Sabotage Review Praises “The Hand that Feeds” February 1, 2011 – Posted in: Aberrant Normalcy

Sabotage has nice things to say about “The Hand That Feeds,” my story in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories.  Tori Truslow writes, “Matt Kressel’s ‘The Hand That Feeds’, which seems to be building towards a romantic criminal escapade through a magical New York, changes tone in a sudden and shocking way that’s very well done. The same story is a particularly bright example of the diversity that is such a strength of the book, with an Indian and a Jewish woman taking centre stage. Jessica and Divya are both flawed and likeable, their defiance and decisions in the face of hardship thoroughly believable.”

She also praises stories by N.K. Jemisin, Amal El-Mohtar, Shweta Narayan and Mikki Kendall.  And of the anthology as a whole, she says, “Steampunk often ends up being highly West-centric, somehow equating ‘the nineteenth century’ with ‘Victorian London’. But there’s a whole wide world out there – and Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories does a damn fine job of exploring it. Not only is this anthology delightful in that its characters – its adventurers and inventors, its rulers and airship pirates, its heroes – are queer women doing things on their own terms, but also in that they are multicultural, from all over the world, or from alternate worlds that are more than just magical versions of Europe.”

Read the full review here.

JoSelle Vanderhooft did a hell of a job editing this anthology, and now, lo and behold, it’s available on Amazon.