Messing With the Veil Between Worlds: C.S.E. Cooney – Dark Breakers

Claire Cooney stole my heart with her collection Bone Swans and other Stories and I have bought everything of hers I could find since then. For those of you who have read the Tordoctom novella Desdemona and the Deep, this collection of very connected novellas and stories is your way back into that magical world of gentry and goblins and art.

DARK BREAKERS
by C.S.E. Cooney

Published: Mythic Delirium Boks, February 15th, 2022
eBook: 292 pages
Collection
My rating: 7.5/10

Opening line: Elliot Howell considered the glittering company about to assemble in the dining room below, and sighed.

A young human painter and an ageless gentry queen fall in love over spilled wine—at the risk of his life and her immortality. Pulled into the Veil Between Worlds, two feuding neighbors (and a living statue) get swept up in a brutal war of succession. An investigative reporter infiltrates the Seafall City Laundries to write the exposé of a lifetime, and uncovers secrets she never believed possible. Returning to an oak grove to scatter her husband’s ashes, an elderly widow meets an otherworldly friend, who offers her a momentous choice. Two gentry queens of the Valwode plot to hijack a human rocketship and steal the moon out of the sky.

DARK BREAKERS gathers three new and two previously uncollected tales from World Fantasy Award-winning writer C. S. E. Cooney that expand on the thrice-enfolded worlds first introduced in her Locus and World Fantasy award-nominated novella DESDEMONA AND THE DEEP. In her introduction to DARK BREAKERS, Crawford Award-winning author Sharon Shinn advises those who pick up this book to “settle in for a fantastical read” full of “vivid world-building, with layer upon layer of detail; prose so dense and gorgeous you can scoop up the words like handfuls of jewels; a mischievous sense of humor; and a warm and hopeful heart.”

Oh, how I have missed reading Cooney’s words! This collection may be complied of separate novellas and stories but the tell one larger tale of a place and a group of friends and how the world changes to adjust to unexpected magic.

The book begins with Dark Breakers which follows Elliot Howell, a gifted painter, as he tries to navigate the world of his rich friends. Bright and bubbly Desdemona Mannering has decided that Elliot is the New Great Painter of the age and so he finds himself suddenly famous and completely unequipped to handle it. The story tells of a party at Breaker House where Elliot encountres a decidedly otherworldly creature – who happens to be the Queen of the Valwode, the Veil Between Worlds – and they promptly fall in love. But being queen of a rather important part of the three worlds, things aren’t as easy as one would hope…

My favorite tale by far was the second one that focuses on two of Elliot’s friends, Ana Fields (penniless but warm-hearted writer) and Gideon Alderwood (sculptor and super rich cousin to Desdemona Mannering). In The Two Paupers, we get to know these two a little bit better. They already made an impressive appearance in the first story but this one is really all about them and everything about it ticked the boxes I love when reading a story. Gideon and Ana aren’t on the best of terms, at the moment, because Gideon is a big jerk. But as they live as something like flatmates – sharing a garret with only one toilet, being separated by nothing but a thin wall – they can’t quite escape on e another, no matter how often Gideon elittles Ana and her work, no matter how many times she complains about him using up all the toilet paper and never replacing it.
What sounds like your basic romcom actually turns into something a lot more magical once you read it. Gideon creates beautiful statues only to destroy them the moment they are completed. He is responsible for Ana’s manuscript having found its way into the hands of a capable and utterly delighted agentand even though Gideon would never admit why he did it, we know that he actually really likes Ana. Theirs is a weird relationship that can only find a way to work once the secrets are out, once the magic that has been part of their lives gets revelaed. Oh, and once one of them saves the other from certain doom.

The other stories int his collection were quite nice as well, but they felt more like additional material to the first two novellas, rather than something that can stand on its own. Salissay’s Laundries was charming insofar as it is written by an investigative jorunalist who infiltrates a place that is said to “disappear” women and/or their unborn children. The Valwolde is supposed to be involved, but we all know that’s just fairy stories…
In Longergreen, we jump forward in time and learn how the world (and some characters we’ve met earlier) have changed. I really can’t say much about it without spoiling, but I found it a very touching, quiet tale that would have rounded up the collection beautifully.
But Cooney ends things on a lighter note with Susurra to the Moon. Here, we meet a character from the first story again as well as someone from Desdemona and the Deep. Things haven’t only changed in our world, but the Valwode has evolved as well. And so we meet two queens of that Kingdom Below as they enjoy each other and make silly plans about how they want to go to the moon. It’s a cute little story but it didn’t touch me nearly as much as the ones about Elliot, Gideon, and Ana.

