Aurealis“The Last Faithful Servant of the Empire” by Blaize M. Kaye
“The Prince of Dogs” by Harry Goddard
“With Teeth” by SR Kriger
Reviewed by Axylus
“The Last Faithful Servant of the Empire” by Blaize M. Kaye covers the familiar ground of robots rebelling against their human overlords. That initial black mark against it could have been redeemed if it had gone on to explore the topic in a particularly fresh or novel manner. Alas, it was not to be. And I also must visit an argument that writers have among themselves about the virtues of “show don’t tell” (tell the story through action and dialog, keeping exposition to a minimum) versus the deficiencies of “telling not showing.” Most writers accept this advice as fairly fundamental, though there are always very valid exceptions. The exception is this: exposition works well for conveying information such as necessary background info, or the protagonist’s ruminations. Action/dialog, meanwhile, work best to propel the plot forward. Conveying the plot through exposition creates distance between the reader and the story; dialog and action (when well done) draw the reader in. Perhaps because this story is framed as one robot recounting the tale of the rebellion to others, it suffers from excessive misapplication of exposition.
“The Prince of Dogs” by Harry Goddard has some very nice descriptive prose in it from time to time: “The sensation of steam rose through the air, the sound of sizzling woks—hissing underneath the faint whir of ineffectual ceiling fans that only churned the air like thick soup. Roasted ducks hung from hooks alongside hocks of char siew, boiled eggs in trays, tubs of curry, bain-maries of black bean beef, glass windows stacked with chicken breast—the floor scuffed and muddied with hundreds of footprints, trays stacked for cleaning, littered with the speckles and detritus of devoured meals.” There is some content here that shows promise. But a lack of creation and release of any meaningful amounts of tension really negated my enjoyment of this wish-fulfillment tale of a bullied student meeting a feral boy.
“With Teeth” by SR Kriger has some mildly amusing body horror about teeth. It does build some tension, and for that reason it struck me as the best of these three tales. But “some tension” is not quite enough to carry it into the realm of “recommended.”