- Sharp Wit & the Company of Women,
- A Wave Blue World
- Edited by Michele Abounader
- Associate Editor, Brent Fisher
- 160 pages, cover price $19.99
- Publication date, March 05, 2024
Every woman has a story . . . these begin and end at the point of a blade!
From the depths of antiquity, female heroes have captivated imaginations. Leaders, keepers of wisdom, warriors of strength, monsters, magicians, or modern marvels; they all stride through these pages in astonishing adventures arrayed with the clang of edged weapons in battle.
Featuring work by FELL HOUND, JUSTIN RICHARDS, SKYLAR PATRIDGE, JADZIA AXELROD, LIANA KANGAS, EVA CABRERA, and many more!
Lemme tell ya, it ain’t easy trying to pull together a review for an anthology. It’s also, occasionally, kinda fun. See, a book like this that’s put together from a collection of writers & artists doesn’t have a style so much as a concept. Keeping that in mind, while it might be tough pulling together pieces for a cohesive article, the review itself doesn’t have to fit any single idea or theme. Besides, I’m still not convinced that anyone’s actually reading my stuff, so whatever. Moving on.
For as long as people have been telling stories, the idea of a woman with a sword/axe/pulse rifle/bazooka has been cool. While rare spectacles during the Roman Empire, the female gladiator- or gladiatrix- was exotic and marked some of the greatest, most lavish events. Robert E. Howard’s Red Sonja of Rogatino was the basis for Marvel Comics’ own Red Sonja, but long before she sported the mail bikini, she had swashbuckled her way into legend in the 1934 short story, The Shadow of the Vulture. Likewise Mulan, Buffy Summers, Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley… all legendary examples of women who, through circumstance, found themselves stepping into the role of warrior, breaking barriers and sparking some epically silly debates.
Coming in March from indie publisher A Wave Blue World, a host of new heroes will be unleashed on the world in the pages of this anthology collection. Featuring an assemblage of talent to make the gods sit up and take notice, these stories range from emotionally impactful, to laugh-out-loud funny, to outrageously badass and mildly NSFW. The writing and artwork have been outstanding across the board, all very well worth the price of admission, my only true gripe is that within the limitations of the format, several stories were just too damn short. I wanted more!
Still, if your interests lie less along the path of the damsel in distress, and more with the damsel causing distress, this will be the book for you. Even in the stories that felt like they needed more time on the page, what they did bring was a running game of “what if…?” in my head. All these women of steel have tales to tell, & all you have to do as a reader is listen.
Final Score: 11/13
