cover image Women at War

Women at War

. Tor Books, $23.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-312-85792-9

The stories in this no-Y-chromosomes-allowed anthology go a long way toward answering the question raised by multiple-Hugo winner Bujold in her introduction: ``What does it mean to `write like a woman?'"" In exploring that issue, Bujold and Green present 17 original stories that muster a regiment of women either born or borne to war. Consuelo in Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's ``First Communion'' is the most noble of these, but the narrator of Susan Booth's delightful ``Edge of the Sword'' is the most intriguing. While several stories are weakened by their too obvious portrayal of unsympathetic males, Melissa in P.J. Beese's ``White Wings'' proves that gender-switching doesn't make a character any more real. The gems of this collection are Margaret Ball's ``Notes During a Time of Civil War,'' a compassionate and horrifying tale dedicated to ``the Muslim women of Bosnia,'' and Elizabeth Moon's volume-closing ``Hand-to-Hand,'' a downbeat but powerful piece that reconsiders the relationship between art and war. It's likely that most readers of this diverse, unexpected collection will answer Bujold's question in the same way that she finally does when she proclaims that ``writers, if they are any good, write like themselves, and like no one else.'' (Dec.)