Sunday, July 09, 2006

Scholars and Soldiers by Mary Gentle

Odd collection. Several of the stories had hidden fangs... They seemed like ordinary tales with classic life-affirming type plots, the sort of thing you might find in say MZB's Sword and Sorceress anthologies, especialy with all the strong-woman heroine types and egalitarian or matriarchal societies. But then at the end they'd turn on you, turn into something different and much nastier. The one with the woman warrior who turned on her masters to rescue the prisoners she felt sorry for, and fled with them... And then turned again, and killed the man she'd rescued. Several of them had endings like that.. Perfectly conventional stories, if only they'd stopped a little sooner...

Only problem was, after the first couple I started to expect that, which lessened the impact.

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