I love how interconnected Cooney’s work is (a play called Bone Swans is mentioned in this collection, which happens to be a real book in our word) and how she writes about artists. Whether it’s Elliot and his paintings, Gideon and his statues, or Ana and her writing – Cooney manages to make them all feel like real artists, she makes their work come vibrantly alive thorugh her own art, and she made them all real, multi-faceted people. I adored both the friendship between these three as well as the strange love/hate relationship that Ana and Gideon have going on. The otherworldly characters were also amazingly done. A fairy queen who is thousands of years old shouldn’t behave like a regular homan and Cooney did a fantastic job making Nyx strange but still relatable enough for me to care about her.

If you like fairy stories, pretending to walk through walls between worlds, to meet magical beings at the chime of midnight, if you like art and beautiful words, then pick this up. It’s truly lovely and makes me all the more excited for Cooney’s second 2022 book (a big fat novel!) Saint Death’s Daughter.

MY RATING: 7.5/10 – Very, very good

A Story For Every SFF Mood: Marjorie Liu – The Tangleroot Palace

If you know Marjorie Liu through her acclaimed graphic novel series Monstress and you happen to like said graphic novel series, then this collection is a treat you don’t want to miss. I went into it with no particular expectations – I admit the Sana Takeda cover is what made me request a review copy and I don’t regret a thing. This collection has something for everyone, there are science fiction stories, secondary world fantasies, military stories, a post apocalyptic tale, and a retold fairy tale. It is seriously good, you guys!
Thanks to Tachyon Publications for providing an e-ARC of this collection. It is much appreciated, especially since it turned out to be such a great book. 😉

THE TANGLEROOT PALACE
by Marjorie Liu

Published: Tachyon Publications, 15th June 2021
eBook: 256 pages
Collection
My rating: 8/10

Opening line: The funeral was in a bad place, but Martha Bromes never did much care about such things, and so she put her husband into a hole at Cutter’s, and we as her family had to march up the long stone track into the hills to find the damn spot, because the only decent bits of earth in all that place were far deep in the forest, high into the darkness.

New York Times bestseller and Hugo, British Fantasy, Romantic Times, and Eisner award-winning author of the graphic novel, Monstress, Marjorie Liu leads you deep into the heart of the tangled woods. In her long-awaited debut story collection, dark, lush, and spellbinding short fiction you will find unexpected detours, dangerous magic, and even more dangerous women.

Briar, bodyguard for a body-stealing sorceress, discovers her love for Rose, whose true soul emerges only once a week. An apprentice witch seeks her freedom through betrayal, the bones of the innocent, and a meticulously-plotted spell. In a world powered by crystal skulls, a warrior returns to save China from invasion by her jealous ex. A princess runs away from an arranged marriage, finding family in a strange troupe of traveling actors at the border of the kingdom’s deep, dark woods.

Concluding with a gorgeous full-length novella, Marjorie Liu’s first short fiction collection is an unflinching sojourn into her thorny tales of love, revenge, and new beginnings.

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It’s a given with any short fiction collection that some stories will appeal more to certain readers than others, and this was the case with The Tangleroot Palace as well. But I have to say right away that there was only one story that didn’t work for me whereas all the others were at least very good. Maybe it’s because I didn’t know what to expect that I was so very impressed with this collection but I think it’s just the fact that Marjorie Liu is incredibly talented and this book gives a taste of all the things she’s capable of.
She easily goes from horror to fairy tale to post-apocalyptic paranormal, and why not throw in some superhero-inspired story, a handful of zobies and a defiant princess in there. All of these stories have been published before elsewhere but I highly recommend this collection, even if you’ve read one or two of its tales before.

Sympathy for the Bones (4/5 stars)

The opening story took me completely by surprise and proceded to knock my socks off. Although it’s really not long, from the very beginning, there is this dark atmosphere, this feeling that there is more underneath the surface. It’s about a young girl who has lost her parents a while ago and now lives with and is sort of apprenticed to a witch woman. This woman sews dolls which she uses to hurt or kill people, depending on what the job demands. But there are rules to this magic which are fun to learn about. And there is also a lot more to our protagonist than first meets the eye. I loved this story so much!

Briar and Rose (3.5/5 stars)

This was the only story I had read previously in the anthology The Starlit Wood although I didn’t remember any details. It’s a spin on Sleeping Beauty, one that puts women center stage, and not only in the role of the villain. The two eponymous protagonists are great characters that defy stereotypes and although the ending wasn’t as surprising or epic as I would have liked, it’s a great story that incorporates some of the darker aspects of the original tale without drifting off into grimdark territory.

