Each piece in this collection is told by a different narrator, so the sparse description and brevity doesn’t have the benefit of building on itself over time. They do build into a characterization of the person of Shame, who is never a narrator, but while I like the idea the result was weak.

I often found the stories ungrounded, because they are little more than a voice describing only one extraordinary, often painful moment in their lives. I get no sense of who they are other than this ’sin’ and their reaction to their ‘Corrections.’ As another commenter noted, the voices often sound the same and end up blurring together. To me the voices didn’t seem like realistic portrayals of the inner thoughts of people from these walks of life, but rather the tropes of people from these walks of life. There was little nuance in their characterization, nothing for me to connect to something deeper.

Admonishments of Kherishdar relies much more heavily on the morally relativistic ‘This might not work for us but it works for them’ idea than Aphorisms, and so the weakness there was magnified significantly.

The Ai-Naidar are bipedal mammals who have developed a (presumably) agrarian-based, hierarchical, urbanized civilization. They appear to have two eyes, ears, hands, feet, and a mouth. From reading both collections I have no reason to believe their weather, geology, flora and fauna, solar radiation, gravity, physical senses, or diet are in any way significantly different from ours (they do not, for instance, have a bi-annual plague of fire-eating insects). Essentially, they are us, but with fur, cat-ears, claws, and a tail. Thus it’s hard for me to suspend my disbelief when presented with ‘They’re different from us and what doesn’t work for us works for them.’ I don’t see how they are different from us, or why shaming, torture, and brainwashing would work healthily for them. Also, despite how ‘different’ they are, they seem to espouse rather mainstream views on monogamy, abortion, and possibly masochism. I also don’t buy that a society insisted to be a near utopia would have the psychological ills described. Those psychological ills are very much grounded in our civilization.

The stories are still thought-provoking, but without the precision and grace of Aphorisms. There are a handful of stories in here that evoked the same rewarding internal conflicts in me that Aphorisms did that I think are worth checking out:

-Non-Conformity -Vanity -Perversion -Ignorance -Tolerance -Cradle -Calling

Aphorisms didn’ t give me the latter as I’d hoped, but it gave me plenty of food for contemplation. It became clear very rapidly that the Ai-Naidar are hierarchical, urbanized, and civilized, which are not only pretty stock fare for sci-fi and fantasy, but which are, for lack of a less dramatic term, anathema to me. The narrator, the Calligrapher, explicitly states that the purpose of writing these stories is to show outsiders how their culture can work for them, when those same structures are so destructive for outsiders (including humans, presumably).

The author seems to approach the subject from a very morally relativistic perspective: ‘What works for them works for them. They’re different from us. If we judge them we are only being culturally near-sighted.’ In my personal perspective I have one foot planted in cultural relativity, and the other firmly grounded in my own personal experience. I believe objectivity is an illusion. I can only examine things from what I know and have experienced. So when I read Aphorisms, it was not without personal reactions as the characters repeatedly reaffirmed and glorified the strict conformity of caste and rank, held in check by public shamings and psychological reconditioning.

Aphorisms is, however, full of concepts that resonate very deeply with me as well. They have a separate concept of touch and sexuality with its own word and social place. They have an unpretentious ease with children. There is an amazing intimacy achieved between characters through an intrinsic knowing of their place in the world and being able to navigate social interactions by that knowledge. The imagery of calligraphy, and calligraphy as a form of healing, has a breathtaking, simple beauty.

What I really appreciate about these stories is the internal conflict they evoked in me when I found concepts that deeply touched me in contexts that did not. The discomfort of this juxtaposition made me think, made me examine myself on a feeling level that has been very rewarding. And that is exactly what I believe the power of story is. Stories entertain, yes, but stories show us who we are, show us nooks and paths and places in ourselves we might not have found otherwise. These stories have that power.

Where the stories really fell flat for me was in depth of characterization. Twenty-five stories by the Calligrapher, some examining incredibly intimate moments, and I still feel like I have very little idea of who he is, even taking into account how he fully identifies as his caste and role in life. He was often portrayed in the role of wise-person that others go to for advice, and yet I have no idea how old he is (except that he is not an elder and is a father), or how he came to be in that role. I don’t know what his formative experiences were, what makes him the way he is other than the bones of his society.

