Fiction: "Princess No More" in Daily Science Fiction

I have a new fairy tale up at DAILY SCIENCE FICTION.

"Princess No More" is the speediest thing I've ever written. I was lounging around one afternoon, thinking about the prevalence of evil queens in the fairy tale tradition, when I had an Idea. I drafted the story that evening, revised it the next morning, and sent it off to DSF less than twenty-four hours after it popped into my head.

They bought it, and it's now available for your reading pleasure.

Or displeasure. As is usually the case with my stories, it's not entirely nice.

And since it's flash (ie, fiction of under 1000 words), I shall say no more than that.

Review: Ember by Bettie Sharpe

Ember is fierce, proud, and in firm control of her heart--until she sets eyes on Prince Charming, whose curse compels everyone who sees him to love him.

Ember isn't about to let a spell force her to feel anything, let alone something as soul-destroying as love. A powerful witch, she embraces dark magics to ensure she never, ever falls under the Prince's sway again.

But a look can go both ways. Charming is determined to find the woman willing to resist his curse, and he is every bit as stubborn as Ember.

Let's get a big, fat disclaimer out of the way first off: laid out in its simplest form, EMBER sounds rapey. This is an enormous lie. This gorgeous, affecting novella is a testament to each person's right to choose what will happen to them, romantically or otherwise, and to spend their lives among people who've chosen them with love in their hearts.

Sharpe handles it so beautifully that this 32,000-word self-published novella remains the best thing I've read so far this year.

Review: Stardust by Neil Gaiman

I’ve written about STARDUST twice before, after my fifth and sixth readings, and my opinion hasn’t changed overmuch. I still love the book deeply, and for the same reasons I’ve loved it all along.

Why review it, then?

Well, because I love it, and because the previous reviews appeared on my old blog. It seems like most of my current readership (hello, readers! I love and appreciate you all!) followed me over from Stella Matutina, but I don’t want to count on y’all already knowing how I feel about STARDUST. I want to tell you straight out so you can say, "Hey, I should read that because it is loved!" Or maybe, "Hey, I remember that book! I should revisit it because I loved it, too!"

Okay, then. Let’s get down to this.

When Tristran Thorn's favourite lady offers him his heart’s desire in exchange for the star they watch fall together, he heads off to the far reaches of Faerie to retrieve the thing and win himself a bride. Tristran expects to haul a hunk of rock home with him and is shocked to discover that the star is, in fact, an opinionated woman who isn’t even slightly interested in helping him win his true love’s affections.

Awkward.

Also, totally awesome.

Review: The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge

THE SNOW QUEEN demands two reviews.

The Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical Version:

OMG y’all perfect book is perfect seriously I lost track of the number of times I whispered 'this is perfect' as I read because there were SO FRICKIN' MANY OF THEM like it’s an SF adaptation of Anderson’s 'Snow Queen' okay and I have this weird thing for that story but that didn’t even matter to me at first because I’m kind of an oblivious dumbass and I fell in love with the book before I realized what was going on and once I did was filled with TERROR and AWE and EMOTIONS because omg the characters are fantastic and I was SO WORRIED ABOUT THEM and also the worldbuilding you guys so many ideas and science fictional thingies that feel more like fantasy because there’s all this tension between mysticism and technology and also there’s the whole fairy tale adaptation angle and my heart hurts now IT IS PERFECT EVERYTHING IS PERFECT OMG HOW AM I EVEN SUPPOSED TO WRITE COHERENT THINGS ABOUT THIS BOOK IT IS JUST PERFECT.