Name: Love & Rockets
Author: Anthology
Publisher: DAW
Number of Pages: 320
Source: Sent to me by Anita Ensal, one of the authors
Love and Rockets as a whole surprised me with how many of the short stories I ended up liking. I really thought I would just be able to read Gini Koch's story under her other name, Anita Ensal. I was so happy to be proven wrong-there were just two stories near the end of the book I couldn't get through, and that's because they were more sci fi oriented then sci fi romance oriented. Actually, most of the stories in this half were more sci fi oriented then the ones in the first half were, but I still manged to enjoy most of them.
The second half of the book had about 8 stories, and here are the ones that I enjoyed the most:
Music in Time by Dean Wesley Smith-This was about a down on his luck singer who had seen better days. He's offered a chance to make it big-but there's a catch. It's in the future, and while he won't age the trip takes a total of 90 years. This is one of the stories I didn't think I'd like because it really didn't have any romance in it, but there was just something about it that made me keep reading it. It just made me stop and think about if I could take a chance and go into the future to make it big or not.
In The Night by Steven H Silver-This was a really different kind of story for me as well. It's about a women who works on a space station, and is the voice that all the ships hear when they come into port. One of the guys on a ship she helps divert from disaster, tries to become friends with her. Dianthe, though is so used to being alone that it takes her almost the entire time the guy is in port to warm up to him. It ends on a somewhat positive note, but was just kind of sad...
If This Were A Romance by Shannon Page and Jay Lake-You know with a title like this, it's not going to end good...but I still liked it. This is about Loren, a girl who works on the docks of a big space ship. She becomes infatuated with the captain, and hopes to become his consort. She ends up being caught by the guards when trying to see him after his image haunts her for days. Instead of being offered the consort job, she's offered another job instead. This was another hauntingly sad story...
While most of the stories in the second half of the book were darker and sadder then those in the first half, they were still compelling to read. This was the perfect break from the Urban Fantasy and romances that I normally read. Every now and then it's good to try something new. :)
