Short Story Club: "Throwing Stones" by Mishell Baker

The final Short Story Club story is "Throwing Stones" by Mishell Baker. Once again, I find myself without a whole lot to say about it.

This is a gender-reversed Asian-flavored fantasy story. The nameless narrator lives in a city with canals and teahouses in an Empire with rigid class and gender roles, a writing system based on ideograms, and a system of temple examinations that offer the narrator a way out of low station. The big difference between this and other fantasy derived from Asian sources is that the gender roles are flipped: women hold all the positions of power, and a man's "only purpose was to produce more girls."

The nameless narrator is a manager at a teahouse, and has a deep secret that is guessable from the second paragraph of the story. The teahouse is frequented by a goblin, an ancient magical creature who can make himself appear human, and occasionally becomes involved with some of the customers. Eventually, the narrator and the goblin become involved, and find they have interests in common.

And, really, that's about all I have to say about this. It's a classic story of an individual trying to pass as a member of the ruling group in a heavily stratified society, only with the gender roles flipped. If you read any SF at all, you've probably read a thousand versions of this story with a girl trying to pass as male, now here's one with a man trying to pass as a woman.

Beyond that, I don't really know what to say. It's very well written and paced, and what we see of the world is nicely detailed. But it seemed a little too obviously to be making a Point, and as a result didn't really connect with me. Despite the fact that it's a well put together story, I still found myself doing the "Yes, you're very clever, now move it along," thing, and that's never good. But, of course, the usual disclaimers apply-- it's entirely possible that this is an idiosyncratic reaction on my part.

The one thing that struck me as a real flaw in the story, and not just something that failed to work for me, was the passivity of the narrator. I mean, this is supposedly a person who has embarked on a dangerous plan to subvert the basis of his whole society, and yet he never takes any initiative, ever. He doesn't approach the goblin until the goblin notices him first, he just sort of falls into the relationship with the goblin without really wanting it, and he doesn't really have a plan for how to get into the Temple structure until the goblin practically pushes him into it.

This is the one real departure from the standard disguised-gender story template-- in the typical girl-disguised-as-a-boy story, the lead character has a powerful drive to achieve something. Here, there's next to nothing-- a vague sense that he probably has magic ability, and a sad story about a brother who ran afoul of the authorities. There's no sense that this is something he needs to do, just a kind of a shrug and a lack of a better plan. The narrator is supposed to be risking death to flout the deepest prohibitions of his society, but he comes off more like an English major applying to law school because, well, do you have a better idea?

It's the biggest departure from the template, and about the worst point at which you could depart from the template, because it leaves me wondering how this big drip managed to pull off the disguise in the first place. "Aimless" is not a good characteristic for the lead in this kind of story. Put that together with the obvious Point-making, and, well, it just didn't work that well for me.

And that's all I've got. Niall suggests that there may be a summary discussion of the whole Short Story Club slate next week, which will be sort of interesting.