I was anticipating essays analysing aspects of SF&F from a feminist perspective, instead it's a series of reviews and rants from her columns in Tor.com and elsewhere. Not what I was expecting, but very entertaining and generally fun. ( )

This volume collects short pieces by Liz Bourke, (mostly) book reviews that were (mostly) previously published on-line, (mostly) at Tor.com. They're very short, usually 2-3 pages long. Bourke is an okay reviewer. Several were really interesting and made me want to read the books in question, and I scribbled down some titles on my "To buy" list. Sometimes, though, I finished the review without a strong sense of why she had liked or disliked it. I think there were only two reviews of books that I had read already: Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice (2013) and Seth Dickinson's The Traitor Baru Cormorant (2015). The latter of these was one of my favorite pieces in the book; a strongly worded negative review that made me reevaluate my take on the book, even though I really liked it myself.* (It's also the only book by a male author she reviews.) On the other hand, there's a long section where Bourke mostly reviews epic fantasy and/or sword-and-sorcery, genres that hold little appeal for me.

* That said, I do find it weird that the original blog post has been updated to acknowledge that Dickinson is not a straight cis man, but the review as reprinted in Sleeping with Monsters still calls him that.

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3021882.html

Most of the pieces collected here are book reviews, previously posted on Strange Horizons, Tor.com, etc; and all of the books reviewed are by women, which makes an important point. This is all good material and certainly points me to a few authors who I should try out. ( )