Ada Hoffmann

In the however-many dozen stories that are retold over and over through time, I have always found the death, decent, and rebirth one of the most powerful and adaptable. In their collection of poetry and short stories Resurrections, Ada Hoffmann brings us down into many different types of underworlds and, hopefully, brings us back up in the end.

I was already passingly familiar with Hoffmann and their Weird space opera Outside trilogy, though its been burning a hole in my TBR. That has moved up the list a few places after Resurrections. In the story notes (which I love in my collections, btw), Hoffmann talks about selecting the pieces for this collection around a loose theme of "'underworlds' - how we descend into them, how we try to find our comfort each other within them, and how we eventually find our way back out." The main characters in most of these stories are explicitly or implied to be autistic and queer, and I highly recommend going to Hoffmann's website where they run an Autistic Book List to expand your reading horizons.

The alternating stories and verse are sometimes dark, often challenging, and with endings that stretch the definition of "happy". They run the full range of Hoffmann's decade-long writing career, moving from fairy tale to space opera to steampunk paleontological adventure! The latter, 'The Scrape of Tooth and Bone', might be one of the highlights for me for its sense of fun and creativity. Likewise, the two stories set in the world of The Outisde were fascinatingly strange - and very much encouraged me to finally get to the novels! I suspect I will be revisiting 'Variations on a Theme From Turnadot' as well. What started, according to Hoffmann's note, as a fix-it fic for the Puccini opera has become here a strong story of power disparities and storytelling. 'I Sing Against the Silent Sun', written in collaboration with the excellent Merc Fenn Wolfmoor, blew my socks off and broke my heart - after that, I couldn't even remember which of the earlier stories fell flat for me - whatever the case, they were worth it for that fantastic conclusion.

I was provided a copy of this book to review by Apex Books.… (more)

This was really good. The characters are well done. The story is original and interesting. It was sometimes a bit of an effort to get through, but mostly it read very well.
I usually enjoy characters that are not too typical, and in this case there were 2 autistic women, one of whom has a relationship with a third woman, and there was an angel who can change not only appearance, but also sex. So plenty of diversity, and all well done. In some books, the diversity can feel contrived, but here it felt natural.

Aside from that, I have to say that the bad guys were very well done as well. Partially because they don't feel too bad for a large part of the time. But they are extremely callous and I seriously wanted them to die by the end of the book.… (more)