I picked this up at Kontur in Uppsala last month, and ended up reading it on the train from Manchester Airport after stupidly leaving the book I had been reading on the plane. To be honest, I’d not been enjoying that book – it was The Music of the Spheres, and the writing was pretty bad – so it was no great loss. I was annoyed, however, about losing the 100 Yugoslavian dinar note I’d been using as a bookmark. (Um, I see there’s one for sale on eBay, from a seller located not all that far from Manchester Airport – they’re asking £1.40, although the market price appears to be 99p…) To be honest, I thought I might have read Her Pilgrim Soul before, but on reflection I think I’ve read some of its contents before – likely in one or another of Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best SF anthologies, which I used to buy for many years. It’s a collection of well-crafted stories, a mix of science fiction and fantasy, most on the light side of either genre (but not the lighter side), and most not especially memorable. It’s been more than a month since Kontur, and I can remember very little about the contents of Her Pilgrim Soul. A good collection, I suppose, but in a way that has no lasting impact and leaves only a vague impression. Fiction, of course, should do more than that; but most manages much less. ( )

Versatile author.?á These literary SF stories are nothing like the historical fiction of Moloka'i, except that they're worthy of being shelved as Literature (not ghettoed as pulp) and that they include love stories.?á I am def. a fan of the author.?á Some of the stories were a little oblique - I don't follow superheroes so I think I missed something in Steel"... and the yuck factor in "Jamie's Smile" was either too high for me or I misunderstood it....?á But the title story is poignant, as are "Healer" and "Sea Change"... which were the least subtle of the stories.?á Hmm.?á Anyway, the 'science' of the SF is pretty implausible, without even a resort to hand-wavium, but that's ok with me because I'm interested in stories of ideas, in the 'What If' of SF.?á I think Brennert takes more care with history when he does HF like Moloka'i." ( )