An intimate first flight of short fiction from award-winning novelist Jo Walton (Among Others, The King's Peace).
A strange Eritrean coin travels from lovers to thieves, gathering stories before meeting its match. Google becomes sentient and proceeds toward an existential crisis. An idealistic dancer on a generation ship makes an impassioned plea for creativity and survival. Three Irish siblings embark on an unlikely quest, stealing enchanted items via bad poetry, trickery, and an assist from the Queen of Cats.
With these captivating initial glimpses into her storytelling psyche, Jo Walton shines through subtle myths and wholly reinvented realities. Through eclectic stories, subtle vignettes, inspired poetry, and more, Walton soars with humans, machines, and magic-rising from the everyday into the universe itself.
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(ONCE UPON A time, a courting couple were walking down the lane at twilight squabbling (THREE TWILIGHT TALES)]***
(Tachyon Publications, 13 February 2018, ARC provided by the publisher and voluntarily reviewed)
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This is my first time reading the author.
I really enjoyed this collection of stories. I liked how some of the stories were not actually stories but opening chapters of unwritten novels or similar. There's something I really liked about this.
I loved the little anecdote by the author after every piece explaining how it came about. I like it when writer's let us peek inside their box of tricks.
Starlings contains a mix of stories with different styles and genres to suit a range of tastes.
My favourite stories were Three Twilight Tales, Sleeper, Out of It, What A Piece of Work and Parable Lost.