I feel even more in the dark on this level about Ai-Naidar culture. The stories are almost completely ungrounded in the landscape. Cultures spring from their physical environment, and there are almost no references to nature or physical subsistence. The weather is rarely mentioned, the landscape other than the city described only once as ‘bucolic loveliness.’ I literally have no idea what their planet is like. I don’t know how an empire of five planets feeds itself, except that it involves farming at some point because of a single description of a field with a fence. I don’t know what animals populate their world, what stimuli in their evolution that would cause the Ai-Naidar to actually be different from us. It was extremely difficult for me to suspend my disbelief and find ‘They’re different and it works for them’ realistic without any of this information.

Even with this, I appreciate that the author explored the concepts they did consciously. Many people hop on the fictional totally-morally-okay empire train without an iota of examination. The author’s prose is gracefully simple and compelling, the emotional and interpersonal imagery gorgeous. I’m really glad I found Aphorisms, and the inner exploration reading it triggered.

God Eaters has some definite thematic parallels to Metanoia (in fact, just take the same phenotypes of the main characters and reverse the roles), which makes me wonder if this was a prototype for the webcomic, or vice versa. Or maybe the author just enjoys those themes. I’ve gotten through 17 of 31 chapters, and I’m not sure I can do much more than skim the rest out of curiosity. It has many of the stock slightly edgy yaoi romance elements: killers and innocents, virgins and whores, hurt-comfort, prostitution, forbidden homosexuality, and sexual love healing wounded souls (which I personally think is a cultural fallacy that can be dangerous to reinforce), but much better written than the usual fare. There is much candy-tastic description of hair, eyes, voices, skin, etc. Usually the only time I go for stories like like this is when I’m straight up looking for porn, which this has very little of as far as I’ve read (and possibly not in the places the author intended).

I’m more a fan of execution in stories than content, and God Eaters is an example of my least favorite form of storytelling. Other commenters have noted the weakness of the preface, which pretty much outlines what’s going to happen in the rest of the story. I’m given information every step of the way, a fairly constant stream of personal, cultural, geographic, and mythological explanations. I’m never left to wonder. I felt no sense of discovery or anticipation when reading. The pacing is pretty much the same throughout the story, making it feel like a steady flow of water without any change in the current or direction. I didn’t feel any building momentum, or any slow savoring. An incredibly touching scene of hair combing after trauma is given fewer words and as much emotional space as a robbery.

There is some really engaging description of godhood and visions, and the occasional razor-sharp insight into the physical practicality of things. I appreciate the places where the author steps away from the tropes of this genre, and both main characters seem to have more self-awareness around healthy relationship dynamics than the average story of this type, though the "I can’t live without you you’re the only person I can ever feel connected to" shtick is still pretty strong.

If you want a pretty well written yaoi romance with the elements listed above, you might very well enjoy this immensely. But despite my love of the author’s other work, and my general interest in yaoi that involves a lot of bleeding, God Eaters isn’t for me.

The writing is subtle in tone, but carries the reader along. Those who enjoy historical fiction will appreciate the author’s descriptions of London in the 1880’s. The characters are well developed, and the prose is descriptive without bogging the reader down into minute details.  This is a fun read with a surprising, twist at the end.

Suki is neither a Mary Sue, nor an anti-hero. She’s classist, sexist, heterosexist, racist, ageist, and probably a bunch of other -ists, and utterly sympathetic. She’s human, and building her life in the ways she has been taught and the ways circumstances provide her. She is very much a product of civilization. Sometimes I question her ability to write down past conversations in such precise detail, but I can suspend my disbelief in that I can believe that someone in her social role would need those kinds of skills to survive in the political climate of her empire.

I just got to book two, and it feels different. But it *is* different, and as much as I think wistfully of the flavor of the first book, I think the difference in feeling serves the story. So the second book is different than what I first loved, but it is worthy and intriguing and exciting all itself.

I am continually drawn to stories that don’t hand me the answers. That provide me with what I need to know, then let me —make me— use my skills of observation and make my own connections. I don’t want to be told what’s going on, I want to find out. I don’t want to be spoon-fed an understanding of what’s happening for the characters or in the plot, I want to develop my own relationship with the story. It slows the pace down, makes it more real to life. Sometimes I’m horribly confused, but I like that.

