The first action of the novella follows Jalila’s journey down from the mountains to the seaside town of Al Janb where after a few days she coughs up from her lungs the breathmoss which had helped her to breathe the rarefied mountain air, spilling it into the sea. Jalila was brought up in the high mountains by her three mothers (only one of them biologically so.) Gateways between the stars allow travel to other worlds in ships piloted by a chosen few tariquas. Title story Breathmoss is set on the planet Habara where men are an extreme rarity – as they are in wider galactic society. Not one of them is disappointing in any way. In this book MacLeod’s lies are profound, considered, and each has a sense of inevitability about it, a revealed truth if you like. In his introduction to this collection MacLeod says that works of fiction are complex lies and if you’re going to do it well you really ought not to stick to realism so much as make your lies as big as possible in order for readers to recognise something they’ve known all along.
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