Currently Reading - The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

 

16. “The Prisoner of Chillon” by James Patrick Kelly

This felt incomplete, like there was something I was supposed to bring to the story that I don’t have. Was also amused that by certain strict definitions (which I do not personally adhere to), this story is not science fiction because the actual narrative - a heist gone wrong, having to lay low with the mysterious figure who arranged the job, the interpersonal tensions which play out subsequently - do not actually depend on the speculative elements to function.

I want to say this story was okay, but really I am still tired of stories in which women fall for damaged men despite themselves, as much as I am of stories in which the mysterious love of a woman has transformative effect on the random male POV of the week. Apart from that, it was almost interesting.