Clockwork Phoenix 2, part one
Mike Allen -
time_shark - is the editor of a short-story collection called Clockwork Phoenix 2 (there is a #1 as well), and offered (offers?) people a free pdf copy of the book to anyone who is willing to blog about it in return. I jumped on his offer, both because I was curious about the book - it contains stories by two authors I really like, Marie Brennan -
swan_tower - and Tantih Lee - and because I could use an incentive to blog more.
I've read two stories so far, Three Friends by Claude Lalumière and Six by Leah Bobet. Both of these stories have kids as their main characters, kids that are unhappy or misfits in some sense.
Three Friends is about the Boy Who Speaks with Walls, the Girl Who Eats Fire and the Kid Whose Laughter Makes Adults Run Away, and their adventures in Greytown, a mysterious part of the city they live in. I'm not sure I get this story - is it a coming of age-tale? Or something else entirely? However, I enjoy it for the quirky characters and their almost surreal surroundings.
Six is about Six, a kid who is the sixth son of a seventh son and 'bad news'. He lives with his huge family on their farm. What I particularly like about this story is how I'm never sure of what kind of character Six is: is he bad news, or is he in fact a good boy? This question is never unambiguously answered - thankfully.
Two stories into the anthology then, and while I'm not completely blown away yet, I'm certainly enjoying myself enough that I'm looking forward to reading on.