I knew of Walton from her longer fiction but hadn't known that she wrote short stories or poetry (the title of this collection comes from a poem, the starlings being a metaphor for light received by the earth from a distant stellar nursery). So it was a delight to read this collection - even if the author, rather modestly, distances most of the contents from actually being "short stories". She maintains instead that many of them are exercises, attempts to capture what she calls mode, or simply written before she knew how to do short stories: "For ages I felt a fraud, because my short stories were either extended jokes, poems with the line breaks taken out, experiments with form or the first chapters of novels".



I'm less sure - whatever you call these pieces, there is some very good reading here. Starlings is a nicely varied collection showing a great range from fantasy to SF to fairy tales to things I can't really classify. They are vastly entertaining, often thought provoking and invariably worth paying attention to. While one or two of the pieces are very short or are definitely, as Walton says, jokes, most are longer and stand up well by themselves.



The first story in the book, Three Twilight Tales, is a good example, joyously adopting the form of the fairy tale. "Once upon a time", it begins, as it spins its three interrelated narratives featuring a pair lovers, a man made of moonshine, an inn (complete with a mantelpiece decorated with all kinds of interesting bric-a-brac about which I want to know more), the Lord's daughter, a blacksmith's apprentice, a pedlar, a king and a white hart. The atmosphere is magical, the people are real. Just perfect.



Jane Austen to Cassandra imagines a (massively) misdirected correspondence... Walton writes her letters with such conviction you'll believe, even so, that it might, might, might just be possible - and in so doing makes some sharp comments about history, war and fate.



Unreliable Witness features just that - an old woman in a nursing home whose memory is going but who nevertheless feels the loss of her old life ("I taught you to read myself and now you're taking my books away"). Such a person may imagine all sorts of things, but does that mean they can't encounter the extraordinary?



On the Wall is another fairytale. Walton explains that this was potentially the first chapter of a novel, retelling a classic story from an unusual point of view, but she realised that she need write no more, the rest simply unfolds. And she's so clearly right. It's a gorgeous story, with faint tones of menace, shadows of the future we know will come to pass (like Jane Austen to Cassandra, and several of the other stories). Walton is though being harsh on herself by saying it's not a short story, because it is, and a perfect one.



The Panda Coin is almost a mini SF epic. Set aboard a (perfectly realised) space station, it follows the path of a rather special coin from hand to hand, giving a glimpse of all levels of the little society portrayed. So many paths cross here and so many stories are hinted or left untold. Deftly done, with just the right amount said (and unsaid).



Remember the Allosaur is one of the jokes. What if an allosaur wanted an acting career? What could he (Cedric) do, and not do? It's acting, right so shouldn't he be able to act any part? As with other bizarre concepts in this collection, Walton writes with such conviction that, joking aside, you abandon scepticism and just think, well, what if...?



Sleeper is another excellent mini-epic. Set in a future gone drearily wrong, it both diagnoses a problem ("The Soviet Union crumbled away in 1989, let its end of the Overton Window go, and the world slid rightwards") and proposes a solution - one which raises some mind bending questions about personality, truth, memory and the future. Subtle, sophisticated and thought provoking.



Relentlessly Mundane is I think given the publication date some years ago an early entry in what is becoming a popular subgenera, which one might call post fantasy stress disorder: the return from a realm of fantasy adventure and peril to the mundane, and the effect this has. Just what would that do to you and what might it make you want to do? Here, after mourning their loss, a group of friends vow to put their experience to good use.



Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction is, with Sleeper and Relentlessly Mundane, another story that proposes something is wrong with the world. Here, though, we see it gradually going wrong. Told through adverts, newspaper cuttings and snippets of story - with that continual promise that SF can take you away from this - we see temptation and the coming of evil. We tell ourselves that we would resist this kind of evil but would we? Could we? It's scarily current and deeply troubling.



