Reviews and Comments

Flight & Anchor: A Firebreak Story
by Nicole Kornher-Stace
Publication Date: 13 Jun 2023

Full disclosure: I read this from a free review copy off Netgalley.

Synopsis: In short (and I do mean short, because the book itself is roughly novella length at 139 pages double spaced), this is a story set in the world of another of the author's works, Firebreak, about a city gripped by a war between two corporate entities, with a team of bio-engineered super soldiers at the heart of the conflict. This story features two of those—06, a girl, and 22, a boy—as preteens trying to escape the corporate facility that grabbed them as small war orphans and turned them into killing machines.
They escape and, rather than making their way out of the city as originally planned, hole up in an abandoned container and scavenge for food in the harsh city winter. The whole time, the nameless facility Director monitors their location by vital signs and tries to hide her failure in letting them escape.

Review: I suppose I just have to say this one wasn't for me. It seems built knowing these children as characters, without giving any real reason to WANT to; since I haven't read Firebreak, and thus don't have any grasp on what they do or their significance, my interest just slides off them like glass. This could also be due to the fact that this very brief story spends SO MUCH TIME on mundane details of survival (with a nearly two page listing of the random detritus they scavenge in their abandoned lot, that then plays absolutely no part in their story).

There are also clear allusions to events that happen years after the story—clearly referring to Firebreak—that are frustratingly pointless to this actual narrative, and so simply stand out as enormous flashing "Hey, remember this part?" signs. I don't, actually.

I was also bemused by how the book spent 13 pages, fully 10% of its length, in the largely uneventful and pointless interaction between a barista, Cass, and these two nameless children, which again had no bearing on the characters' further actions or development. In terms of Chekhov's gun, there were like four shotguns (Offscreen characters, suspicions, potential friends, potential foes) in that scene, and none of them ever fired. It was essentially 13 pages of "Then they got some cast off coats and stale donuts." Which they later did AGAIN after digging through the garbage.

That scene did successfully shake my affinity for "they" as a singular pronoun, since it featured Cass as "they" interacting with two unnamed people acting as a unit whom Cass immediately identified as "boy" and "girl" because I guess that's what a non-binary person does on first meeting preteens? Anyway, it was tortuous and difficult to get through, and served so little purpose in so many pages that I very nearly stopped reading once I realized it just hadn't mattered.

However, when something actually happened—the intriguing nanobot array that filled the so necessary "snarky sub character" slot showing up, the roughly two pages of action at the end, etc.—it was fun. The writing itself in the use of language and pacing are really quite good, so that was a pleasant part of the experience.

Overall, I'd give this three of five stars, for deft sentences and glimpses of an intriguing world, with marks off for not a whole lot happening that makes sense to this non-Firebreak reader.

It is always a bit tricky to review an anthology, especially one by different authors. Some stories will inevitably work better than others, and of course our own personal preferences will influence how that works.
In this case, I'm basing my star score on the best stories, and trying not to let what I see as the worst stories influence me.
Taken as a whole, the anthology is an interesting idea. It collects stories from a seemingly arbitrary "Medieval" period in the dark fantasy/horror genres, which is a great idea both despite and because of the undefined nature of that period. Predictably, most of these are set in a vaguely "Medieval" Europe. I say "vaguely" because, for example, the first story--"The Crowing" by Caleb Stephens--is a dark fairy-tale-like set in a Europe that had been covered by literal fog for 1,000 years. That itself sends the whole concept of timelines and history out the window.

There is also an admirable, if somewhat strained, attempt to move beyond the Western milieu with three stories set outside Europe. Two, "In Every Drop" by Lindsey Ragsdale and "The Forgotten Valley" by C.B. Jones, are set in the pre-modern Americas and "A Dowry for Your Hand" by Michelle Tang is set in China. The best of these is, by far, the last, primarily because it is just a good, creepy ghost story, while also engaging in the actual horror of the setting.

This is where this concept--horror set in pre-modern times--gets really great. They layer supernatural horrors over natural ones, and the medieval age had plenty of those. "Deus Vult" by Ethan Yoder is a prime example. In it, a knight returning from the Crusades brings the terrible sin of that time back, to find that there is no solace in returning home. "Palette" by J.L. Kiefer engages with the grotesque demands of feminine beauty, which went so far as to demand women literally poison themselves for beauty. The aforementioned "A Dowry for Your Hand" uses the form of traditional Chinese ghost stories (which are a genre in themselves throughout east Asia) to examine the pressures placed on women in that time and place, and the price of placing family honor over love.

Some other stories tended to just be "creepy stuff in a monastery." Some of those were a lot of fun, while others were kind of tedious.

But, overall, the best of these stories were very good, and the worst were not terrible, so the anthology is well worth a read!

Disclosure: this review was based on a free NetGalley copy.

I almost hesitate to critique this book, since it is so old and so clearly revered by whisky fans.

I can see why it is such a classic of the field. It's beautifully made, and must have been trying comprehensive for its day. It goes without saying, of course, that the whisky world has changed immensely over the last 15 or so years. That is no fault of the book.

The intense reverence for Scotland is inevitable, I suppose, but there are clear factual errors and exaggerations that are simply eye roll inducing. No, Scotland is not the world's biggest barley producer...

The rest of the world is treated largely as a footnote, or as an exercise in tired cliche (American pioneer spirit, or "losing face, a fate worse than death" in Japan).

There may not be more beautiful whisky books, but there are plenty of ones with all the same information, without the outdated attitudes.

A Glass Apart is essential. It is exhaustive. It is, at this point, also slightly dated--the Irish whiskey industry has changed so much in the last few years that it's inevitable, and the book knows this. That's fine.

The introduction to Irish Pot Still (pure or single, whatever you want to call it) here is paced well. It starts with the basics of production, then gets into the actual tastes that create the style so that the beginner knows what they're working with.

The language is vibrant. Spry, might I say? At times it is a little too much so, bordering on the giddy in discussions of taste, especially. But tasting notes are always an iffy prospect, being so subjective.

After introducing specific bottles, the book moves into history that can only be called complete. It starts from the birth of distillation itself, then moves into the intricacies of colonial tax law, and all the way into the near death and astonishing rebirth of Irish pot still whiskey. The glorious end section with a look at the distilleries that were just being born in 2014, and that are now either pumping out liquid or quietly closing up shop, is particularly exciting. It's a great book.

It's also frustratingly difficult to read. I looked into getting the print version, but saw tons of reviews saying that the print was too small and hard to read, so I got the ebook. Guess what? The print is still too small to read. The publisher made the baffling decision to put the book out as a locked-in layout, so the text can't be resized or reflowed. All you can do is zoom in on the page, leading to fuzzy letters. It gave me a headache to read for too long. So, while the actual content of the book is stellar, the accessibility to that content is a real barrier. Buyer, be aware.