BOOK REVIEW | SCORPION GIRL | JANEEN WEBB

BOOK REVIEW | SCORPION GIRL | JANEEN WEBB

ABOUT THE BOOK

We all have our demons. In Scorpion Girl, women of all ages face theirs. From battlefields to bedrooms, in these stories nothing is what it seems: creatures from myth, legend, history and literature rub shoulders with ordinary—and extraordinary—people. From ghosts to scientists, from eco-terrorists to time travellers, these courageous women come face to face with the uncanny, the supernatural and the bizarre. They meet the challenges with whatever they can muster—from the casual bravery of a woman warrior to the stoic endurance of a refugee child. Like all of us, they try to make sense of the unstable, conflicted world in which they find themselves.

Scorpion Girl is a must-read collection for everyone who enjoys fast-paced, unsettling, provocative fiction.

CONTENTS

• Preface: Stories with a sting in the tail
• A Pearl Beyond Price
• Monkey Business
• Fade to Grey
• Sorrow
• Future Perfect
• Mordor South
• When Dolores The Dancer Met Buckeye The Pirate
• Snakebite
• A Second Coming
• A Wondrous Necessary Woman
• Apostles of Mercy
• Night Out
• Gallipoli Belle
• Mother Diamond
• Spike
• The Dowager Duchess of Dingo Creek
• The Medici Stiletto
• Scorpion Girl

REVIEW

It’s always interesting when you are introduced to a new author you have never met before. You never know what you are going to get, especially when it comes to short stories which can have a plethora of different styles and subjects.

I must say that I absolutely adored this collection of stories from Janeen Webb. Whilst the stories are indeed entirely different, one of the main characteristics that came through her writing in each story was her wit and humour.

It’s very rare that I read a collection of stories where I enjoy every single one of them, but this was the case with Scorpion Girl.

As I said earlier, while the content of the stories are all different in content, they all deal with a similar subject, strong women facing tough situations.

The first story in the collection, A Pearl Beyond Price, tells the story of a young pearl fisher who is gifted treasures beyond reasoning by the eldritch, tentacled beasts that protect the isolative culture that she comes from. When she gets her first taste of the outside world in the form of Scandinavian sailors who have chanced upon the island for trade, she becomes besotted with a young crew member. However, she soon discovers that the outside world is not the place that she fantasised about and is soon faced with the harsh realities, leading to terrible consequences.

There are a number of stories which are loosely interconnected and tell the story of an enhanced female soldier who protects the daughter of a rich family in a future world. I loved the interconnectedness of these stories and how they progressed throughout the collection.

I have a number of favourites in the book that really stood out for me. Fade to Grey tells the story of female ghosts who have been butchered by a male gynaecologist whose malpractice has led to their deaths. When a new resident moves into the converted apartments, the ghosts enlist the help of a woman who was an investigative journalist to tell their stories. However, there is a sting in the tail to this story.

A Second Coming is a charming tale of what happens when a number of historic figures are brought back to the world of the living in Stonehenge. I really enjoyed the humour of the story and how the wights were dealt with in this tale.

Apostles of Mercy is an alternative take on H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. In this, one of the Martians crash land in Tasmania and the tale tells of how the Martian takes an alternative route in the conquest of the local inhabitants. Whilst the story has aspects of humour, it deals with the very real matter of colonisation and how the inhabitants of the time managed in their own primitive methods to deal with the invasion of people with greater technological advancements than themselves.

Finally, there is the story of Scorpion Girl which deals with the subject of asylum seekers and the trauma that they experience before they get to their destination and the indignities and cruelties that they experience whilst seeking asylum. This one is a tough read and deals with a number of different traumatic experiences. However, it aims to shed a light on the experiences of those who in their desperation resort to illegal traffickers and how they are dehumanised by the system.

Scorpion Girl is a really good collection of stories and I enjoyed every single story in this collection.