Joyful and Triumphant: St. Zenobius and the Aliens is a piece that Walton wrote for Christmas 2011. Its actually a fairly theological "what if" that plays little games and is also rather funny.



Turnover is a lovely SF story set on a generation ship. I loved the way it portrayed the ship with a vibrant cultural life, not just a bunch of redshirts and a team from Engineering. The designers of this community had appreciated what would be needed to keep a vessel alive and it isn't just air, water and food. But things will change when the ship reaches its destination: who wants to leave a metropolitan life for one of isolated farmsteading? Like Luke Skywalker, Fedra Orville wants to be at the centre of things. At the heart of this story is an ethical, cultural debate quite unlike anything I'd read before. Again, well-realised and thought provoking.



At the Bottom of the Garden is a short piece that made me deeply sad. But it is I think devastatingly well observed.



Out of It (for Susanna) is another retelling of an ages old story but I can't say which one because the gradual realisation is one of the joys of the story. Again, it completes something else while being complete in itself.



What a Piece of Work anticipates, I think, by several years much of the current debate about the powers - and dangers - of Big Data, as well as putting a spin on the old Asmovian idea of the Laws or Robotics. We never did get around to plumbing them into Google's servers, did we?



Parable Lost is an odd little piece: an "extended joke", Walton calls it, but as with some of the other pieces, to try to explain would give away the punchline, so I won't.



What Would Sam Spade Do? imagines a world where Jesus has been cloned. Just what would that be like? What if one of them set up as a hardboiled PI in a seamy district... partly a (well done) exercise in style, partly a genuinely intriguing piece of detective fiction, this is perhaps one the weirdest stories in the book - which is saying something!



Tradition is another weird story, one touching on themes of prejudice and tradition. Just why do we do things the same way as we were shown by our parents? And why did they do them And what's the point, really? Here the mystery is solved and it all comes to make sense but, the story seems to suggest, that didn't have to be the case.



What Joseph Felt is another very Christmasy story. I read this book in January, just missing the festivities but thesis such a well realised exploration of Joseph's role in all that that I may just show it to my wife, who's a vicar, when she's pulling together that difficult Christmas Day sermon in eleven moths' time...



The Need to Stay the Same pokes gentle fun at the pressure of creators to continually move on and explore new horizons - by posing an example that seems absurd yet comes very close to home.



A Burden Shared is a rather sad story, based on the premise of being able to assume another's pain. What difference would this burden make to a life? It's well thought out idea with some very human emotions behind it.



Three Shouts on a Hill is a play script, at one level a preposterous story beginning with Old Irish myths but then gradually roping in aspects of history, the modern world, other countries' myths and stories and finally becoming self aware and circular. By the time that happened it has rather grown on me. Great fun.



I feel less able to comment on Walton's poems (now who's the fraud, O Reviewer?) Like the stories they show great range, covering fantasy (Dragon's Song), neon midWest revenge (Not in this Town), Classical mythology (Hades and Persephone) and history (The Death of Petrarch) and Norse myths (Advice to Loki - that advice in a thoroughly modern vein: "You're worth it, and he's such a selfish prick. Go do new things, burn brighter than before...", Ask to Embla)



"Three Bears Norse" is a wonderful reworking of "Goldilocks" in the style of a saga ("An old home, a bear home, remote from human haunts/ Wall-girt and weather-warded, where ones wise in woodcraft

Lick into new life, a baby, a bear cub...")



"Machiavelli and Prospero", based, apparently, on a real letter, is like the Austen/ Cassandra correspondence an imagined communication between two people we may well suspect would have much to say to one another. "Cardenio" is a poem that Walton admits "doesn't actually mean anything" but it still says it in a very impressive way! In "Sleepless in New Orleans" the tone is very much set by the opening lines "The moon has set/ and the fucking Pleiades/ and I have to be on a train at seven o'clock/ this morning/ but here I am/ writing poetry under the covers/ as if I am twelve"



Finally, "The Godzilla Sonnets" is a zany collection of pieces imagining Godzilla as seen through the writing of Shakespeare (Just read it. It'll make sense, really it will).



