I’m thinking maybe the stories, while they look like they’re about character, are mostly about worldbuilding, and that’s why they never quite clicked for me. Because while the worlds are varied, there’s a certain sameness about most of the characters and their transformations, after a while.
Black Juice
This week’s reading included Margo Lanagan’s short story collection, Black Juice. I’m still puzzling out why this one didn’t quite work for me. The writing was strong. The worldbuilding was creative. Yet the characters should have moved me, and somehow they didn’t. The endings were all structured in ways that should have been powerful, and somehow they weren’t.