The Only Harmless Great Thing

eBook, 96 pages

English language

Published Jan. 23, 2018 by Tor.com.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-16947-1
OCLC Number:: 1052675067
ASIN:: B07142ZRWY
ISFDB ID:: 2287050

(2 reviews)

The Only Harmless Great Thing is a heart-wrenching alternative history by Brooke Bolander that imagines an intersection between the Radium Girls and noble, sentient elephants.

In the early years of the 20th century, a group of female factory workers in Newark, New Jersey slowly died of radiation poisoning. Around the same time, an Indian elephant was deliberately put to death by electricity in Coney Island.

These are the facts.

Now these two tragedies are intertwined in a dark alternate history of rage, radioactivity, and injustice crying out to be righted. Prepare yourself for a wrenching journey that crosses eras, chronicling histories of cruelty both grand and petty in search of meaning and justice.

3 editions

Thom reviewed The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander

Review of 'The Only Harmless Great Thing' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Three different female characters in two time frames tell one story in this printed novella, originally available from tor.com. The author expanded on two historical events, joining them in a tragic "what-if".

This quick read is about the power of story and the manipulation of truth, along with the impact of stories through history. It is also a very emotional tale about abuse of power, sentient elephants and people. It takes a few pages to get used to the writing style, quick shifting between characters with no introduction, and I almost put the volume down at that point. Glad I didn't.

The author is a self-described writer of "weird things of indeterminate genre", and is working on a novel. This story is tragedy, somewhere between alternate history and fantasy.

Sami Sundell

rated it

July 13, 2019