{"id":15273,"date":"2016-05-17T09:03:10","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T16:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2016\/05\/17\/15273.html"},"modified":"2016-05-17T09:03:10","modified_gmt":"2016-05-17T16:03:10","slug":"sh-flashback-talisman-by-traci","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2016\/05\/17\/sh-flashback-talisman-by-traci\/","title":{"rendered":"SH Flashback: “Talisman,” by Tracina Jackson-Adams"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A new entry in my about-to-be-weekly-again Strange Horizons<\/cite> retrospective:<\/p>\n

\n
“Talisman<\/a>,” by Tracina Jackson-Adams<\/dt>\n
A story about touch-hunger, and violence, and coming of age in one of the old families, and a dangerous kind of magic. (Published in 2002.) (5,400 words.)<\/dd>\n

It's getting worse and worse these days. Nobody understands how hard it is to stop at just hitting. Nobody gives me any credit for that.<\/p>\n

And nobody understands how damned good it feels to touch<\/em> someone.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n

(See also the full list of Flashback stories<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

(I'm still behind on posting Flashback stories, but if all goes well, I'll catch up later this week.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

SPOILERS FOLLOW<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

I like the way that this story handles gradual revelation: by the end of the first scene, it's only just beginning to become clear that this is not just an ordinary story of a horse-riding girl who gets distracted by a shirtless guy.<\/p>\n

And I love the worldbuilding as it develops over the course of the story—the sense of a rich and strange history and a system of familial magic that isn't quite like anything I've seen elsewhere. (I know about the Morrigan<\/a> from Irish mythology, but Cal's morrigan doesn't seem to be the same being.)<\/p>\n

And I especially love the way the touch thing plays out—Cal's hunger for touch, and her knowledge of what will happen if she gives in to that hunger.<\/p>\n

I think this story connects interestingly with our years-later unintended mini-theme of stories about violent women<\/a>, and especially “Who in Mortal Chains<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new entry in my about-to-be-weekly-again Strange Horizons retrospective: “Talisman,” by Tracina Jackson-Adams A story about touch-hunger, and violence, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories","category-strange-horizons"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}