Will Sargent reviewed The Chains That You Refuse by Elizabeth Bear
Review of 'The Chains That You Refuse' on 'Storygraph'
4 stars
There's a wide array of styles and directions here; the first stories especially pack a punch as you realize that every sentence and every phrase means something. The first story in the book took several readings for me to be sure I'd really got it.
Some of the ideas in the story have been done elsewhere, and I was (interestingly) surprised when reading first person accounts, because I kept getting the sex of the character wrong. I'd hear a man's voice in my head, and the character would be a woman, or vice versa. Bear doesn't see characters as subject to sex based tropes, and it shows in the actions of her characters as well, giving me some pleasant surprises along the way.