pen.books.and.scalpel

Someone in time is a collection of 16 short stories from renowned authors like Alex E. Harrow, Zen Cho, Seanan McGuire, Sarah Gailey, Jeffrey Ford, Nina Allan, Elizabeth Hand, Lavanya Lakshminarayanan, Catherine M. Valente, Sam J. Miller, Rohan Coleman, Margo Lanagan, Sameem Siddiqui, Theodora Goss, Carrie Vaughn and Ellen Klages. The stories are all based on time travel romance. Some are warm and emotional while some are funny. Others are thought provoking and heart breaking. PROS : The LGBTQ representation is good. Inclusion of subjects like climate change, civilisation, soulmate equation, historical romance etc. The asian representation is amazing. Few stories are awesome while the others are kind of okay-ish. Each chapter has a brief introduction to the author’s profile. Stunning cover. I got introduced to a lot of new and bipoc authors. Will work for everyone who love romance and science fiction. CONS: Like I said before, few stories were okay-ish and might not be as interesting

This book writes about different people belonging to the Tamil film industry in the 1980s. The patriarchal narcissistic hero, Arun, the star who is at the peak of his career. Even though he is self absorbed, he is under the constant pressure to perform better everyday to maintain his graph. There is Kalyani, the childhood love interest of Arun who gets to bear the results of Arun’s persuasive behaviour. Premlatha, the young mediocre actress, facing the same age old problem of career vs marriage battle. She comes as arrogant in the beginning and later turns out to be the only sensible character in the book. There are other characters like Bhaskar - Arun’s manager, Arumai Rajan - the aspiring singer and Manonmani - a struggling small time actress, trying to make her place in the Kollywood. PROS : The cultural appropriation was perfect. With the dialogues in the local slang, the mention about the famous songs and movies at that time, the book exactly paints a picture of Madras in the 80s.