Rag and Bone by Priya Sharma
My rating: 4/5 cats
I leave Gabriel in the yard and go into town, taking my bag with the vials of skin and bone, flesh and blood, my regular delivery to Makin. The Peels are looking for body parts.
a second excellent free tor short by this author. i didn’t like it quite as much as Fabulous Beasts: A Tor.Com Short Story, but it was still pretty damn good.
it’s an alt-historical set in a 19th century liverpool in which the wealthy elite treat the underclass as a spare parts marketplace, and rag and bone men like our narrator tom acquire not only scraps of everyday odds and ends to sell and trade but also the above-quoted skin and bone, flesh and blood from the desperate poor, for the benefit of the few wealthy ruling families. it’s a living, and it’s better and safer than most, but it’s also not without its moral conflicts, even in a scrabbling world like this one, where options are very limited.
despite enjoying more freedom and respect than is typically afforded to those of his class by his wealthy boss on the strength of his character, despite the wisdom handed down to him by his father,
Do whatever you need to survive, Dad would say. Do whatever you need to be free,
when presented with the opportunity to risk it all for the sake of a woman he admires, tom does not hesitate to make the sacrifice.
there be consequences.
there’s a twist here, but it’s a twist so common in these tor shorts that i wonder sometimes if there’s some sort of drinking game going on with the tor editors, or some plot-wheel authors have to spin before they submit their pieces where they have to incorporate certain elements into their tales if they land on ’em. i didn’t predict it happening this time, which is preferable to seeing it coming a mile away, and there was definitely a dramatic payoff and a purpose for it, but you encounter the same twist in enough stories and there can’t help but be diminishing returns on the old element of surprise.
apart from the twist, the real strength of this piece lies in her descriptions—the atmosphere really comes alive with strong characters and a vivid and bustling location. i also really liked the ending, although that opinion may be a lonely one.
still, this is definitely an author i hope will write many more tor shorts, or, you know—anything. i’m officially a fan.
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2013/04/10/rag-and…
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