![]() "Colours" is a war story set in roughly Napoleonic times. Instead it settles for being a story about petty office politics, with quickly forgettable characters. ![]() "How the Morning Glory Grows" could have been a steampunk police procedural about steampunk mecha and genetic engineering experts. The story of "No, They Dream of Mechanical Hearts" survives because of villains who aren't ruthless enough to press their case - or clever enough to recognise the implications of imprisoning an expert android crafter in a cell guarded by an android. "Morrow's Knight" takes a while to build up steam - a major strike against a short story, which does not have time to do that - and quickly becomes predictable. It isn't a story it's just a single long scene interrupted by musings. While it has a richly researched world with interesting characters, the story has neither conflict nor any sense of dynamism. The opening story,"'Ascension", is fundamentally static. I honestly expected more from this anthology. These stories also employ tired tropes, like blatantly stupid villains, stereotypical sneering hypocritical Westerners, and characters who are invincible by virtue of being mechanical. ![]() That would work in mainstream fiction, but some stories here are not, and fall flat because of it. The stories are all mellow, as smooth and pleasant as the cover. The novelty of the effort - a Singaporean steampunk anthology, with a mainly-female crew, covering imperialism and Asia - outweighs the actual experience of the stories. ![]()
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