Overall this is a nice collection. While some of the pieces probably aren't short stories as such they illustrate the range of what Walton can do and almost everything here contains an arresting thought, a well turned phrase or a perceptive, different view on something. Recommended, and not just for Walton completists!

Jo Walton says in the introduction to this book that short stories are not her cup of tea. She explains that it is difficult for her to write a story from beginning to end in three pages or less.

The short story books are not my thing honestly. I have a hard time going from one story to another every three pages. It is very uncomfortable for me and I don’t seem to advance much when reading. That’s what happened to me with this book. I don’t mean to say that I do not like short stories; that’s not the problem. The problem is when there are many stories one book. Even more when there is no connection between them. I got carried away by the name of the author. I’m hopeless.

Having said that I do not know how to qualify this book: have I enjoyed it? Well I would say not really. It’s good? Yes, definitely. But before I got to the middle of the book I was not only exhausted but I had lost interest. This may be your book, but not mine.

The confusion that I get from one story to the next prevents me from enjoying it as I should. But I have also found good things. It is a compendium of stories of fantasy and science fiction that Jo Walton wrote at different times of his career as a writer. At the end of each story there is a afterword in which Walton explains where the inspiration came from, where she was at that moment, when she wrote it or the mood she was in.

My favourite story is one in which Jane Austen writes a letter to her sister Cassandra but the letter is lost through time and space and the person who receives that letter is Cassandra the fortune teller from Troy to whom Apollo gave the gift of divination on the condition that she slept with him. Then she refused and as punishment the god promised her that no one would ever believe her word.

Apart from this story about Jane Austen in the book you can find stories of cloned dinosaurs, artificial intelligences that need to be updated, kings who fall in love with farmers, coins that travel from hand to hand…

Perhaps if I had read one story every few days I would have enjoyed it more. Who knows. Yet I need to remark the fact that the problem was in me, not in the book.

This was the first time I got to read a short story collection on Magical realism, Aliens and anthology (!?). I liked the stories but not all. Some were too complex or too simple for me to understand, that is I am used to very straight forward stories. I am a dumb person in that matter. Plus the author was new to me and I was getting used to the style.

The Stories I liked:

1.Three Twilight Tales
2.Jane Austen to Cassandra- This was Funny!!
3.Unreliable Witness
4.The Panda Coin
5.Joyful and Triumphant: St. Zenobius and the Aliens
6.What a Piece of Work- After reading this, I like to go to page 99 in google search, Just in case
7.What Would Sam Spade Do?
8.Tradition
9.What Joseph Felt
10.A Burden Shared
11.Three Shouts on a Hill (A Play)
12.Poetry -UMMM I am not sure, I felt that part a bit fleeting.
It was a good and a bit off my normal kind of read. But I am glad that I read it. It gave me a different perspective on reading and more open to a different style which was unknown to me.

If you have read Jo Walton before, I think you will like it much more than me. I surely look forward in reading more Jo Walton in future.

Happy Reading!!!

ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

To use one word to describe this it would be that it is eclectic. The stories were my favorite part and they were very short for short stories. Some were just a couple of paragraphs and other were about 5 pages long. My one of my favorite was Jane Austen to Cassandra, which was a short exchange between Jane Austen in the Regency era and Cassandra, in Ancient Greece. Think The Lake House but two pages long and something I never knew I needed before I read it. Turnover was an original science fiction story centered around a group of teenagers on a long distance spaceship. First, there is space ballet which is again something I did not know I needed and how our actions can affect the future. Plus there was lots of gnocchis which I love. I think that I would really enjoy reading longer versions of these.

