★★★☆☆ Honorable Mention
(Horror) The narrator falls in love with a “Deer Woman,” and gives up everything for her. But will she kill for her too? (3,426 words; Time: 11m)
"Harvest," by Rebecca Roanhorse [bio] (edited by Nisi Shawl), appeared in New Suns (RSR review), published on March 12, 2019 by Solaris.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2019.277 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: It’s a story of obsessive love with a supernatural twist. Tansi loves her deer woman, who uses her terribly. And the true horror, at the end, is that Tansi knows she’d do it all again.
The parallel with the behavior of abused women is obvious.
Con: The speculative element is very thin. It’s easy to read this story as Tansi losing her mind and seeing hallucinations that make her kill people.
Tansi isn’t a very sympathetic character. She’s so cold to poor Jefferey, her fiancée, who clearly loves her and is desperate for her approval. This makes it hard to really care much about what happens to her.
Other Reviews: Search Web, GoodReads.com
Rebecca Roanhorse Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
Pro: It’s a story of obsessive love with a supernatural twist. Tansi loves her deer woman, who uses her terribly. And the true horror, at the end, is that Tansi knows she’d do it all again.
The parallel with the behavior of abused women is obvious.
Con: The speculative element is very thin. It’s easy to read this story as Tansi losing her mind and seeing hallucinations that make her kill people.
Tansi isn’t a very sympathetic character. She’s so cold to poor Jefferey, her fiancée, who clearly loves her and is desperate for her approval. This makes it hard to really care much about what happens to her.
Other Reviews: Search Web, GoodReads.com
Rebecca Roanhorse Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
Reprinted in Uncanny 33 (Mar/Apr 2020):
ReplyDeletehttps://uncannymagazine.com/article/harvest/