The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander
The Only Harmless Great Thing, Brooke Bolander
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The Only Harmless Great Thing

Author: Brooke Bolander

Narrator: Courtney Patterson

Unabridged: 2 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 10/29/2019


Synopsis

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novelette

Finalist for the Hugo, Locus, Shirley Jackson, and Sturgeon Awards

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 twentieth 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.

About Brooke Bolander

Brooke Bolander writes weird things of indeterminate genre, most of them leaning rather heavily towards fantasy or general all-around weirdness. She attended the University of Leicester from 2004-2007, studying history and archaeology, and is an alum of the 2011 Clarion Writers' Workshop at UCSD. Her stories have been featured in Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Nightmare, Uncanny, and various other fine purveyors of the fantastic. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, the Hugo, the Locus, and the Theodore Sturgeon Awards, much to her unending bafflement.


Reviews

Goodreads review by karen on May 20, 2019

**congratulations on your nebula award! best novelette 2018! i do not love the word, but i love the win!** in just under a hundred pages, brooke bolander figured out a way to rewrite american history so it’s even worse, develop two-and-change distinct storylines, flesh out the thoughts, traditions, m......more

Goodreads review by Heidi on May 04, 2019

Author Brooke Bolander takes two unrelated historical events and ties them together in an effort to make a statement about the inherent darkness in humanity. Historically speaking, an elephant named Topsy was actually put to death by electrocution. The radium dial painters, whom you can read about i......more

Goodreads review by Cassandra on June 16, 2017

So. Caveats first: I'm another Tor.com author; I know Brooke Bolander as a friend. The draft I read? One of the earlier versions of the finished product, I'm sure. But stranger, if you're here, combing through the wilds of Goodreads to see if this book is worth pre-ordering or buying, the answer's si......more

Goodreads review by Magrat on April 15, 2020

3,5/5 Una novela corta muy original, impactante y brutal. La autora muesta a través de varias voces en el tiempo la crueldad del ser humano en aras del progreso de la ciencia. Aunque al principio resulta confusa y caótica, pronto las piezas comienzan a encajar, y el fantástico prólogo ayuda a comprende......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on January 27, 2019

I received this for free as part of Tor.com’s free ebook of the month club. I wasn’t terribly excited about it when I saw it. But free is free and it was quick so I took a chance, and I’m so glad I did! First- content warnings, because this isn’t an easy book to stomach. (view spoiler)[Animal abuse and torture, gra (hide spoiler)]......more