Now some of the stories were really weird. For example, At The Bottom of the Garden, which is about a child who pulls the wings off of a fairy. And this child is freaking sadistic; she is pulling off the fairies wings and then kills the fairy after her friend invites her to go swimming. It was a great expose on how we humans treat smaller creatures. The play, Three Shouts on a Hill, was cool but still very weird. Also, the ending was pretty good and made it worth the read. The poetry was my least favorite part of the whole book as I am not really one for poetry and some of them I had a hard time understanding.

Overall, if you want something short to read but is brain food that I would definitely suggest reading this.

Thank you to the publisher for sending me this copy to review.

This review will be published on 15th February at the link provided below and on Goodreads.

In brief ★★★

Imagine you walk into Jo Walton's house, pull one of her writing notebooks off the shelf, and start thumbing through the pages; that's the experience of reading this eclectic collection of poems, short stories and a play. While you won't find a uniting thread or theme, which will be unsatisfying for some, you will find wild creativity, humour, philosophy and adventure. Clearly a talented writer, Walton canvasses both sci-fi and fantasy in bite-sized chunks. This was my first exposure to her work, and on the basis of her fertile imagination, I'm curious to try her novels.

In depth

Plot: Each of Walton's short stories are absorbing, and their breadth is actually quite astonishing. This collections includes fairytales and nursery rhymes retold (On The Wall, Three Bears Norse) as well as vivid sci-fi worlds (The Panda Coin, Sleeper, Turnover), some of which are the beginnings of novels never completed. I was easily absorbed into each world, but was often left wanting more, or a little dissatisfied by the simplistic resolutions. Some feel hurried (What Would Sam Spade Do) and others have so very little to them it's hard to expect them to leave much of an impression (Remember the Allosaurs, At the Bottom of the Garden), but Walton writes in her introduction that short fiction doesn't come easily to her, and this collection shows different aspects of that journey.

Themes: It's difficult to capture the wide range of themes covered by this work - the ethics of artificial intelligence, inequality, racism, belonging (or not), amongst others of family, identity and hope. As the best fantasy or sci-fi does, this collection holds a mirror up to the world we live in, bringing the fantastical close to home with contemporary dilemmas.

Writing: Walton is clearly a talented writer - she evokes complex systems in sci-fi worlds with so few words, plunging the reader right in with confidence and aplomb. The stories are well-polished, but not all of them feel whole or totally fleshed out, giving the collection a scattered vibe overall. The poetry generally follows more traditional rhyme schemes (including a fun series of sonnets about Godzilla), but she uses words beautifully and to good aural effect. The play was one of the most enjoyable reads for me - irreverent and fast-paced, it was a real romp of a read.

Recommended if you liked: Rubik

I received an advance e-book copy of this book from Tachyon Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The only thing that unites this collection is the author: the short stories are diverse, ranging from fairytale-like to SF, but all were entrancing and written with a lyrical voice that I liked quite a lot. Some ideas are incredibly good, I would have loved to see them extended / detailed into novels.
I must confess I was afraid of the poetry part, but the poems read more like ballads, and I was glad to find them enjoying.
I also liked the personal touch – after each work, she says a few words about it, what determined her to write it, for what publication or occasion.

This was an interesting read with an intriguing plot but it lacked in delivery.

A wonderfully clever and intricate story with beautiful writing.

Multiple award-winning science fiction and fantasy author Jo Walton first short fiction collection is a captivating array of fairy tales, mythology, space fiction, machine sentience, alien encounters, heaven, and more. Easily a third of these stories in this collection are 5-star worthy. Here are my absolute favorites:

-Three-Twilight Tales, about three separate magical encounters in which a rural fantasy village
-Unreliable Witness, in which an old woman with dementia describes her encounter with an alien
-Relentlessly Mundane, about several adults who discuss their secret trip to the magical land of Porphylia when they were younger
-Escape to Other World with Science Fiction, in which several slices of life in 1960 New York have little to do with what’s in the papers
-At the Bottom of the Garden, my absolute favorite tale of book, which captures the lack of empathy we teach our children in a world that could be full of wonder
-A Burden Shared, in which a mother shares the burden of pain with her daughter by technology, at unseen costs

Some of the short stories, like the ones mentioned above, are perfect combinations of form and idea and execution. I love that this collection is so diverse. There are stories, plays, poems, and sonnets, and each contain such different subject material, from pure fantasy to magical realism to hard science fiction to Norse and Greek mythology. Some are disturbing; some are funny; some are clever; all of them are interesting.

