Prophecies, Libels & Dreams: Stories
Ratings1
Average rating3
15
Ratings1
Average rating3
"Praise for Ysabeau S. Wilce's previous books:"This fresh and funky setting is rich with glorious costumes, innovative language, and tantalizing glimpses of history."--Kirkus Reviews, starred reviewThese inter-connected stories are set in an opulent quasi-historical world of magick and high manners called the Republic of Califa. The Republic is a strangely familiar place--a baroque approximation of Gold Rush era-California with an overlay of Aztec ceremony--yet the characters who populate it are true originals: rockstar magicians, murderous gloves, bouncing boy terrors, blue tinted butlers, sentient squids, and a three-year-old Little Tiny Doom and her vengeful pink plush pig. By turn whimsical and horrific (sometime in the same paragraph), Wilce's stories have been characterized as "screwball comedies for goths" but they could also be described as "historical fantasies" or "fanciful histories" for there are nuggets of historical fact hidden in them there lies.Ysabeau S. Wilce is the author of Flora Segunda, Andre Norton Award-winner Flora's Dare, and Flora's Fury, and she has published work in Asimov's, Steampunk!, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in San Francisco, California. Her website is yswilce.com "--
"These interconnected stories are set in the Republic of Califa -- a baroque approximation of Gold Rush era-California with an overlay of Aztec ceremony. By turn whimsical and horrific (sometime in the same paragraph), Wilce's stories have been characterized as "screwball comedies for goths" but they could also be described as "historical fantasies" or "fanciful histories" for there are nuggets of historical fact hidden in them there lies"--
Reviews with the most likes.
Very difficult book to rate.
Starts with two three-star stories (both loosely connected to the Flora Segunda books). But then we get three stories which can be dubbed as Hardhands and Tiny Doom: The Early Years, and I really did not like them. But I dislike writers never using one word if they can use two or – better! – more. It very rarely works for me, and in this case it did not. The fact that Hardhands and Tiny Doom's family is the very model of a disfunctional one does not help...
Luckily the last two stories I really liked, the Hand in Glove being my favourite. Strangely, the best stories have almost nothing to do with Flora books – they simply happen to be happening in the same world, and that's all.
Featured Series
3 primary books4 released booksFlora Trilogy is a 6-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2006 with contributions by Ysabeau S. Wilce and Gardner Dozois.
