This is the second volume of the Warrior Wisewoman anthologies, billed as “stories about powerful and remarkable women.” Not all the woman here are powerful, not all of them are even truly remarkable – but the anthology certainly delivers a variety of solid, clear stories revolving around women, and that’s pretty interesting on its own.

In Jennifer Brissett’s “The Executioner”, our protagonist is called upon to do her civic duty, which is exactly what the title implies. Brissett takes an unusual course in this story, inasmuch as it presents perhaps the most gentle, compassionate, humane execution one could imagine to be possible. There’s not a hint of dystopia or totalitarianism. The power of the piece is in its demonstration that even this soft, sanitized execution is a traumatic experience. By imagining the very best an execution could possibly be, “The Executioner” makes painfully clear where the more common variety must stand.

In “Shop Talk,” by Ian Whates, an outlandish clothing shop opens Gemma’s eyes to the truth of the society she has grown up in. The story is light and engaging, but as it progressed, I found myself more and more exasperated by two central flaws. First among these is the animosity between Earthpeople and the estranged off-world colonists – it is incessantly stressed, driving the story, yet it seems to lack even the flimsiest foundation. They never give a reason for fearing each other, not even a shallow-minded stereotype or a racial slur. Nor does the issue seem to occupy the Earthlings at all when they don’t happen to be in close proximity to the colonists, i.e.: ever. They just… don’t like each other. Because. But they really, really don’t like each other, you see? Because.

The other difficulty I had was with the story’s “let me take you away from all this” plotline, which is cliche and has the uncomfortable feeling of gratuitous wish fulfillment. The idea the Gemma is being chosen on merit is unconvincing, since the only merit by which she seems to have been chosen is that the author has arbitrarily chosen her to be the only one spared from the arbitrary hatred towards the colonists. What remains does not hold up well against scrutiny.

Still, it’s certainly a fun story to read, especially for its many clever details concerning domestic technology in the future.

Jennifer R. Povey’s “Working the High Steel” introduces Malisse, a Mohawk woman who insists on working in construction – the bigger, the better – in defiance of her tribe’s traditions and elders. Marshall, her fellow tribesman and construction worker, is with her on a project bridging earth with a space station – and he’d like her to leave construction and become his wife.

This story really didn’t manage to grab me. It’s got a lot going on, but none of the details caught my attention or provoked me to care. The characters are flat and stereotypical. The trouble on the project feels minor and nonthreatening. Both Mohawks and construction work are unusual themes, but I didn’t feel that they influenced the story in any substantial way. I’m sure some readers will enjoy the drama and the space adventure, but I think that most will find the story unremarkable.

In “Changer”, by Ardath Mayhar, we see through the eyes of the alien Gularans when agents of the Consortium arrive and want to take possession of the planet’s resources. The Gularans aren’t as primitive as the humans imagine, though, and will fight for their home to the last.

Sadly, this story has little to recommend it. It is difficult to take a story seriously when the villains are such caricatures of unfeeling rapaciousness, with a whole team spouting off lines like “How many bases have you imposed on worlds that were unprepared to cope with the changes they bring and the problems they create for native populations?” There’s not a single character that demonstrates any measure of depth or complexity. There’s little in the way of plot; the story as a whole seems devoted to setting up as one-sided a situation as possible by alternating exposition with hand-wringing over the awful things that have been exposed. The ending is telegraphed, contrived, and not nearly as satisfying to this reviewer as the author seems to have found it.

Leslie Brown describes “The Last Nice Afternoon In October” for her protagonist – first introduced only as a celebrity of some sort, who has chosen this fine afternoon to duck away from her bodyguard and enjoy a few precious moments by herself in the real world. As the story unfolds, we discover more and more of this world, and more and more about who this character is. We gradually uncover a grand SF premise, and the tragic figure of our narrator.

