{"id":782,"date":"2014-11-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T00:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=782"},"modified":"2025-01-01T14:01:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T01:01:58","slug":"rogues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2014\/11\/08\/rogues\/","title":{"rendered":"Rogues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois (Eds<\/strong>)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Titan Books<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, November 8th 2014<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>Rogues<\/em> is a cross-genre anthology in which the central character is, in some shape or form, a scoundrel. The resulting is an interesting if patchy collection where a straight crime caper rubs shoulders with an extra-terrestrial con-job and historical mystery with supernatural fantasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Although it is a bold experiment and I sympathise with the editors\u2019 attempt to combat the increasing fragmentation of the publishing market, I\u2019m not sure it is entirely successful. In part this is a matter of personal preference&nbsp; \u2013 I\u2019ve never been all that interested in scam stories and I don\u2019t find rascals as fascinating as Martin and Dozious obviously do \u00ad\u2013 but it also reflects the difficulty of arranging a collection around a central theme. For all the differences in style and form there are only so many possible variations on the classic trickster trope, and while some stories are both great fun and very clever, being confronted by 21 of them <em>en masse<\/em> can lead to aesthetic indigestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">That said, I was pleasantly surprised by find myself enjoying stories by authors I would never otherwise have bothered with, and Gillian Flynn gets my vote for the best line of the year (<em>\u201cI didn\u2019t stop giving hand jobs because I wasn\u2019t good at it\u2026I quit because when you give 23,456 hand jobs over a three-year period, carpel tunnel syndrome is a very real thing\u201d<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><em>Rogues <\/em>is fun to dip into and I am certainly going to check out the editors previous two collections, <em>Warriors<\/em> and <em>Dangerous Women. <\/em>But I\u2019ll be checking them out of the Public library rather than adding them to my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/collection-stories-scoundrels-central-characters-bold-experiment\">https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/collection-stories-scoundrels-central-characters-bold-experiment<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois Eds<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review November 8th 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[193,349,370,18,375,407],"class_list":["post-782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-193","tag-anthology","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-short-story","tag-speculative-sci-fi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=782"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1745,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/782\/revisions\/1745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}