Melanie R. Meadors

I'm a huge fan of Martha Well's Raskura/The Three Worlds series but not so much a fan of the Mech trope, so I had opted not to back the Kickstarter fund for this particular publication. However, it's now more than a year since the project launched, the price has dropped on the digital edition, I had some Amazon digital credits in my pocket, and I figured I could spend a couple bucks to read a single short story.

"Birthright" seems to take place chronologically earlier than the previously published short story featuring this cast of characters ("The Almost Last Voyage of the Wind-ship Escarpment", Stories of the Raksura, Volume 2), based on the fact that a major character in the latter is not mentioned in the former, which I found a touch disappointing and mostly because I had burning curiosity as to what would happen after "Almost Last Voyage" and "Birthright" did nothing to satisfy it. "Birthright" does explore a bit into the other characters, but it's so dang short that it reads as here, there, done. The Kickstarter also funded an illustration to accompany this short story, but I didn't think the illustration fit the story well (or maybe ran so counter to my imagination that I could only rouse a meh for it).

Three stars. Probably a must for the completist of this author or series, but I think I would have been better off waiting and hoping that it reprinted with a publication that was a more suited match for my taste.

(I did not read the other stories in this anthology.)… (more)