Call Her Savage (2/5 stars)

This is the story that didn’t work for me, mostly because I found it confusing and felt its plot just didn’t fit into this short format. There is a whole lot of world building here but, unfortunately, by the time I had figured everything out enough to understand what was going on, the story was over. Not knowing for a long time who the characters are, what war they are fighting in, who is allied to whom, didn’t help. It’s possible I missed some clues early on, but I just felt lost for the majority of the story. When I did start to enjoy it, I had reached the end.

The Last Dignity of Man (4.5/5 stars)

Gaaah, I loved this so much! It’s about a man named Alexander Lutheran who is the genius billionaire owner of a tech company and thus identifies with Lex Luthor of Superman fame a little too much. The company’s latest experiment is creating worms that eat waste, to be put into the sewers and literally deal with the shit the city can’t handle. I don’t want to tell you any more about this story because it is so very excellent, you should enjoy it for yourselves. But let’s just say there are layers to it. On the one hand, there is the plot with the worms which is super cool. But on the other hand, it’s about Alexander’s inner life, his personal struggles, about morality and power, about love and true friendship. I just adored this!

Where the Heart Lives (4/5 stars)

This was a lovely, atmospheric ghost story turned fairy tale. It’s about people who are outsiders because they are different from the others, it’s about a girl finding a new family away from a home that doesn’t want her. It’s got some of the greatest romantic tension I’ve read in a story this short. And it turns out, it’s a sort of prequel to Liu’s series of paranormal Dirk & Steele novels which I didn’t know about but am now very interested in. Despite those covers.

After the Blood (3.5/5 stars)

This one started out a bit confusing because it seems to take place in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies/vampires. The Amish are now the most powerful people in America (or at least the ones that survived the easiest because they can do without techonlogy, they know how to farm, and so on) and this is the story of a young woman with a strange gift and a large amount of cats, trying to make a life for herself. Her and two male protagonists, one of which is decidedly not human anymore, are made to feel more than unwelcome in their home. To me, this felt like a great beginning to a novel. It has a creepy, mysterious atmosphere, you want to find out what is going on, how the protagonists came to be who and where they are, and what happens next. As a story on its own, it worked okay, but I honestly would have loved to read a full novel where this was just one chapter.

Tangelroot Palace (4.5/5 stars)

The final piece of this collection is a novella that is part feminist fairy tale, part love story, and part the perfect story for my younger self. Sally is a princess but she prefers planting flowers to needlepoint. She doesn’t care that she smells of manure, she has no interest in being lady-like, she’d rather be useful. However, when her father the king finds himself in the precarious situation of almost losing his kingdom, an alliance with the feared Warlord is in order. And what better way than marrying off your only daughter to the reputed brute?
Sally is having none of it and promptly runs away on a quest to the Tangleroot Forest, a dangerous, mysterious, and feared forest that none dare enter. It is said to return people changed or not at all. But Sally’s mother – before she died – went into that forest, so there must be answers to Sally’s problems in there.
I loved every part of this story. The plucky princess, the dangerous, creepy feeling of Tangleroot, the mystery behind its magic, and especially the friendship and love story that happens along the way.

Overall, this is an excellent collection that convinced me that I have to read more by Marjorie M. Liu. The way she writes romance especially vibed with me. Understated without any cheesy declarations, the feelings between her characters usually come across through glances or gestures, through people saving each other’s lives, or making sacrifices for the person they love. It also helps that many of these tales have this fairy tale feeling to them, whether they specifically retell a certain tale – as “Briar and Rose” does – or are simply set in a world with magic in it, like in Tangleroot Palace.

I was also impressed with the writing itself. Liu can do fairy tale-esque really well, but her more horror/gothic style stories also conveyed atmosphere so easily, it felt like I was in these creepy places, seeing the knarled trees, hearing those ravens caw. The only critique I have is that some stories don’t give enough information at the start to be fully enjoyed. It takes a few pages to understand the world we’re in and by that time, the story is almost over. In a novel, it’s okay to throw your readers straight into the action and let them figure out the background information later. A short story simply doesn’t offer enough time to fill in all the blanks in time to enjoy the rest of the story. But that’s really a minor point and it only happened in a couple of stories. All things considered, I would put this collection into any SFF fan’s hands.

MY RATING: 8/10 – Excellent

Ted Chiang – Exhalation

I am so happy Ted Chiang is nominated for two Hugo Awards this year because that gave me the necessary push to finally read something by him. Instead of just reading the nominated novella and novelette, I decided to read the entire collection. And boy, am I happy about that decision. His first story collection Stories of Your Life and Others is already on my e-reader and I cannot wait to read that as well. There may be some gushing below.