I enjoyed this story immensely – a perfect balance of enticing hints and startling discoveries, all through the viewpoint of a character who is both unique and entirely human. Fresh, well-written, and compelling – highly recommended.

Lee Martindale’s “Lady Blaze” is an adventurous romp on the seedy side; the title is given for both the story’s viewpoint character and for the spaceborn bordello she runs. The story begins when Lady Blaze accepts a new staff member with an unusual motivation – Felicity wants Lady Blaze’s help in tracking down a notorious brigand who has Felicity’s son.

The story succeeds in setting an enjoyable, light-hearted tone and playing a pleasant riff on the “whore with the heart of gold” cliche. I could have done without the repeated lampshading (primarily concerning the aforementioned heart-of-gold cliche), but it fits the style well enough. More problematic is the story’s ending, which seems to be aiming for an emotional shock for the reader. To this reviewer, this sudden change of direction fell embarrassingly flat, and I came away with the sense that the story wasn’t really sure what it was meant to be about.

“The Making Of Her,” by Sarah Ellender and Michael O’Connor, portrays the cautious beginning of reconciliation between two warring peoples. Divided by culture and technology, the “Geneers” and the “Techs” are now trying to set their differences aside – with a marriage between the heirs of the two empires. Our narrator is a Sygia, a genetically-engineered companion and guardian for the Geneer heiress. She is uniquely situated, both to fully apprehend the clashes and the connections between the two sides, and to find herself causing some trouble of her own.

Though the setting is a bit simplistic, it’s a well-told story, and both premise and protagonist are pleasantly unusual.

In Deborah Walker’s “Sister Grass”, humans have been turned into refugees and scattered across the galaxy by the mysterious Kristralls. Neve, after two years eking out a meager life for herself and her sister, has saved up enough money to enter one of the Kristralls’ games. She doesn’t know the rules, but they have assured her that the game is fair – and that if she wins, she’ll be awarded enough money to change her life around.

The story takes an interesting approach to describing a contest in a suspenseful manner. Most stories have a difficult time carrying themselves solely on the strength of a binary “will she win/will she lose” question; “Sister Grass” sidesteps this by making the game itself unknown – a mystery to be explored and, gradually, understood. The twists and the conclusion are satisfying, though not superb.

“Heart Bowed Down,” by Jeff Crook, begins with a dismembered head. “Don’t be afraid,” it calls, “I’m not human.”

It’s the head of a robot, designated Joan, who’s been sent into territory controlled by the alien enemy in order to contact the scientist Cassius, who may prove crucial in the war. The story follows their cautious back-and-forth, each one trying to decide to what degree the other can be trusted – and what he himself is capable of doing. Some important plot points regarding the war weren’t entirely clear to me, but the story maintains constant tension, and portrays an intense personal confrontation admirably well.

Catherine Mintz’s offering is entitled “Peacock Dancer,” but it opens with a swan song – Jaidee is to end her brief career as a dancer, forced to pass on the torch to her genetically-identical replacement. She will lose both the joy and the shelter she had as a respected dancer, and her future prospects seem bleak.

A well-written piece, with a little bit of everything good in a story, from the immediately accessible character of Jaidee and the whirlwhind of her concerns and worries, to the brushstrokes and details of the future Mintz has imagined for us.

“Bloody Albatross,” by David Bartell, asks a touchy question: when is it time to let the past be buried? Netty is one of Earth’s few survivors; from the whole of Earth, she could rescue only a handful of mementos, and was forced to choose which items most needed to be saved. We find that Netty has chosen an item which weighs down her spirit more than her backpack, and she is forced to consider whether under such extreme circumstances, preserving the past is a necessity or a hindrance.

Neither plot nor character are the center of this story – more than anything, it feels to me like an illustrated discussion of a question. It’s an interesting question, and the story’s illustration of it is both vivid and apt. The result is perhaps a bit introspective and hypothetical, but these are hardly faults, certainly not in this context.