Even the stories that aren’t my favorites are quite memorable, lingering because of their unique subject material. Interestingly, in the introduction, Jo Walton mentions that the art of short fiction did not come naturally to her like novel writing. I understand what she means, in that she has a wide range of intriguing ideas, and she presents them in new and unusual formats, but often the final stroke, the proverbial period at the end of the sentence, does not pack the punch I expect from the set up. In fact, I often wonder if I missed something, that maybe I did not quite get it.

It’s a mix, but one I highly recommend. Specifically recommended for fans of literary scifi and fantasy!

I’m honestly not quite sure of how to review Jo Walton’ collection of short stories, Starlings. As a fiction read, it left me greatly wanting, with many of the stories (there are also poems and one play but more on those later) feeling undeveloped, slight, and too one-note, so that most frequent reaction was “nice idea, but . . . “with the “but” mostly signifying a response that really wasn’t a response. And so what’s the problem, you might be thinking. You didn’t respond to most of the stories; give it a bad review. Which is a nice idea, but . . .

And here’s the thing. Each story is followed by a brief afterword explaining where the premise arose, or what Walton’s intentions were, or where it was published (or not) or how much she was compensated (or not) or any mix of those. And in these afterwords, Walton often shares that this story was, well, “one-note,” or the start of something that was left, um, “undeveloped” or that it was an experiment in form or mode, an exercise of some sort. Most times I negatively critique a story for lack of development, or characterization, or for feeling too much like it was just an experiment, it’s because it’s presented as having those things or being more than those things. That’s not the case here. At least, I don’t think it’s the case. So yes, as an anthology of short fiction, for me Starling failed in that I didn’t react much or at all to many of the stories: they didn’t linger, I didn’t respond emotionally, they didn’t provoke much thought, I wasn’t compelled by plot or character. But . . .

As an entry point into a writer’s process, as a craft-book-that-isn’t-really-a-craft-book-but-could-be, I kind of liked Starlings. I liked how she offers up a series of writerly questions: how might one write a POV from an inanimate object, or how might I enter a clichéd tale in a different or subversive way that hasn’t itself become a cliché? Can I mash up some people/characters and find a way to make it work, say Jane Austen and Cassandra of Greek myth? Or Godzilla and Shakespeare? Many of the stories didn’t do much for me, but the playfulness of the writer’s mind did. But . . .

That isn’t to say none of the stories worked for me. “Three Twilight Tales” is lovely and rich in tone and style, with gorgeous language use. “Jane Austen to Cassandra” is one-note/one-joke, but Walton nails the voice. “On the Wall” is that inanimate POV — a magic mirror in a classic tale — and it has a strong start, an OK middle, and a strong close. “Escape to Other Worlds With Science Fiction” was a solid if not overwhelming tale set in an alternate history, but Walton does a nice job with structure (with a nod to John Dos Passos). My favorite parts of the novel outside “Three Twilight Tales” come in the one play in the book — “Three Shouts on a Hill” —a jaunty metafictional ride that is funny and has a good close, even if the play as a whole went on a bit long for me (ironically when my major complain with most stories was their slight nature). The other stories were either solidly entertaining but as noted didn’t do much or linger at all, or were relatively pedestrian, or were so slight that I was surprised they were actually published (or not surprised that they were not. Finally, the closing poems were a mixed bag for me, though poetry being so selective I won’t say much beyond that save I loved the Godzilla/Shakespeare cycle and quite liked “Hades and Persephone.”