EXHALATION: STORIES
by Ted Chiang

Published: Knopf, 2019
Ebook: 352 pages
Collection
My rating: 8,5/10

Opening line: O mighty Caliph and Commander of the Faithful, I am humbled to be in the splendor of your presence; a man can hope for no greater blessing as long as he lives.

This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In ” The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate ,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary ” Exhalation ,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. And in ” The Lifecycle of Software Objects ,” a woman cares for an artificial intelligence over twenty years, elevating a faddish digital pet into what might be a true living being. Also included are two brand-new stories: ” Omphalos ” and ” Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom.”

In this fantastical and elegant collection, Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest questions on earth—What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human?—and ones that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning, and compassion.

The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate

The opening story is one that, after two or three pages, made me ask myself why I have waited so long to read Ted Chiang!
A merchant in Baghdad visits an alchemist’s shop where he is shown two gates. One whose right side precedes the left by a few seconds – meaning if you stick your hand in, it won’t come out the other side. At least not immediately, but only a few seconds later. He is then shown a second gate with a time difference of 20 years – essentially, a time travel portal. The alchemist then precedes to tell our merchant several stories of people who have gone through this gate and what befell them. These read almost like fairy tales, with simple characters, but clever ones nonetheless.
I am a sucker for fairy tales, the rule of three, and all that stuff, so I gobbled this up with joy. But it’s not only a fairy tale with a science fictional twist, it’s also a story about whether the past can be changed and, if yes, whether it should.

Exhalation

The titular story of this collection was both intriguing, thought-provoking, and a little weird. We follow a scientist who is trying to figure out two things. One, how does a person’s memory work, and two, why do all the clocks seem to run fast? It becomes apparent very early that the protagonist and his people are not humans but some sort of robots or cyborgs? A science experiment then leads to big revelations about their world and ones that translate pretty well into our world as well. There may not be exact parallels but it definitely got me thinking about climate change, entropy, and the fate of our universe in general.
I liked the story but it wasn’t my favorite and maybe a little too weird to hit me emotionally.

What’s Expected of Us

A very short tale with a cool premise that fell mostly flat for me because I had actually seen a documentary once, dealing with this very topic. The question posed – or rather, answered – is that of free will. Do humans have it? And if you could prove we don’t, do any of our actions still have meaning?

The Lifecycle of Software Objects

I had heard about this novella before but, to my shame, never read it until now. This was truly something else. It’s about a start-up that creates digients, sort of virtual pets, but ones that can and have to be be taught to mature – like the ultimate Tamagotchi (I’m totally showing my age here). Ana is a young woman who trains and teaches these creatures and gets quite attached to them. We then follow Ana and Derek – who animated the animal’s faces – and the digients themselves throughout the next years and get to watch an astounding development.
It’s hard to put into words how this story made me feel, but it made me feel A LOT! As much as we are reminded that the geniets are software, I couldn’t help but join Ana, Derek, and their friends in truly caring about them and their future. It poses questions of what makes a person, whether love to a string of code can be real love, and about human (and AI) rights. The ending was a bit of a let down because compared to the pacing of the novella so far, it happened too abrupt and wasn’t as satisfying for me as I’d hoped. But this is still one of the best novellas I have ever read.

Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny

Now this was very much up my alley. Framed as the description of a museum piece, it tells the story of a man who was looking for a better nanny for his infant and promptly invented a mechanical one. I don’t want to spoil anything about where this goes but while most of it is rather predictable, it is so well written and so entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time that I really loved it.
It also always amazes me when one author can switch voices so effortlessly. Chiang wrote this piece in a completely different style from the other stories here and it works beautifully. It feels authentic and puts you in a different time period.

The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling

Another well-known story that I’d heard of but never read before, this felt very much like a Black Mirror episode, except not quite as dark. In fact, it uses one of the same gimmicks – a device calle Remem that records everything a person sees, hears, or says. This device can be used to win arguments over who said what, settle issues at court, and much more. So learns a father when he rediscovers his own past not as he remembers it, but as it truly happened…
A parallel story told is that of a people without written culture. They keep their memories by oral tradition, simply telling the next generation what needs to be remembered. When missionaries introduce writing into this culture, however, young Jijingi sees how it may change things.
I loved the ideas presented in this story despite the fact that I had encountered the technological gimmick in pop culture before. But what Ted Chiang does differently from Black Mirror is showing not the big impact technology has an humanity as a whole, but rather looking at the little things. Small conflicts that only affect two or three people, not world-changing questions are at the center of this story. It also asks questions about the reliability of human memory and whether what’s true is also right.