Kate MacLeod give us “Gardens of Wind,” which this reviewer considers one of the standouts of the anthology. Our protagonist Akeli is being pressured to choose a new mate, to a background of war, scarce resources, and life aboard enormous airships. Though the pressure is cruel, there is harsh necessity behind it, starting off the story with immediate tension. As the story flows its course, Akeli finds her solution, which is as sudden and surprising as it is satisfying. Very well done.

“Silent Whispers,” by Karen Elizabeth Rigley and Ann Miller House, sets xenologist Julia Hedrick racing to find evidence that mining a new cache of minerals on a far-off planet is killing a sentient lifeform. Alas, I’ve read this story too many times before – the rapacious corporate lackeys, the “the landscape is alive” overly-obvious revelation, the damning report that will Set Everything Right. Flat characterization and trivially predictable plot twists sink whatever remaining suspense and excitement the story could have hoped to muster.

Z.S. Adani’s “Beneath The Alien Shield” describes the last thrust against the invading Hermit, and Kestra is the special ops agent whose been sent to deliver that thrust. To do so, she must enter the belly of the beast – the asteroid the Hermit has taken over – where she befriends the remaining captives and witnesses the horrific aliens for herself.

The alien Hermit is well-conceived and well-described, calculated to be gruesome and chilling. This is a race which inhabits limbs and body parts it detaches from its human captives – arms, legs and heads skittering around, human in shape but achingly misused.

The Hermit, and Kestra’s arsenal to bring about their destruction, is the meat of this story. The story stands out somewhat as being one of the few where almost no emphasis is placed upon the character or personality of the female protagonist – there’s a very cinematic feel to the piece, for good and for ill. The plot, as far as it goes, leaves something to be desired, with almost no choices, twists, or things to anticipate, besides the ever-present “will the next thing Kestra tries work?” and “will she be caught/killed now?”. All in all, I liked the concept and the beginning, but I didn’t feel like the story quite delivered on what I was hoping for, nor on what it was trying for.

Closing the volume is “Rainfire By Night,” by DJ Cockburn, in which our protagonist Rainfire is sent as a sort of Trojan horse into an enemy citadel. Her pride and pleasure at proving herself to her father and winning victory for her people are soon mixed with curiosity as to the strange new people she encounters and the callousness of her father’s use of her.

This story managed to score several points against it in my book, most particularly with the oh-so-coy references to modern technology as being the stuff of legend, such as “the People of the Mercedes” who want to steal their enemy’s repository of ancient knowledge, the “Cedrom.” These references feel to me like the author’s trying to be clever by name-dropping, and they mostly serve to remind me of the implausibility of this setting, which borders very close on generic fantasy, but is somehow presented as being the far-flung future of present-day earth. Other points that bothered me as well included Rainfire’s sudden leap from rambunctious girl to femme fatale (and her constant astonishment at such), and the apparent hints towards a kitschy ending.

Happily, though, not only did the plot twist away from the kitsch conclusion I was dreading, the story also managed to grow as I read, evolving into something with much more depth and interest the farther I got in. By the end, the story was much more focused on the cocktail of conflicting emotions I mentioned earlier, which I definitely enjoyed.

Lastly, how does Warrior Wisewoman hold up as a themed anthology? Pretty well, to my mind. Though almost no story is “about” the theme, and there is no individual story whose impact would have been lessened by being read outside the context of this anthology, the mere collection of stories with female protagonists is enough to provide a refreshingly different reading experience. It’s not that there is some single female element these stories uniformly provide, but merely that focusing on female protagonists exposes us to a wide range of voices and character types that are more rarely explored in other venues.

Over a quarter of the stories pass the Bechdel Test, which is no mean feat for short stories, which tend to be sparsely-populated. The stories in the anthology cover a very wide range of settings, issues, and conflicts, and I think it’s precisely seeing all these different women just being themselves, rather than trying to make some collective point, that makes them feel real, unique, and interesting.