REVIEW: Tales from Outer Lands (e-book) by Shira Glassman

Tales from Outer Lands is fantasy.

Review:

My edition of Tales from Outer Lands was published by Torquere Press. The author has since rereleased it as part of Tales from Perach.

This collection contains two stories, which I’ll write about separately.

“Rivka in Port Saltspray”

This takes place a year and a half after Rivka left her home, so I think it’s maybe a year and a half prior to the events in The Second Mango. Rivka is stuck in Port Saltspray with no way to get her dragon-horse to Zembluss, where she’d been hoping to fight in a civil war and earn a much-needed paycheck. A man named Waterweed seems to be the answer to her problems: he wants to hire her to fight in a competition for him. The prize, he says, is his beloved’s hand in marriage - because he’s missing an arm, he’d never stand a chance on his own.

This was a bit predictable, but still enjoyable. Rivka was my favorite character in The Second Mango, so it was nice to see her again. She hadn’t managed to make a name for herself yet and was in dire straits - nearly broke, stuck in a corrupt town, and in danger of losing Dragon, her loyal companion, if she couldn’t earn some money fast.

I loved that Rivka spent so much of the story basically looking out for others, both unconsciously or on purpose. She’s very much a “protector” sort of character. Not even her terrible financial situation could get her to compromise her morals, and I was really glad that she asked the questions I felt she needed to ask - I had suspicions about one particular character and was worried that this would be one of those “the main character doesn’t see the trap coming until it’s too late” stories.

Rivka’s analyses of the various fights were interesting, although I found myself wishing that the fights had been more vividly described. The absolute best part of the story, though, was probably when Rivka and Stella had some time alone together and, even though they didn’t speak the same language, figured out how to communicate via their shared religion.

All in all, this was pretty good. If I remember right, this story was what prompted me to buy a couple of Glassman’s works in the first place. I had heard that it contained an asexual character. If I interpreted things correctly, that character was probably Stella. The way her aunt described her made me think she was probably aromantic:

“‘No, she really doesn’t ever want to get married!’ said the aunt. ‘I even thought, you know, maybe she doesn’t like a man, then she can have a female companion. I had someone like that once. But no, not even that… she says she’s complete with family and friends.’”(28)

It was a nice little detail, although I had sort of been hoping for a bit more from the story. Ah well, at least I enjoyed getting to see more of Rivka.

“Aviva and the Aliens”

This takes place about 7 months after the end of The Second Mango. The people of Perach are preparing for Passover. Aviva is getting ready for the royal seder, putting away ingredients in her kitchen, when she and her entire kitchen are abducted by aliens. They’re tired of their flavorless ship food, and they want Aviva to cook them a good meal. However, if Aviva isn’t careful, she might end up being forced to cook for them forever.

The first story was about 30 pages long, whereas this one was about 15 - very short. It was bizarre and silly, too much so for my tastes. If the Mangoverse is going to be odd, I’d much prefer it to stick to fantasy oddness. Locust-like aliens abducting a random human in order to make her their new cook just didn’t seem to fit. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if the story had ended with “it was all a dream,” but no, as far as I could tell it was all supposed to be real.

It also didn’t help that the story’s logic didn’t hold up very well. The aliens’ reasons for abducting Aviva didn’t make much sense. What if the random person they chose had been a terrible cook? How did they know that Aviva’s definition of tasty food would fit their definition? What had they planned on doing after Aviva ran out of ingredients? The aliens’ reason for letting Aviva go again wasn’t much better.

Of the two stories, I only really liked “Rivka in Port Saltspray.” It’s probably for the best that Glassman’s newly released collection contains more stories, since I don’t think I’d recommend this two-story collection on its own to anyone except big Rivka fans and Mangoverse completists.

REVIEW: The Second Mango (e-book) by Shira Glassman

The Second Mango is fantasy containing both f/f and m/f romance. It's very short - I don't know the word count, but it came out to 140 pages on my Nook Simple Touch.

Review:

The Second Mango is the first book in Glassman’s Mangoverse series. I’m reviewing the Torquere edition. The author has since gotten the rights back from that publisher and rereleased it, and I don’t know if the two editions differ in any way.

The Second Mango stars Shulamit, the new queen of Perach, and Rivka, a female warrior for hire who travels disguised as a man. Shulamit’s father died two months prior to the start of the story, and since then she has both been trying to deal with her grief and find herself a lover - a difficult task, since she’s a lesbian and the only other lesbian she’d ever met was Aviva, who’d been her first and only lover and who had left her without explanation. Rivka agrees to help Shulamit find a woman who might love her and who she might love in return. Their journey brings them to a temple filled with nuns who have been turned to stone by an evil sorcerer. Rivka and Shulamit are the only hope the nuns have of breaking free of their curse.

Several aspects of this book intrigued me: the Jewish fantasy setting, the lesbian main character, and Shulamit’s food sensitivities. I enjoyed Shulamit and Rivka’s discussions comparing their two cultures - they both celebrated Chanukah, for example, but associated different foods with the holiday. I didn’t understand all of the Hebrew and Yiddish words the text was peppered with, but the context usually gave me some idea of what was being said, and I googled whatever else I wanted to know more about.

As far as Shulamit’s food sensitivities went, I can’t recall ever reading something dealing with similar issues. The closest I can think of, at the moment, is C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series, in which Bren, the human main character, has to be careful about what and how much he eats, because he can’t tolerate the same things his atevi hosts can. Shulamit’s biggest problems were 1) finding out which foods were the problem and 2) convincing everyone that she really did need to avoid certain foods (wheat and poultry) and that her sensitivity wasn’t just in her head or evidence that she was a spoiled princess hoping for more attention. Aviva, the person she eventually fell in love with, was the only one who believed her and made absolutely sure that her food never even touched surfaces contaminated by wheat or poultry.

I liked how sweet and fluffy the overall story was. The beginning of Shulamit and Rivka’s adventure was a lot of fun, and I particularly enjoyed the bittersweet flashback to Rivka’s earlier life, defying her uncle and gradually falling in love with Isaac, the wizard who secretly taught her swordplay.

Unfortunately, I did have a few issues with the book, mostly centered on Shulamit. It seriously bugged me that, only two months after her father’s death, Shulamit’s biggest concern wasn’t finding her footing as the new queen and ensuring her country’s continued stability, but rather running off to find herself a new lover. Shulamit herself felt a bit bad about this later on in the story, but that didn’t negate the fact that she’d done it.

Granted, she was young and sheltered, but she still came across as flightier and, well, hornier than I’d have liked. She told Rivka that she needed to join her in the search for a potential lover for her because she wanted to make sure that the woman was someone she could love in return, but I got the impression that she’d have given any pretty lesbian Rivka managed to find a shot. During the course of the story, she tried to find a potential lover at a brothel, hit on Rivka at least once, almost landed them both in a trap due to her attraction to a pretty stranger, and found herself attracted to a pretty nun in statue form. All of that, combined with my assumption that Shulamit had probably just been too focused on her own emotions to notice what was bothering Aviva enough to make her want to leave, made it difficult for me to enjoy how her romantic storyline turned out.

My other issue with the book was that the writing felt simplistic, which meshed oddly with some of the sexual content. It also made Shulamit come across as being even younger than she might actually have been. I can’t remember if her age was ever stated, but for a while there I assumed she wasn’t much older than maybe 16.

Despite my issues with the book, I’m glad I already own a collection of Mangoverse stories. I’m looking forward to reading them, especially since I already know that one of them features Rivka, my favorite character in The Second Mango.