The Great Silence

This story is merely a few pages long and I didn’t much care for it until the very end. Told from a parrot’s perspective (yes, a parrot), it draws a parallel between a message sent out into the universe in the hopes of finding alien life and the “alien” life that exists alongside us on Earth, namely the parrots of the Río Abajo Forest.
It is a nicely written story but one that I only sort of enoyed. Until the ending, that is. The very last line hit me right in the guts and even made me tear up a bit.
The origin of this story, explained in the Story Notes at the end of the collection, is also highly interesting.

Omphalos

Here we are, at the first Hugo finalist for 2020. This novelette has many things going for it, first and foremost the world that is somewhat like ours, but also decidedly not. It is told through a series of long prayers to the Lord, said by Dorothea Morrell, an archeologist, recounting her days. You see, on this alternate Earth, archeologists can trace back artifacts to the creation of Earth by God. There are trees with no growth rings, human bones without signs of having grown; they simply came into existence fully-grown, and so on.
The plot revolves around the theft (probably) of some such artifacts, dating back to the creation of Earth, and Dorothea wants to make things right, but discovers something much bigger in the process.
I really liked discovering the world building of this particular story but the plot and language just couldn’t reach me the way some of the other tales in this collection did. Had I read this on its own, I may have liked it more, but with this sort of competition, I wasn’t really in it.

Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom

The other Hugo nominated tale, up for Best Novella, had a much deeper impact on me. Again, a technological gimmick is the source (or the catalyst) for diving into deep questions about what it means to be human, whether our choices and actions have any meaning, and whether technology helps or hurts humanity.
Prisms are computer-like divices that set off different branches of the universe. In universe A you may go grab a coffee before work, in universe B you go straight to work and consequently get run over by a car – that’s my very short, simplified description of it but of course, things are much more complicated. People like to see what their paraselves – them in different universes – are up to. While differences usually aren’t drastic, depending on how long ago a prism created another branch, your paraself may be quite different from yourself. You might hate your job and have messed up your relationship while your paraself is happily married and loves their job…
Ted Chiang uses this idea and spins a fantastic story about a handful of characters who are all impacted by prisms in one way or another. Dana is a psychologist whose clients’ problems often have to do with prisms, Nat works at a place that rents out prism time for people to chat with their paraselves, and Nat’s boss Morrow has a plan to make them both very, very rich.
There was so much to unpack in this novella, so many things to think about, to ponder over, to endlessly discuss with friends, preferably when slightly drunk and feeling inspired and philosophical. I adored it!

General thoughts

What a collection! Of course, I didn’t like all stories equally, but I couldn’t say that any one of them was bad or that I didn’t enjoy it. But even with stories of this high quality, some are bound to appeal more to any individual than others. As a fan of fairy tales, I loved the opening story, but others might prefer more contemporary settings, even though that story does involve a time machine.
But what really tells me that this is an excellent collection is that I can’t really choose a favorite. Each story does something different, is set in a different place at a different time and deals with completely different characers. Sure, they have certain themes in common – free will, the impact of technoligal advance, the meaning of freaking life! – but it doesn’t feel right comparing them with each other.
The only remotely negative things I can say about this is that I was disappointed in the rather abrupt ending of “The Lifecycle of Software Objects” and that “What’s Expecte of Us” didn’t work for me. But when I say this it’s not the same as when I said it about other collections. Because while one story may not have been my jam and another ended differently than I had expected, they were still fantastic science fiction stories that deserve a wide audience and all the awards.

As much as I want to dive straight into Ted Chiang’s first collection Stories of Your Life and Others, I think I’ll have to let this one sink for a while. There’s a lot to digest, an enormous amount of food for thought, and characters (not all of them human) that will stick in my mind for a while. If it hasn’t come across yet – I am deeply impressed and will henceforth call myself a Ted Chiang fan.

MY RATING: 8,5/10 – So very excellent!

Helen Oyeyemi – What is Not Yours is Not Yours

I managed to spend this week at home in bed with a terrible bronchitis, so not only didn’t I read a lot (90% of my time was spent sleeping, sweating, and coughing… seriously, it’s not pretty), but I also didn’t tell you about the books I had read prior to turning into a pale, clammy monster. Today, I feel a little better and can stare into a computer screen without headaches, so let’s do some catching-up, what do you say?

