Gardner Dozois: X6 Reviews

Feb 16, 2010 07:48

From Locus, Feb 2010:

Gardnerspace:
An obscurely published (from an American perspective, anyway) anthology from Australian small press coeur de lion, X6, a "novellanthology" of six novellas edited by Keith Stevenson, slips into the original anthology race late in the the year and makes a very respectable showing for itself, nosing ahead of several more prominently published anthologies in the race for the "Best Anthology of the Year" title. The best story here here, and one of the most powerful of the year, is Paul Haines's almost 40,000-word long novella "Wives", a brutal and compelling story about an economically and envrionmentally stressed near-future Australian society where ill-advised selective-breeding techniques have led to a severe shortage of women available to be wives, and the extreme measures some are willing to take to obtain one anyway. Be warned that when I said it was brutal I wasnt kidding - this story pulls no punches, is full of very unpleasant people, and is not for the faint-hearted or squeamish reader, but it has the fascination of a grotesque and bloody accident on the highway that you can't make yourself look away from.

Best Of The Year:
One of the year's best anthologies was published by an ultra-small press in Australia, and is going to be very difficult for most readers to find. Nevertheless, X6, a collection of six novellas edited by Keith Stevenson, features two of the best stories of the year - an evocative fantasy by Margo Lanagan and a brutal, hard-hitting examination of a disintegrating Australia by Paul Haines - as well as good work by Terry Dowling and Cat Sparks.

wives, x6, writing, reviews

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