Geektastic: a review

[bonny_kate]

I recently finished a collection of geeky short stories, Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd. I was massively underwhelmed. There were some stories I couldn't stand, but mostly, they were forgettable. Kelly Link's Secret Identity was tremendously well written (I go back and forth on her work, my favorite being Magic for Beginners, which I fell in love with when I first read it, and have since vacillated on), but somewhat disturbing in terms of the story itself. Other than that, I quite enjoyed Garth Nix's The Quiet Knight, but didn't think it his best work at all. It was rather predictable. The whole collection, while occasionally having moments of being amusing (the premise of the first story, a Jedi and a Klingon hooking up at a sci-fi convention is hilarious, for instance), fails because it stays within the nice, comfortable levels of geekiness. It is geeky, but conventionally so. None of the stories challenged how I think about geeks, or what I think it means to be geeky, or what I think about an aspect of being geeky. They aren't bad stories, I just found them unremarkable (and a few were more explicit than I expected).

Comments

[hippie1025.livejournal.com]

That's unfortunate, as I've been really looking forward to that one (if my library ever gets it in!). They gave me awesome little "geek candies" several trade shows ago (long before the galleys were anywhere near ready), and I've been kind of waiting ever since. I'll read it anyway, but I guess I should lower my expectations of the collection.

[bonny-kathryn.livejournal.com]

The stories were very geeky, and most of the stories worked as fluff, so hopefully you'll enjoy it.