WHAT IS NOT YOURS IS NOT YOURS
by Helen Oyeyemi

Published by: Picador, 2016
Hardback: 263 pages
Short story collection
My rating: 7,5/10

First sentence: Once upon a time in Catalonia a baby was found in a chapel.

Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret—Oyeyemi’s keys not only unlock elements of her characters’ lives, they promise further labyrinths on the other side. In “Books and Roses” one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers’ fates. In “Is Your Blood as Red as This?” an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. “‘Sorry’ Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea” involves a “house of locks,” where doors can be closed only with a key—with surprising, unobservable developments. And in “If a Book Is Locked There’s Probably a Good Reason for That Don’t You Think,” a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).

Oyeyemi’s creative vision and storytelling are effervescent, wise, and insightful, and her tales span multiple times and landscapes as they tease boundaries between coexisting realities. Is a key a gate, a gift, or an invitation? What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours captivates as it explores the many possible answers.

Normally when I review story collections, I like to talk about each story a little bit but I won’t do that here. As with most collections, I loved some stories, liked others, and disliked one or two. But “dislike” isn’t the right word because the few stories that I’d rate a little lower are simply ones that didn’t stick in my mind, not even a week after I read them. I do remember while reading them that I thought they were weird, strangely-constructed tales that start one way, then take a crazy turn and end up being about something completely different. That doesn’t make them bad stories, they just didn’t work for me (much like Oyeyemi’s strange novel Mr. Fox).

Before I get into my favorite stories and why they are so wonderful, one thing about their interconnectedness. Oyeyemi tried what Angela Slatter does so perfectly in her story collections (in case you want my fangirling thoughts, here are my reviews for Sourdough and The Bitterwood Bible). One story’s side character comes back later as a protagonist, or a new side character, or we go back in time and see their childhood – and that’s how the stories are supposed to be connected and tell one bigger tale. Except it doesn’t really work all that well in What is Not Yours is Not Yours. First of all, the stories are so different in tone, setting, and time period, that it was difficult for me to find any sort of common ground. And when I did recognise a character from a previous story, I had a hard time reconciling that person in the current story with who I met before. There was one mention of some previous characters that made me smile, because we find out what happened to them after their story ended, but in most tales, I didn’t really need them to connect to the rest of the collections. The stories stand on their own.

Now. Here’s why you should read this collection. It has fairy tale-esque stories, like “drownings”, filled with evil tyrants who drown their enemies in the swamp, princesses and the perfect fairy tale voice, but it also has paranormal-ish (and seriously creepy) tales like “Presence” about a couple who tries a new sort of therapy which is supposed to help the bereaved reconnect with their dead loved ones. It was a truly chilling tale, but the creepiness levels were always just right.

There is one story that chilled me to the bone for other reasons. When a Youtube video exposes a famous musician – Matyas Füst – as having beaten up a girl, the world answers. And it answers pretty much the way you’d expect our world to answer. The social media attacks are aimed mostly at the victim, the half-hearted apologies by the celebrity are eaten up by his fans, and hey, why not use this incident to write a new song that will make him some more millions? This story was both sickening and fascinating, because we also see how a fan tries to justify her idol’s actions so she can keep liking him.

Then he stood over her in all his wealth and fame and arrogance and shrugged when she said she wasn’t going to keep quiet about this. Matyas Füst had shrugged and asked her if she thought anybody was going to give a shit that someone like her had got hurt. A nameless junkie with seriously crazy English. Look at you, he said. And look at me.

But by far my favorite story – and maybe because it is such an uplifting, hopeful one – was “A brief history of the Homely Wench Society” which tells of two Cambridge University clubs. The Bettencourt Society is basically the rich boys’ club and no women are allowed in their hallowed halls. Except when they pick the most beautiful girls to have dinner with them. However, the not-so-beautiful girls are fighting back. They created their own club whose purpose is to see the Bettencourt Society go down.
While this story starts as a basic us vs. them/boys vs. girls/beautiful vs. plain/rich vs. poor type tale, it slowly unwinds into something more complex and more hopeful. And inter-club romances make it just a little bit harder to keep hating each other. My favorite part was definitely the prank the Homely Wenches pull by breaking into the Bettencourt library and exchanging some of their male-authored books with some female-authored ones they brought. And both sides soon have to admit that the others have pretty good taste in books (and nobody gives a shit if the writer was male or female). It was adorable and I loved every part of the story, but that prank and the ending especially left me beaming with joy.

The book’s opening story “Books and Roses” was also beautifully told and although it has a healthy dose of magical realism, was the perfect tale to fall into. It’s also the beginning of the collection’s theme of keys. Much like the recurring characters, I didn’t think the key theme added much to the collection, because the subject matter and voice is so different from one tale to the next, but it is a lovely bit of imagery. I was also reminded just how many things can be considered keys and in how many shapes and sizes keys actually come.

