{"id":1973,"date":"2014-08-24T08:54:38","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T16:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1973"},"modified":"2014-08-24T08:54:38","modified_gmt":"2014-08-24T16:54:38","slug":"review-kalpa-imperial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1973","title":{"rendered":"Review: Kalpa Imperial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Argentinian writer Angelica Gorodischer has put together a winning collection of short stories in <em>Kalpa Imperial<\/em>.\u00a0 As with much interesting writing, the genre defies easy classification.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re a SF reader, these might be light fantasy; if you&#8217;re more literary, they might be stories of magical realism.\u00a0 I came to them from a recommendation from <a title=\"Review: What Makes This Book So Great\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1936\">Jo Walton<\/a>, so someone thinks they&#8217;re SF.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of which genre bucket you put them in, the stories are rewarding and enjoyable.\u00a0 Each is a tale of some facet of an imaginary Empire told by a different anonymous storyteller.\u00a0 Gorodischer gets the most out of those constraints, showcasing different storytelling styles and kinds of stories.\u00a0 Each storyteller is different, and visible in the text, though how and why differs widely.\u00a0 Most tellingly, each has a different reason for telling the stories.\u00a0 There are compelling reflections on the reasons we tell stories and methods we tell them.<\/p>\n<p>The stories range from the personal to the political.\u00a0 There are stories of individual lives that shaped the Empire and histories of cities that make it up.\u00a0 Each has a point without being overly didactic.<\/p>\n<p>The writing itself is beautiful.\u00a0 There are well-turned phrases and perfectly textured paragraphs embedded in these well told stories.\u00a0 Ursula Le Guin did the translation, and did the writing justice.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Argentinian writer Angelica Gorodischer has put together a winning collection of short stories in Kalpa Imperial.\u00a0 As with much interesting writing, the genre defies easy classification.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re a SF reader, these might be light fantasy; if you&#8217;re more literary, they might be stories of magical realism.\u00a0 I came to them from a recommendation from [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1973"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1974,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1973\/revisions\/1974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}