Irresistible Forces [Paperback]

Like other reviewers, I picked it up mainly for the Bujold story. (Don't any of these other writers have fans?) But I also read the rest, and there were some interesting finds.

Bujold's entry is the first and best, with several familiar characters from Miles's Free Dendarii days showing up at Vorkosigan House as guests at his wedding. It's a blast for established fans like myself, but I have my doubts that it would work for somebody unfamiliar with the characters.

Putney's story is about a secret society of mages who work to protect England facing the Spanish Armada. The characters lacked real depth, hard to create in such a short space. But the idea was interesting. Putney is working on a novel, probably ultimately a series, on the same concept, and this was good enough that I'll want to check out the novel.

I've read one of Asaro's Skolian Empire novels and it didn't impress me, perhaps because I started in the middle of the series. But the story here, also from that universe, didn't work either. One problem was that she didn't really use the Skolian setting - with very minor changes, this could have been a traditional romance in a medieval setting. The basic story - a character from an aristocratic house flees an arranged marriage for true love - is too familiar, and there wasn't enough different in this version to make it fresh. And the main characters were too young, only about 13. That was a problem because they didn't act it - they seemed more like about 17 - and it also undermined the whole story. It really doesn't make a lot of sense for characters so young to make such huge decisions even for their own lives, much less when they could affect many others.

Deb Stover's story of a man reincarnated as a woman to repair some of the damage he did in life just didn't work for me. But Jo Beverly's story of a colony world threatened by a mysterious native life form did - it actually used SF elements more than others in the book. At least it seemed to - in retrospect, both the alien threat and the methods used against it were so vaguely explained that the story was in some ways more of a fantasy.

Jennifer Roberson was the other writer in this collection whose work I've read previously and wasn't impressed by. The story here, while it manages the tricky feat of uniting the two most famous legends of early England, Robin Hood and the Arthurian cycle, in one short story, didn't change my mind.

As for the rest, I tried to read each one, but just couldn't engage. The worst was the Putney, with its cliches and its total lack of historical sense despite all the right names and places; the Stover had an interesting idea, as did the Roberson.

As far as the other stories, boring, boring and boring. The only possible author of interest of Asaro, I found some of the elements in her story interesting. I too agree with a few other reviewers in that I was troubled with the very young age of the protagonists.

If you are a fan of one of the authors, please take this book out of the library. This book is a shameless attempt to make money for shoddy second-rate work by beloved authors.