Lace and Blade 2, ed. Deborah Ross
I really liked the first Lace and Blade anthology, with a few caveats, when I read it earlier this year, but what less in love with this one. Which is sad, as it was the cover of this one that made me notice the anthologies.
But really, for a book with a woman with a pretty dress and a sword on the cover, it was rather…light on women. Then again, it is a Headless Woman cover. But really, my problem wasn’t the fact that it was light on women that bugged me so much as the fact that several of the stories stopped just short of advocating the idea that choosing Male over Female was for the best. The stories also see much less focused on the “swashbuckling x romance x magic” theme, though I suspect that may be a natural danger regarding anthology series. Looked at as a whole instead of on a story-by-story basis, I liked it a good bit, if not as much as the first, but the only stories that really stood out to me were Sherwood Smith’s story about Jane Austen vs. Dracula, and Madeleine Robins’s story set in a world where same-sex marriage is normal, and a heterosexual and seemingly asexual women get stuck in an arranged marriage and decide to take matters into their own hands.
But really, for a book with a woman with a pretty dress and a sword on the cover, it was rather…light on women. Then again, it is a Headless Woman cover. But really, my problem wasn’t the fact that it was light on women that bugged me so much as the fact that several of the stories stopped just short of advocating the idea that choosing Male over Female was for the best. The stories also see much less focused on the “swashbuckling x romance x magic” theme, though I suspect that may be a natural danger regarding anthology series. Looked at as a whole instead of on a story-by-story basis, I liked it a good bit, if not as much as the first, but the only stories that really stood out to me were Sherwood Smith’s story about Jane Austen vs. Dracula, and Madeleine Robins’s story set in a world where same-sex marriage is normal, and a heterosexual and seemingly asexual women get stuck in an arranged marriage and decide to take matters into their own hands.