eBook Review – Asymmetry by Thoraiya Dyer

Asymmetry is the latest of the top shelf Twelve Planets series to emerge from Twelve Planet Press.  It continues what I have found to be an outstanding showcase of Australian women writers in the speculative fiction field.

Thoraiya has been well supported by the team at Twelfth Planet Press for some time; she appeared in the anthologies, New Ceres Nights and Sprawl(her short, Yowie, won an Aurealis), had a novella, The Company Articles of Edward Teach (which won the Ditmar Novella Category in 2011) published as part of a double with Matthew Chrulew and now she’s produced Asymmetry.  Thoraiya also picked up a Ditmar this year for her The Wisdom of Ants published published in Clarkesworld.

So as you would expect this collection of shorts is worthy of someone who is generating a lot of good work.  There’s four stories, that showcase Thoraiya’s versatility within the genre and I would be stretched to find a less than brilliant one amongst them:

I fell into After Hours, a story of a young vet attached to a practice that has a special relationship with the nearby military base. They house and train “special” dogs.  It’s a sign of very good writing that a novel, let alone a short can draw you in and immerse you when you are tired. I had a distinct yearning for more of the interesting the world and characters Thoraiya has delivered here.  Very smooth and subtle writing, great characterization and a tantalizing idea. It’s hard to pull off a werewolf tale and make it fresh but Thoraiya does.

Zadie, Scythe of the West, could not be further from the setting of After Hours.  Thoraiya gives us a female dominated warrior society where to participate in battle a woman must have given birth for every life she takes.  This set up is not as desirous as some might think though and the emotional core of this story comes from the tension that this society creates around relationships and that despite having to give a life before you take one, war and killing is still horrendous and perhaps unjustified.  This short could I think spawn an entirely original Dark Fantasy series if Thoraiya were so inclined.

Wish Me Luck somehow manages to fuse a  steampunk-ish future with trans-dimensional travel where you pay your way with physically manifesting luck. It felt very Final Fantasy to me a fusion of science and magic, with pseudo-victorian trappings. Again entirely different to the preceding stories.

And rounding out the quartet is Seven Days in Paris, which is partly about counter terrorism and partly about human cloning.  It raises questions about the acceleration of organisms (tips its hat toward current issues on GMO) and what boundaries governments will cross when they think it necessary to save lives.  Somewhat evocative of the questions raised by Blade Runner.

I would be very surprised if this weren’t on the awards list next year.  The only regret I have after reading it was that it was so easily consumed. For a collection that is thematically about imbalance, Twelfth Planet Press has produced one of the most balanced collections I have come across in recent times.

 

Kudos to Amanda Rainey for cover design and Charles A. Tan for the eBook layout.

This review copy was made available by the publisher at no cost.

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Other Twelve Planet Reviews:

eBook Review–Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren

Book Review–Showtime by Narrelle M Harris

Book Review–Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti

Book Review–Thief of Lives by Lucy Sussex

Book Review–Nightsiders by Sue Isle

eBook Review–Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts

Book Review–Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan

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This review is part of the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2013.  Please check out this page for more great writing from Australian women.

 

 

 

 

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Cover Candy–Asymmetry by Thoraiya Dyer

Another beautifully understated cover by the talented Amanda Rainey and another wonderful collection from one of Australia’s talented crop of female writers.

I still don’t have a release date for it but it’s out sometime this year, coming in as volume 8 of the Twelve Planets Series.

Synopsis:

An Australian Air Force base patrolled by werewolves. A planet where wages are paid in luck. A future where copies are made of criminals to interpret their dark dreams. A medieval cavalry of mothers who are only permitted to take as many lives as they have created.

In every world, an imbalance of power. Something terribly askew between women and men, humans and wolves, citizens and constructs, light and dark.

In every world, asymmetry.

The TOC:

 

• Introduction -Nancy Kress

• After Hours
• Zadie, Scythe of the West
• Wish Me Luck
• Seven Days in Paris

You will be able to purchase this volume from Twelfth Planet Press shortly, but if you are interested in the concept of 12 volumes of speculative fiction from as selection Australia’s top female speculative fiction writers, go here.

It’s worth noting that Thoraiya is eligible for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer

H/T David McDonald

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A Trifle Dead final cover revealed

Another Amanda Rainey cover and this time I think she has really outdone herself.  This book makes me want to eat trifle and read…but not kill people.

A Trifle Dead is the debut novel of stunning new crime writing talent Livia Day*  the first of the Dealines imprint from Twelfth Planet Press

 

You can preorder your copy now.

* it should be noted that I have only read the first chapter, but then Livia Day occupies the same brain space as Tansy Rayner Roberts so, I sure it will be excellent.

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Cover Candy - Through Splintered Walls by Kaaron Warren

 

Amanda Rainey has done another fantastic job on this Twelve Planets book cover. 

It’s a little while till we get it (the book), but seeing the cover and having encountered Warren’s work before I think its an excellent choice.

TPP has released the back cover blurb:

Country road, city street, mountain, creek.
These are stories inspired by the beauty, the danger, the cruelty, emptiness, loneliness and perfection of the Australian landscape.

Canadian Horror writer Gemma Files gave it this intro:

Every Warren story is a trip with no map… If you are bent on opening this book, therefore, remember: Keep your eyes open, accept all of what it has to offer without qualm, and beware the only thing I can promise you is that you will be taken where you may not want to go.

For Kaaron Warren, while many things, is very much not your Mum; she owes you nothing except the words on the page, this open door into four very different someplaces else through which she will escort you, then take her leave, without a single glance back. And it will be entirely contingent on you to get yourself back out.

The book will be launched  at Continuum in early June, which segues nicely into my panhandling on the NAFF race:

I have been nominated to run in this years fan fund for the National Science Fiction Convention to be held in Melbourne.

If you appreciate the work that I do in Australian Speculative Fiction Fandom and you have a spare $5, you can vote for me here and help send me to the National Conference.

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