{"id":1864,"date":"2017-09-05T06:43:32","date_gmt":"2017-09-05T11:43:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=1864"},"modified":"2017-09-05T06:43:32","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T11:43:32","slug":"maps-to-nowhere-by-marie-brennan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/?p=1864","title":{"rendered":"Maps to Nowhere, by Marie Brennan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Review copy provided by the author, who is also a personal friend. Also the title is a <em>Fire and Hemlock<\/em> reference, which, come on, how can <em>that<\/em> not bias a reviewer.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;ve read any of Brennan&#8217;s work before, there are through-lines to it: anthropology, history\/quasi-history, and adventure fantasy. These are clearly visible in this short story collection, although the adventure fantasy is the smallest strain in this bunch. I think it&#8217;s in some ways hardest to write something that feels like adventure fantasy and still has plot at this length. In any case, if you <em>haven&#8217;t<\/em> read Brennan&#8217;s work before, that&#8217;s the place where this collection is least representative of the spread of what she&#8217;s doing.<\/p>\n<p>Other than that, there is quite a lot of what Brennan does. There are bits with faeries and bits with odd artifacts, stories of self-discovery and stories of community relationship. There are funny bits and deathly serious bits. There&#8217;s a lot of range here.<\/p>\n<p>What there is not&#8211;and this was important for me the day I read this book, and it may well be important for you&#8211;is a lot of gratuitously depressing or cruel material. The characters are not all sweetness and light&#8211;some of them are basically <em>no<\/em> sweetness and light&#8211;but what this collection is unlikely to do is leave you numbed and helpless in the face of an uncaring world. I feel like when I ask for things that are not staggeringly depressing, people think I want books in which the teddy bears have their picnic, and this is not one of those. This is just&#8230;balanced. Sometimes we can use some balance.<\/p>\n<p>Please consider using our link to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B074T3YZ9T\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=novegazi-20&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;creativeASIN=B074T3YZ9T&amp;linkId=3914f4bfbf4aa1ab4d07732ccfe55829\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">buy\u00a0<em>Maps to Nowhere<\/em> from Amazon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Review copy provided by the author, who is also a personal friend. Also the title is a Fire and Hemlock reference, which, come on, how can that not bias a reviewer. If you&#8217;ve read any of Brennan&#8217;s work before, there are through-lines to it: anthropology, history\/quasi-history, and adventure fantasy. These are clearly visible in this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-1864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bookses-precious"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1864"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1882,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions\/1882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}