we see all too much of in this field. "Joyful and Triumphant St. Zeobius and the Aliens" is a wonderful guide for new residents of heaven who are a bit surprised that there are aliens there. Growing up Catholic, I certainly never thought that there'd be anything other than humans in heaven. I found the piece interesting and delightful. "Turnover" is a piece that I think of as a short story, but Walton says is the first chapter of a novel; if that's true, then this is a novel that I'd like to read. It takes place on a generational starship, and in this particular bit we're joining some of the starship travelers for lunch as they talk about whether they want to go on to the landing or not, as the Turnaround of the story, where the ship turns around and begins deceleration toward the planet upon which it intends to land, is quickly approaching. The idea of residents of a generational starship born during the journey discussing that they didn't choose this life - it was chosen for them - is not a new one in science fiction, but the idea of being a figurative fly on the wall during one of these discussions is intriguing. "What Would Sam Spade Do?" is a piece with a fascinating idea clones of Jesus are a common ethnic group in the United States. The narrative relates the circumstances under which one clone is investigating the death of another clone at the hands of yet a third clone. The idea that someone would find Jesus' genetic material and create clones of him is interesting in and of itself, and the oddness of the investigation is an intriguing and interesting way of using the concept.

Real honest to goodness stories? How about "Unreliable Witness", about a woman with dementia who meets aliens - and of course, no one believes her. One of my favorite pieces in the book is entitled "Three Shouts on a Hill (A Play). It's a story told in play form based on an Irish legend. My wife may be half Irish (on her father's side), but I've never heard the legend before. This one had me going for awhile as I didn't know where it was headed. It was certainly a lot of fun. "A Burden Shared" is a wonderful piece the central conceit of which is the fact that a person's pain can be shared by other people, but the story is really about familial relationships and how we deal with suffering loved ones.

The remaining prose pieces are generally just as interesting and just as creative and diverse as those I've already talked about. They nicely demonstrate Walton's range as a writer and storyteller. There are many pieces throughout the book, either some that I've mentioned above or those that I haven't, that I would like to see fleshed out into complete stories or novels.

The second section of the book is a collection of poetry. In the interest of full disclosure, I've never been into poetry; maybe it's because I don't know how to read it or appreciate it for the many and varied forms it takes. I will admit to having a difficult time in reading and appreciating the poetry that appears here. Favorites are "Ten Years Ahead Oracle Poem", a piece that tries to predict the future; "The Godzilla Sonnets", the title of which I
suspect is fairly self-explanatory; and "Three Bears Norse", the subject of which may be obvious.

Starlings is a collection that demonstrates Jo Walton's ability as a writer. The pieces within show off her range and versatility, her style and technique. This short story collection may not contain a whole lot of traditional short stories, but what it does contain is a whole bunch of good old fashioned high quality writing, the kind she demonstrated in AMONG OTHERS, and the kind I expect we'll see from her as her career continues
Some clever, some mundane. Not engaged by the poetry. And don't enjoy reading plays should be seen and not read.
Jo Walton never ceases to delight. I am particularly taken with her poetry, which is perfection itself. This is a lapidary collection.