Lavie Tidhar

An enjoyable story with intriguing worldbuilding, fun characters, and entertaining prose

Like most anthologies there were a few stories that just didn't work for me, but most were very good - interesting concepts, well written, novel perspectives on traditional SF&F tropes. There were quite a few authors I already knew, but almost half were new (to me) and definitly worth keeping an eye out for. Highly recommended.

The first Bookman piece in the series was intriguing enough that I decided to read the second. I could barely make it through the first third. I kept forcing myself to read it, because I'd bought, but finally I found the writing so poor that I couldn't do it anymore.

This was a huge disappointment for me. The Bookman is full of gimmicky uses of literary figures (both real and fictional), and most importantly fails to provide any explanation or detail about the society in which it is set. The premise is interesting, but there was no follow-through.