PodCastle Reviews.

[tablesaw]

After soliciting podcasts, I started listening to the Escape Artists triumvirate of podcasts, Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and PodCastle. I thought I'd write up brief reviews, but the process was taking (in time) and getting (in space) too long, so I decided to split them up.

I'm starting with my reviews of PodCastle, mostly because it was the group that I'd finished most of. Also because it's the podcast I'm enjoying most of the three. Unfortunately, it means I need to do some explaining about Stephen Eley. Eley is the editor of Escape Pod, and reads a number of the stories there. And I've started to have a really hard time listening to his readings, especially his attempts at women's voices. I'll have more to say when I write up the Escape Pod episodes, but because he's read a few PodCastle stories as well, it comes up below.

• No. 1. "Come Lady Death" by Peter Beagle (read by Paul S. Jenkins). A colorful cast of aristocrats invite Death to a party, and are (unsurprisingly) surprised at the outcome. This was a really amazing way to get started listening to these podcasts. It's a little morality play set in Georgian England; both the text and Jenkins's performance captured an older style very well, and it was an effortless listen.
  
  
• Miniature 1. "Stoneborn" by Loreen Heneghan. The best flash fiction always feels more like poetry; so did this one. I don't recall anything particular about the performance.
  
  
• No. 2. "For Fear of Dragons" by Carrie Vaughn (read by "Cunning Minx"). This story put me to sleep, though, to be fair, this was my intention. I started the playback when I was trying to get to sleep, but was still feeling mind-restless. Both the story and the performance seemed a bit bland, and I wan't compelled to listened to the end when I woke up. The part I heard was about a dragon and a virgin who is offered up to the dragon, but who is secretly a plucky heroine.
  
  
• No. 3. "Run of the Fiery Horse" by Hilary Moon Murphy (read by Rachel Swirsky). A young girl defies Chinese culture and a Chinese demon, as is her astrological nature. I enjoyed this enough while I was reading it, but I don't really have anything to say about it, which may be a not-so-good sign.
  
  
• Miniature 2. "Giant" by Stephanie Burgis (read by Jonathan Sullivan). A nice little story, and a nice little reading. It's a simple POV-change retelling of a fairy-tale trope, and it works very well.
  
  
• No. 4. "Goosegirl" by Margaret Ronald (read Mary Robinette Kowal). A retelling of a Grimm-captured folktale I wasn't familiar with. In the original, a princess and a witch exchange places by means of magic. In this retelling, instead of waiting for the rex ex machina, the confused princess takes a very deep look into the meaning of identity. I really enjoyed this story. The performance felt awkward, but it didn't take long to hear that it was deliberately so. I especially liked the book of magic, which, as far as I can tell, is a Merriam-Webster's dictionary.
  
  
• No. 5. "The Ant King: A California Fairy Tale" by Benjamin Rosenbaum (read by Stephen Eley). This was my worst run-in with Eley's characterization. The surreal text was drained of all of its poetry, and by the time Eley got to the dialogue with the Ant King, I was so aggravated that I had to shut down the playback. I'd still like to read the story sometime.
  
  
• Miniature 3. "Pahwahke" (or "Pahwakhe") by Gord Sellar (read by C.G. Furst). There was a really nice synergy between the text and the performance that combined to make this really sound like a told story, as opposed to a written one. It's a ghost story told by a Native American, though the ghosts are not what one would expect.
  
  
• No. 6. "Hotel Astarte" by M.K. Hobson (read by Paul Tevis). I've met Tevis and listened extensively to his Have Games, Will Travel podcast, and I was pleasantly surprised by his performance. It applied a very light touch to the text that worked well.
  
  I can't say I liked the story all that much, though. Though the title references ancient Middle Eastern mytholgy, it's really a retelling of "American" mythology. It's the story of Columbia, the personification of the America of the United States. She is blonde and "divinely fair." It's the America whose destiny is and always was manifest, and who owes nothing to the Americans who lived before colonization or who brought for the purpose of servitude. Not only is this a mythology I'm not interested in hearing about, it's a mythology that's actively harmful. While Hobson calls the story "a mix of 'Historical Fantasy' and 'Secret History,'" the carefully pruned topiary of this sort of history is more of a fantasy itself, and its elevation turns other real, actual history into secrets and fantasy in the minds of the mainstream United States.
  
  
• No. 7. "Fear of Rain" by Robert T. Jeschonek (read by Mur Lafferty). Flood comes to Johnstown, PA. What I liked most about the story was the descriptions of Johnstown, but there was a lot that just seemed off. The story's logic just didn't sit well with me, and I felt the ending didn't make a whole lot of sense. I don't recall the performance very clearly.
  
  (But let's take a moment to look at the logo of the City of Johnstown website. Their logo is the basin with the buildings entirely covered in water. That's really creepy.)
  
  
• No. 8. "The Osteomancer's Son" by Greg van Eekhout (read by Ben Phillips). A down-and-out magician undertakes the greatest heist in Los Angeles at the La Brea Tar Pits. My favorite story so far, a shocker to everyone, I know. A fantasy set in a wonderfully detailed alternate Los Angeles? How could I not fall for it? I also loved the system of osteomancy (bone magic) as portrayed in the story. I'm likely to buy one of the anthologies with this story. Looking at the author's livejournal (gregvaneekhout), it appears that he's working on a book proposal based on this story. To which I say: awesome.
  
  Phillips's performance as the narrator was excellent, but I didn't think he was as great with the outlying characters. I think my infatuation with the story has made me overly harsh, though.
  
  
• Miniature 4. "Hippocampus" by M.K. Hobson (read by Stephen Eley). Heteronyms are reality! I figured with a flash story, I could just grit my way through Eley's performance, but now I think that it soured me on the text.
  
  
• No. 9. "Wisteria" by Ada Milenkovic Brown (read by Máia Whitaker). By far the best performance I've heard in these podcasts, and certainly well up on the best performance fo a short story ever. Whitaker's reading is both technically brilliant and emotionally evocative. Which is good, because the story itself isn't really a plot story, it's an emotion story, and Whitaker presents a wonderful rollercoaster of aching.
  
  
• No. 20. "Cup and Table" by Tim Pratt (read by Stephen Eley). A dirty trick, this was. It seemed like I was going to be okay with Eley's reading, since the only woman character had very few lines. And then halfway through the story: Bam! New character! It's the squeaky voice for you now! And by that time I was so engrossed by the text that I had to push through it.
  
  I guess the story is about the quest for the Holy Grail, though one abstracted to the point of ironic MacGuffinism, an object that means something different to every character. But that very simple plot is illuminated with an amazing amount of marginalia, tangential flourishes that really make up the bulk of what makes the story interesting. They rarely advance the plot because the plot is an inevitability, marching on heedless of anything else, which made it a great story to listen to. Did I miss something? Doesn't matter; it wasn't essential, and there's something new just coming up.

PodCastle is definitely my favorite of the three podcasts, and I'm only upset that there's less backlog I get to sift through.

TueNYTX: 4:30.