I love the precise, minute details. The setting and characters of most scenes are sharply clear to me, and everything outside of that particular scene seems dim by comparison. I love the dialogue that doesn’t try to include me as the reader, because the characters already know what they’re talking about and they have no reason to try to explain it to me. They are real, in this way, not fictional.

Ysabel, who could be the most stereotypical of characters, is slowly revealed facet by facet to be an actual person. The Mooncalfe and the Duke fascinate me. There are many characters who I simply want to know more about.

This story is a great mirror for me as a storyteller because I use similar techniques. It shows me what works for me as a reader and what doesn’t, which can help me see what might work in my stories and what might not.

There’s something often-times square-edged about the flow of this story, something a little jagged about some scenes or lines that catches me and slows me down instead of drawing me along. It’s not how I would write it, but it may be intentional on the part of the author. There’s also a lot of description of clothes I don’t know about (I’m a simple soul), and songs I’ve never heard of. Sometimes I find this distracting, other times it really enhances the experience for me. Sometimes the description takes a dive for overkill, which blurs the visual into a goopy grey puddle for me instead of clarifying them.

But I dig this story so much right now. I’m glad I came back.

I love the contrasts to the Disney-fied version of Cinderella. The step-family is truly family, and beauty is not blonde and demure and dainty. I particularly enjoyed the author’s take on witchcraft and Wise Women, and how it affected the characters culture and relationships. The writing is snappy, informative without overloading you, and didn’t drag. The sex is honest, and while a bit glorified, not the typical over-the-top fare of your average romance or erotica.

The one aspect that turned me off was the prince’s obsession, and how he kept getting his way. His deception was fine— he had his reasons. But the obsessive interrogations that led to people mutilating themselves was quite off-putting. It all could have been resolved with a little radical honesty. And he got his way, he got the girl, he got married, he got a queen. That fell flat for me. I did like, however, Ember’s unapologetic description of what many people would consider morally questionable. She wasn’t evil, in my mind, her conception of the world was just different. A longer telling might have helped add depth to the characters, but I found them all refreshingly human in this brief retelling.

This is, as other reviewers have mentioned, the way fairy tales should be. Honest, authentic, and compelling.

Upon reading, however . . . It just didn’t seem very squirrel-like. Maybe I’ve watched too many squirrels. It didn’t seem like realistic squirrel social interactions or motivations (other than food, which they’re pretty big on). I found the anthropocentric projections of hierarchy and houses and political machinations off-putting. I did enjoy some of the squirrel’s-eye-view portrayals of objects and places many humans take for granted, but often found them unrealistic. The writing style dragged, and often felt clunky.

I think it’s an interesting premise, and might be a doorway for people shifting from their own anthropocentric perspectives.

Like Tales of MU, I appreciate how Mei Lin openly discusses non-mainstream sexualities in the story, though I have misgivings about how they are portrayed. As far as I read, which was quite extensively, often non-mainstream sexualities were treated as coping mechanisms for trauma or family issues. I think this can be dangerous, because while she acknowledges and even celebrates these sexualities, it portrays them as "not normal" and without possibility of being natural orientations of their own. Admittedly this may have changed since the last time I read.

I was intrigued by several of the story lines, especially the ultimate role and fate of Teacher, and the eldest royal daughter’s relationship across time with a strong woman leader. I also appreciated her deft use of violence that is realistically brutal, but doesn’t wallow in it like a gore-fest. Near the end of my time reading, I found myself dragging with the pace and quantity of the story, but I liked it enough that I think I’ll pick up the revised print edition.

A five-day-a-week update schedule has a certain allure, but even as a slut for detail, I found the sheer amount of information presented about every day (or even every hour) of Mac’s life overwhelming. I also feel like the quality of the writing has suffered for it, though Erin has both talent and an eye for dialogue. I enjoyed the twists on classic fantasy concepts, though at other times I was turned off by the extreme parallels to the modern, industrialized world. That’s a matter of preference, though, not quality.

I eventually stopped reading just because of the inordinate detail and my flagging motivation to wade through it all to "find out what happens."

I think Tales of MU is worth a look, and is noteworthy for its role in the webfiction movement.