I picked this book up a few years ago, back when I was living in Ethiopia. Because finding English books by local authors is almost impossible, I snagged this up and a few others up quickly. Sadly, it took me a few years to get around to it.

But this book is so Ethiopian it hurts. I saw old friends and colleges in these pages, and it brought me back into culture and environment of the country.

This is your classic rags to riches story, but in true Ethipioan fashion it's all achieved through hard work and hard study. Brook's father's untimely passing and the sudden appearance of his second family forces Brook to find new streams of income and boy does he go far.

Of course, this story moves a bit fast and complications come out of nowhere, but I still enjoyed reading this.

I feel in love with this right away. I mean, an all women crew of pirates? I'm there.

And then it kept blindsiding me with how perfect it was. Not just women pirates, a lesbian ones. Sciencey ones. WOC. A first mate heads taller than any one else who runs a book club and DnD game. Jokes and situations that are so about today it was like "on snap" and "yes" and "let me take photos of all these panels cuz people have *got* to see this".

I finished this in 40 min. And then requested all the other volumes in my library system.

There's just so much about this that's awesome.

Full disclosure, I'm one of the authors in this anthology. But there are other really impressive stories in here!

These stories get into the different nuances of love for both partners and family members. It's hard not to find something in this collection that connects to your own experiences and makes you think.

I wanted to like this book, but about a third in I just couldn't find myself picking it up any more and moved on to other things. For one, the fantasy words used seemed unnecessary. They didn't mean something world specific. I also found things slow and drawn out, long flash backs I felt were not needed, and characters and situations that only half thrilled me. There's potential, and maybe if I forced my way through a few more chapters it would have picked up, but with so many books on my self I'm finding myself selective and this book just couldn't hold my interest well enough.