Review: Feisty Females & Dystopian Worlds
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 20, 2013
'The Stolen' contains 2 short sci-fi stories starring feisty females on dystopian worlds.'The Fields' is the story of Clarice, a rule breaker sent to a sort of prison for governesses who misbehave.  I found Clarice almost instantly likeable and I really sympathised with her.  The repression she fights against is extreme - sexually suggestive items, such as stockings, are illegal yet she smuggles them in to the Reformatory with her. This is the shorter of the two stories and it's a great introduction to Browne's writing style.'Word Thieves' is the story of Sarah, a disillusioned young woman working on a foreign planet where censorship is a way of life.  Sarah has a great love of language so her anger over rewrites of the likes of Shakespeare is understandable and makes for some fantastically witty dialogue.  I found this the more entertaining of the two, as there is quite a bit of dark humour drawn out of the repressive situations.Both of these stories were real page-turners and my only complaint was that there wasn't more as I really would have liked to keep reading!  Browne has created facinating fully formed worlds with interesting characters I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know.I realised while reading this book that the vast majority of sci-fi books I've read have had male narrators, so Browne's strong female characters made a very refreshing change.  For me this was something totally different & I loved every minute of it.  Highly recommended!