Pretty much as expected this was a mixed bag for me, but I will continue to keep my eye out for Helen Oyeyemi’s books. When she goes too abstract, I usually don’t get much out of her fiction, but when she hits a note I like, she really hits it. I can’t wait to discover what she will come up with next.

MY RATING:  7,5/10 – Very good!

 

 

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Angela Slatter – The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

Well, this is how long I could keep away from Angela Slatter’s stories. A bit more than a week, which I used to order a paperback copy of Of Sorrow and Such… now that I’ve read The Bitterwood Bible – which is a sort of prequel collection to Sourdough – I am even more in love with Slatter’s style and ideas. I really hope that her Tor.com novella will expand her readership and get more of her stories into my hands.

THE BITTERWOOD BIBLE AND OTHER RECOUNTINGS
by Angela Slatter

Published by: Tartarus Press, 2014
Ebook: 280 pages
Short story collection
Illustrated by: Kathleen Jennings
My rating: 9,5/10

First sentence: The door is a rich red wood, heavily carved with improving scenes from the trials of Job.

Welcome back to the magic and pathos of Angela Slatter’s exquisitely imagined tales.
The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings returns to the world of Sourdough and Other Stories (Tartarus, 2010), introducing readers to the tales that came before. Stories where coffin-makers work hard to keep the dead beneath; where a plague maiden steals away the children of an ungrateful village; where poison girls are schooled in the art of assassination; where pirates disappear from the seas; where families and the ties that bind them can both ruin and resurrect and where books carry forth fairy tales, forbidden knowledge and dangerous secrets.
The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings is enhanced by eighty-six pen-and-ink illustrations by artist Kathleen Jennings.

What is it about Angelas and fairy tales? In both forewords to Angela Slatter’s two collections, she is mentioned in one breath with that other famous Angela who did fairy tales her own way, Angela Carter. While I’d say Carter is a tad darker, I understand the comparison. But because of what this Angela (Slatter, that is) does – namely, connecting all of her short stories and using them to paint one large picture of a time and place – I must admit, I actually prefer her over Angela Carter.

In The Bitterwood Bible, we see what things were like before the events of Sourdough (reviewed here). Familiar names pop up, well-known settings are used, and one object that was almost a gimmick in Sourdough becomes quite important in these new stories. Since Slatter continues the trend of taking fairy tales and myth and folklore, and using them to build her own stories on top of them, I hardly need to say I loved this collection. But it was striking how much the author has developed, how much more crafty her tales are. What little critique I may have had for Sourdough can’t be repeated about Bitterwood. If there are twists to these new stories, such as in the first story “The coffin-maker’s daughter”, then these twists really hit home.

I am absolutely in love with “The Maiden in the Ice” which, apart from being a wonderful story in and of itself, ties in nicely with the first story in Sourdough and made me immediately want to re-read it. I haven’t had the time yet but I believe that I will like that Sourdough story much more and see it in a very different light after reading “The Maiden in the Ice”.

Her perfume is earthly, rich and dark, like rotted roses; a sweetness at first, then a potency, then grown too strong, and finally the hint of decay as she moves past the folk in the streets, those in the markets.

If you didn’t think there could be a new and interesting way to update vampires, well, you are wrong! So wrong! Angela Slatter takes vampires and just… does strange and interesting things with them. Hers are neither only sexy and dark, nor purely tortured innocent-ish beings. They are a bit of everything and something different entirely. And they certainly don’t sparkle. I’d say the vampire craze is mostly over and lots of readers may even go out of their way to avoid vampire stories, but lend me a bit of your trust and just try this one. It’s really something else.

“St. Dymphna’s School” merges seamlessly from one type of tale – at least the type I expected it to be – into quite another. It follows a heroine both determined to do what she came for, (almost) no matter the cost, and yet compassionate and understanding that the people surrounding her shouldn’t be hurt just because they don’t help her achieve her goals. In this tale, another character makes a reappearance from Sourdough, or more accurately – an appearance after being mentioned in Sourdough.

I said above that Slatter isn’t quite as dark as Carter, but that doesn’t mean that these stories are for children or light-hearted. There is one story that  never explicitly mentions the terrible things that happen to its protagonist, but it will break your heart a hundred times over. Even stories with a quirkier, lighter tone manage to twist a knife in you at the end, leaving you filled with horror and shock.