So what to say? I can’t give the usual reasons for recommending a fiction book here. But in the end a review comes down to does one think a book is a “worthy” read, is it “worth” the reader’s time. Thinking of it that way, then Starlings is a surprisingly easy book to recommend.

Starlings was my first real dive into Walton's short stories and poetry. Ultimately it felt like a mishmash of stories I liked and pieces that didn't really feel like short stories. With Walton's own commentary about learning to write short stories, this collection naturally drew my attention to that question: "What IS a short story?"

A few of the stories really worked for me, but some others just didn't gel, or felt a little stale. For example, do we really need a sci fi lite version of the "why do you cut the end off the ham" joke? That one felt like filler, especially to someone like me who's come across this particular joke a lot in recent days.

"Sleeper" was a reread - I read it first when it was published on Tor.com, and it's one of my favorites. Also, it seems, it's one of her more recently written stories, and not necessarily a spin on a joke or a practice at writing from a specific viewpoint (which are two things that come up a lot when Walton talks about inspirations for stories in this collection).

Other stories I particularly liked were "On the Wall" (written from the viewpoint of the magic mirror from Snow White), "The Panda Coin" (where the POV changes to follow a coin as it goes through the hands of people living on a space station), and "Turnover".

"Turnover" was the particular story that tickled my fancy the most in this collection. The story is about a generation ship on its way to a planet - and a younger generation wants to preserve their way of life even when they arrive. Yes, there will be a lot of scientists and engineers in space colonies, but the arts and ballet (or low-gravity ballet) are just as important to society and civilization and people's souls. And there's something very uplifting in a story about creating more options for the future, rather than narrowing it down. Let's give our children wiggle room for their lives. We'll all be happier for it.

I feel that Walton really lives in her poetry in this collection. She seems to have a confidence in it that she doesn't have in her short stories (going by her own remarks). Sadly, I am not a fan of much poetry so far, so it was lost on me. A matter of my taste rather than her quality, for sure.

Overall, this was a pleasant collection with a couple of standout stories that I would especially recommend to Walton's fans from her novels.

Starlings is a collection of short stories, some hardly more than extended jokes, all with a sci-fi/fantasy bent. Some were entertaining, others confused me. I enjoyed the longer sci-fi story best.

Most of the shorter works had an ironic twist a la Twilight Zone. Including a letter from Jane Austen to her sister Cassandra, waylaid and delivered to the Greek myth Cassandra, who writes back to Jane.

I did not feel propelled to read these selections and I lost access to the ebook before finishing it.

I don't think they are 'my thing.'

Starlings by Jo Walton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was delighted to find out that I could read and enjoy Jo Walton's first short story (and poetry) collection on Netgalley and saving it just in time for xmas. I do that with authors I really enjoy. The fact is, Ms. Walton has taste. Granted, I've only read three of her books before now, with this one making number four, but trust has been earned.

What else should I expect from someone who reads copiously and discerns with great verve?

But then there comes the introduction. She admits to experimenting and learning the short-fic craft and some of these aren't precisely over-practiced. To that, I say, nevermind. :) I'll read and judge based on my gut reactions anyway, and while a good number of them aren't overly fantastic in my opinion, a few stand out well.

It's on these that I'm resting the weight of my enjoyment.

The Panda Coin - The moon, androids, humans, and AIs... a full slice of lives lasting only as long as the coin remains in their possession. It's a great SF twist and I had a great time piecing out the world and feeling the commentary.

Remember the Allosaur - It may be a joke piece like a number of her other smaller works, but this one works best for me. I keep thinking of my favorite Raptor memes. :)

Sleeper - A pretty awesome future dystopia from the focus of a biographer and an AI-simulation of a real person during the early-mid 20th-century heretics (of mild socialism). I think I may have had the best time with this one just because it's so seditious. If only all biographical works could be the spearhead of a revolution, right?

