Publisher’s Weekly: The highlight is Rachel Swirsky’s Story

From Publisher’s Weekly‘s review of Eclipse 4, an anthology book:

The latest volume in Strahan’s unthemed anthology series has almost no weak links. The highlight is Rachel Swirsky’s “Fields of Gold,” a diabetic ghost’s witty and melancholy tale of his life and death. Other standouts are Andy Duncan’s folksy, Twainesque “Slow as a Bullet,” Kij Johnson’s metafictional “Story Kit,” and Caítlin R. Kiernan’s uncommonly beautiful Lovecraftian “Tidal Forces.” Even familiar tropes are handled elegantly by top talents like Michael Swanwick (whose “The Man in Grey” explores the idea that human reality is controlled by others), Jeffrey Ford (playing with doppelgängers in “The Double of My Double Is Not My Double”), and Eileen Gunn (nicely twisting time travel and paradox themes in “Thought Experiment”), as well as relative newcomers like Peter M. Ball (whose “Dying Young” is a surprisingly fresh postapocalyptic western). Less successful contributions from Gwyneth Jones and Emma Bull are still entertaining but outshone by their companions. Strahan continues to raise the bar for original genre anthology series.

That’s some big names in that book — but nonetheless Mandolin’s story was picked out as the best by Publisher’s Weekly. Pretty awesome!

Speaking of stuff like that, I mentioned earlier today that Rachel is listed for three separate items on the annual Locus poll. It’s worth mentioning, that’s not a minor achievement in and of itself.

(Via.)

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4 Responses to Publisher’s Weekly: The highlight is Rachel Swirsky’s Story

  1. 1
    nojojojo says:

    WOOT!! Congrats to Mandolin!

  2. 2
    Ampersand says:

    And congrats to you, Nojojojo — you were listed in the Locus poll too!

    (BTW, I’m halfway through your second novel now, and really enjoying it so far.)

  3. 3
    Jake Squid says:

    It’s not a minor achievement because Mandolin is not a minor talent. The ambient fairness of life has reared it’s all too often hidden head.

  4. 4
    nm says:

    The joy of finding out that so many of the posters here have been people whose formally published in actual books work I actually get pleasure from reading has been profound, considering that I ended up here for some other reason altogether.