Bookish Thoughts

This was a wonderful, quick read that Tor.com released for International Woman's Day. It's about 30 pages long and contains eleven super short stories. Each author was asked to use the famous admonishment of Elizabeth Warren as a prompt. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless she persisted. I liked some stories more than others. I knew most every author included in the book, and it was fun to get a little tasting menu of their styles. Not to mention that this was a particular balm to the soul, being delivered so soon after Warren dropped out of the presidential race. If you've got half an hour and a desire to try out several SFF authors, you can't go wrong with this small, free book.

Before I dive into the content of this book, I need to talk about the book itself. Because I have this whole complicated relationship with it outside of the stories it contains. And it's worth bringing up in light of recent political shenanigans. Once upon a time a man got cancer. Treatment worked and he went into remission and went on with his life. But a few years later he got cancer again. A different kind of cancer this time. However, since he'd already had cancer once before, health insurance wouldn't cover him this time around. Pre-existing conditions and all that. So he reached out to his writer friends and asked if they'd be willing to donate stories that he could put together into a book that he could sell to pay for his treatment. His friends came through, the book sold well, the man beat cancer again and didn't have to declare bankruptcy. As plans go it's a better solution than selling meth. Of course, the best solution would be health care that act...

I'll admit, I bought this $30, 800+ page tome in order to read one single short story. Because that short story was written by Patrick Rothfuss about Bast, and I am desperate for new material in that world. Of course, this collection also contains plenty of other stories by plenty of other authors I love, so it felt worth that price tag. Let's go through it story by story, shall we? The Lightning Tree  by Patrick Rothfuss - This story basically chronicles a day in the life of Bast an indeterminate amount of time before the first book starts, but after Kvothe has established himself as Kote, owner of the Waystone Inn. Bast trades secrets and favors with children, gets into some mischief, does some highly questionable and uncomfortable things, but also does some tough and honorable things. He's a tough guy to pin down, because his moral code is skewed by his Fae heritage. This story left me more confused about him than before, but it was a nice little slice of life, none...