I guess this is actually an author review.
Author rave, my precious!
I discovered Naomi Kritzer entirely by happenstance. I was killing time on Twitter, so I wouldn't actually have to write this scene in my horrible novel, which had been galling me raw all morning, and I came across someone (I have no idea now who) recommending her story in Clarksword.
This story: Cat Pictures Please.
If you haven't read it yet, go do so now. I immediately fell deeply in love, not just with the story, but with Kritzer, and began hunting out everything by her I could find. Which -- spoilers -- is how I operate.
If it's how you operate as well, here's Naomi Kritzer's homepage to help you out.
What do I love about Kritzer's fiction?
A list!
(1) So many women protagonists.
(2) Such wonderful lucid writing.
(3) Such physical writing -- flavors, scents, details about landscapes and clothing and how the world feels.
(4) Social fucking justice. Fuck yeah.
(5) And yet! Complex and complicated ideas. Nothing is simple or simple-minded here.
(6) Animals. I loved how the animals are characters, too.
(7) LGBT characters. Brown characters. Multiple landscapes -- we have complex and complicated cities, we have complex and complicated environments, we have economic systems, we have different languages, we have scholars and working class and rulers and the understanding that the most informed person in a given household is not, in fact, the master, but the kitchen maid.
(9) Character who learn, and are allowed to learn, from their mistakes. This is great. This means we get characters who can be wrong, who can learn better and do better. I'm thinking of the trilogy (which I highly recommend) that starts with Freedom's Sisters, but it's true in other examples of Kritzer's works as well.
(10) Kritzer always starts with the ghost pigs. Not a wasted word.
In summary, what are you waiting for? Go and read!
3 comments:
Ah! I have been wishing I could remember where I encountered that story (and who wrote it) for AGES! Awesome to hear that her other writing is also excellent.
Thanks!
She also has another really interesting story free to read online, called "Liberty's Daughter," which is part of an on-going series she is writing:
http://www.naomikritzer.com/stories/libertys_daughter.html
I've only been able to find a couple of the stories in this series, curse it!
The mos recent (I think) "The Silicon Curtain," was just published in the July issue of F&SF, but I think I missed about 10 of them.
No fear! I will hunt them down!
Wow. WOW. Thanks for the link- what a story.
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