A Burden Shared - I think I prefer this one for its basic SF-concept over the execution, but even that did a great job. Pain-sharing seems to be just the start. I keep thinking about the possible economic slant to it. Walton's take is purely interpersonal, but a whole society that has this is bound to abuse it. Fascinating, either way. :)

Three Shouts on a Hill - This one is an all-out Irish legend turned into a wild mish-mash mythology adventure and placed firmly into a stage production. It's pretty awesome, ranging from Cromwell, the Thunderbird, the Aztecs, Golden apples and underwater dragons, and even King Arthur. It's about tricksters and overwhelming odds and payback. I'd love to see this put on! :)

The poetry in this collection is very decent, too, but beyond that, I'll not say too much. There is an ever-growing field of SF poetry, after all. It's worth browsing. :)

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

In her introduction, Jo Walton mentions that she really doesn't know how to write short stories, but over the years, she's come to the conclusion that what separates a good short story from a good novel is that the ending isn't as weighty. A weak ending might be something more common in a short story than in a novel, but that doesn't make it actually <i>good</i>.

I'm a big Jo Walton fan and have loved her novels. But when she says she doesn't know how to write short stories, she's unfortunately right. Even the best of this anthology is merely mediocre.

To be fair though, not all of these are actually meant as stories. There's some extended jokes, some writing exercises, some experimentation with odd points of view. There's really only a couple stories meant to be self contained stories. Oddly enough, neither of those actually seemed like complete stories to me. Instead, the one that seemed the most complete to me was meant to be merely the first chapter of a novel. Go figure.

Overall, this just makes me rather sad. I love Jo Walton's novels, but I'm utterly disappointed in her short fiction.

Thank you to Netgalley & Tachyon Publications for the ARC, but I'm sorry I couldn't give this a great review.

Jo Walton has been on my to-read list for forever. Just, absolutely way too long. Which is why when I saw this book (with an amazingly beautiful cover), I jumped and got it.

From what I am familiar with, Jo Walton writes fantasy that has covered a variety of subjects and this collection of short stories is no different. But to take a moment, these don't really feel like short stories. Included are also poems, beginning thoughts for novels and writing prompts. They don't feel quite as complete and polished as other short story collections I've read (this has been a bizarre year of short story collections one after the other for me). On the whole the pieces were all okay. Nothing stood out as a favorite and I've never been one for poetry... no matter how hard I've tried.

If you love Jo Walton as a writer and want to get an insight into how she works and thinks, this is a book I am sure you'll enjoy. After I go back and read some of her novels, maybe I'll come back to this with fresh eyes.

The introduction to this collection was a bit strange. How do you expect people to spend their hard earned money when the author herself doubts her qualities as a short story writer? With lowered expectations I started to read the stories but ended up liking a lot of them. On my own rating scale (A=great, B=good, C=didn't like it) I finally had 11 A, 5 B and 5 C (full details are at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2210858854)

My favorites were:

"Unreliable Witness": An old lady complains that her things get stolen or moved around. When she meets an Alien it's her chance to find out the truth, but the Alien wants something in return. It's a story with a big heart and I really loved it!

"Sleeper": People from the past can be resurrected as AI, which can then be sold as interactive autobiographies. With her latest project Essie has something else in mind... A true SF idea and my favorite story of the whole collection. I liked Essie's subtle, subversive way and hope she succeeds. :-)

"Three Shouts on a Hill": This is a play - and I would love to see it on stage one day! The father of Lugh, who is the king of Ireland, has been killed and he requests compensation. Different magical items must be brought to him, which can only be obtained with bravery and trickery. There is a major twist at the end that turns the story into meta-fiction and it really works until the very last line.

In total this is a 3 stars collection and you can add one more star if you are a fan of Jo Walton.

