I’m sorry there was no update on Thursday – I had connectivity issues. There was a change of ownership at our ISP, and we’ve been seeing more downtime than usual.. let’s hope I manage to post this one!

A Prince of Thirteen Days by Alaya Dawn Johnson (an African-American woman)

from the June 2011 issue of Fantasy Magazine

This is a novelette from the Borderlands anthology, reprinted in Fantasy. (Yes, it’s eligible for this year’s Hugos – the reprints cycle is faster and faster!)

It’s an urban fantasy story, maybe a bit too urban-fantasy-ish for my tastes… does every work in this subgenre have to do with the characters having sex? That and vampires. There are no vampires in this one, but it’s all about sex. I didn’t really understand how the protagonist went from receiving a prophecy of love to “I must have sex with a statue”. It’s not graphic at all, but very sex-centered nonetheless, and in a rather forced way.

I’m all for thoughtful or deeply felt explorations of sexuality (for example see my glowing review of Amal El-Mohtar’s lesbian steampunk story), and this story had all the potential, with a multigenerational family setup, teen pregnancy, etc., but ultimately the sexual theme felt like a gimmick. As if the whole novelette was written just so that in the opening paragraphs, the heroine could ask a statue to have sex with her.

I also found the first-person / third-person transitions slightly distracting… when I’m thinking “look, a literary device” while reading, that’s not a very good sign. I prefer to enjoy the work as a whole, not its form by itself, unless the form is very very inventive. This wasn’t inventive, just distracting.

On the plus side, I really liked the casual mentions of everyday magic (cooking magic, minor prophecies, etc.) and the interactions of the family members. I wished there was more of that and less of the main plot… maybe I’m just not sexual enough!