Our second piece of audio fiction for June is "Trickster" written by Mari Ness and read by Kate Baker.
Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 57 - Trickster by Mari Ness [59:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7911)
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Mari Ness lives in central Florida with two cats who think her fingers should spend less time on a keyboard and more time in their fur. Her fiction and poetry have previously appeared in numerous print and online publications, including Fantasy Magazine, Ideomancer, Daily Science Fiction, and Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science Fiction. On Thursdays, she blogs about classic works of children's fantasy literature over at Tor.com. You can also follow her on Twitter at mari_ness.
Website:
mariness.livejournal.com
I'm not such a fan of this one. Kate's work is very good, as usual. It's the story that I found very - eh. I was constantly waiting for something interesting, engaging, or interestingly unexpected to happen. It did not. There was a massive info-dump about the pantheon of 13 gods. The gods were very Greek god-like, capricious, taking human form, and disinterested in the humans - all very done-before. The grieving mother keeps referring back to her lost child, again and again. One god acts - or maybe doesn't - against another. maybe it was the grieving mom, or both... neither? A moon disappears for some reason, sad mom has to pee really bad, the water god turns to water... I just didn't get the point. The writing per se was nice, but the plot, or plots, baffled me. Why was the story written? What message did it mean to convey? Convolution is not another expression for complexity.