A prehistory story from Bennardo (so why is it in an SF magazine I wonder??).
Young Sedu is part of a hunting tribe, and she yearns to be out on the savannah hunting with the men, but that is not the role for women, no matter how good they are at hunting.
I couldn’t get engaged with the story at all, as the narrative from her brother failed to convince – there was no attempt to create a language in keeping with a pre-historic tribe – to the extent that I was waiting for the ‘reveal’ that we weren’t in pre-history at all, but in a post-something scenario where we have returned to a more primitive way of living. The worst example of this was the brother returning to his sister, who has broken a limb, referring to the bones ‘knitting together’ when healing, which is terminology w-a-y beyond the pre-historic.
More from this issue here.