Jo Walton's Starling is a whimsical collection of short stories. You can find fairy tales, sci-fi, magical realism, satire, mythology, exercises and poems. All these stories are imbued with fantasy and a wonderful writing style that carries you effortlessly from one page to the next. Each story is a world of their own. Their style, tone, narrative and POV also changes from story to story but they are all similar in that they posses an enchanting "out of this world" feeling to them.

The unpredictability when going from one story to the next made my reading experience even more enjoyable; I didn't know what to expect and needed to clear my mind so I could welcome the next story. It was exciting to speculate what kind of world would come next, would it be on earth? space? or inside a fairy tale?. I let myself be carried away by Walton's prose and poems and fully enjoyed it. Some stories felt perfect as is, while others left me wishing there was more. At the end of each one, an afterword is included telling us about her inspiration or purpose on writing each piece and information about previous publications.

My favorite stories where:

Three Twilight Tales: 3 tales that take place in the same village, in a cozy inn warmed by a fireplace. The first one concerning a man made of moonshine, the second one a peddler selling wondrous items and the third, a king in search for adventure. I loved the atmosphere, the detailed descriptions of the place and the unexpected endings for each tale.

On the Wall: related to a well known fairy tale, we get to know a different side of the story from the point of view of an unexpected secondary character.

The Panda Coin: an science fiction exercise where a series of stories unfold in chains as a coin passes from hand to hand, thus allowing us to know the story of its handler and, as the story progresses, gives us a clearer picture of this bizarre world. I really liked the idea of a coin being the key that connects one character to the other and pushes the story forward. As with the other stories, you never guess how it will develop or end until it happens.

Since the beginning, Walton warns us that short stories is not her forte and that most of the stories are not even real short stories but, for example, exercises, first chapters or prose poems. I really didn't mind that, I found those apparently imperfect pieces to be full of wonderful ideas, worlds and emotions that left me smiling, dreaming and craving for more.

Part of me wishes I had never requested this anthology of short stories, jokes, poetry, etc. I've long meant to read one of Walton's books (I have AMONG OTHERS on my shelf at the mo) and thought this would give me a glimpse into her writing or tease me to want to read other things she's written. Instead I was so bored I dropped my kindle on my face multiple times, skimmed, skipped, and put it down to do any possible other activity but read. Sadly the good intentions I had when starting STARLINGS never panned out.

I wouldn't <b>not</b> recommend this because I can see it possibly working for others but sadly this wasn't for me. I think I might have liked one of the opening stories but honestly it's buried so far underneath all the rest that I couldn't even tell you what it was about or what I liked. I do still intend to give this author's full-length work a try so if nothing else this hasn't scared me away; despite that rather telling rating. I just really did not enjoy this experience overall.

Jo Walton has one of the most beautiful writings I have ever came across. I loved My Real Children and I hoped to enjoy this one just as much. However, no matter how beautiful she writes, the stories are on the ‘too lyrical’ side for me.

Half of the book consists in poems (which I did not read) and the other half in short stories. I read five of them and stopped. I just could not get into them.

One story is a version of Snow White, told from the Pov of the mirror but the resemblance with the fairytale stops here. Another is a letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra – yes, that mythical Cassandra… Another is about an 89 years old woman (suffering from dementia and not realizing it) and her encounter with an alien. I guess the others are more of less in the same note.

Unfortunately, there are just too many allegories for my taste. But if you love her style, you’ll love this collection too.

This collection is a mixed bag. Some stories make the reader turn the pages faster while others drag on with little purpose. The poetry is amateurish at best, I'm afraid, and is the weakest part of the collection. I found myself cringing at some of their lines. There are some really great retellings here of fairytales, and it feels as though some other stories could have been much better if they'd gone through some revisions. What I get most out of the fiction is that the stories are mostly half-baked.

I won't go on at length about each story because I'd get repetitive: plots that are not fully formed, writing that is not quite up to par with other short story writers, and completely unnecessary acknowledgement sections after each tale.

One of my "eh" books this year.