“By the Weeping Gate” is the only story that’s a bit slow to start but it wouldn’t be in this collection if it didn’t deliver the same powerful punch at the end that Slatter’s other stories do. The last story in the collection presents almost a seamless sequel to “By the Weeping Gate” and not only ties these two stories together, but connects the entire book into one big whole beautiful thing.

If Sourdough was about the story of a place and the women living there over the course of several generations, then Bitterwood is about The Little Sisters of St. Florian, women who collect and preserve knowledge, who copy rare (and not so rare) books, some of them mundane, some dangerous, and what happens to their order. The recounting of their last days made me cry a little, as it combines powerful writing with a heart-wrenching story.

One last raving paragraph must go to illustrator Kathleen Jennings, whose work I knew from Catherynne Valente’s The Bread We Eat in Dreams. The style is immediately recognisable and her little drawings are full of detail (albeit a little small on an e-reader). She did excellent work, choosing what to depict – sometimes objects, sometimes animals, and sometimes the characters. I was always a bit giggly when I swiped to the next page and saw an illustration come up. Really wonderfully done!

The longer I read this book, the more superlative my exlamations about it became. From “Hey, I really like this” I went quickly to “This is amazeballs” straight on to “I fucking adore everything Angela Slatter writes!!!” – I gather from other people’s reviews that these are the natural stages of book love when reading Angela Slatter. I kept Of Sorrow and Such for last, because chronology, but you’ll probably be seeing a review of it in December, despite all my well-laid plans for reading exactly what’s on my challenge lists… sorry reading challenges.

Next year promises the publication of Slatter’s first novel Vigil. I don’t even know what it’s about. All I know is that I need it yesterday, and the sequel too!

MY RATING:  9,5/10 – Oh my God, so close to perfection!

Second opinions
(because you know I’m not completely trustworthy when I adore a book this much – although it did win the World Fantasy Award. Just sayin’…)

• SF Signal
• Tsana Reads
• Randomly Yours, Alex
• The Writer and the Critic (Podcast)

 

Nalo Hopkinson – Falling in Love with Hominids

Look, I would read anything by Nalo Hopkinson, but that cover is STUNNING! The colors, that woman, her hair, the sketchy art. I want to print a poster of this and put it on my wall. No wonder I jumped at the chance of a review copy. After reading the content – yeah, yeah, I know that’s the important bit – I am once again reminded of Hopkinson’s ability to write amazingly diverse stories, and at the same time a bit worried that her best work is her older stuff…

FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS
by Nalo Hopkinson

Published by: Tachyon Publications, 11 August 2015
Ebook: 240 pages
Short story collection
My rating: 8/10

First sentence: I didn’t used to like people much.

Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, The Salt Roads, Sister Mine) is an internationally-beloved storyteller. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as having “an imagination that most of us would kill for,” her Afro-Caribbean, Canadian, and American influences shine in truly unique stories that are filled with striking imagery, unlikely beauty, and delightful strangeness.
In this long-awaited collection, Hopkinson continues to expand the boundaries of culture and imagination. Whether she is retelling The Tempest as a new Caribbean myth, filling a shopping mall with unfulfilled ghosts, or herding chickens that occasionally breathe fire, Hopkinson continues to create bold fiction that transcends boundaries and borders.

Falling in Love With Hominids  was pure delight. I read few short story collections but when I do – despite other plans – I tend to read them like a novel. I don’t read one story, wait a few days, then read the next. I read story after story after story until it’s time to sleep or go to work or, you know, all that other grown-up stuff that gets in the way of reading. This makes it difficult to review single stories because they blur together in my memory, some I don’t remember very well at all, but others stand out.

The collection’s first story “The Easthound” is such a standout story. It first appeared in an anthology called After: Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Tales and that is exactly the kind of story it is. A group of children and young adults fight for survival in a world infested with what I first assumed to be zombies. Hopkinson is more original than that and the focus of the story is not that survival but much more presonal. It reminded me of the YA novel This is Not a Test which attempted to do in 300 pages what Nalo Hopkinson managed much better in one little short story.

My favorite story of the collection was the hilarious, whimsical “Emily Breakfast”. Emily Breakfast is a missing chicken – yes, really. Cranston, a young man goes to pick up fresh eggs for breakfast and notices one of the three chickens is missing. He and his wonderful cat Rose of Sharon go and search for Emily Breakfast. The plot is really simple, but what made this so entertaining was the almost sneaky world-building and the wonderful tone of voice. Yes, a man searching for his missing chicken really can be super entertaining and smart and funny. Oh, this was so funny. I particularly loved Rose of Sharon, who is so very clearly a cat and at the same time definitely not from this world.

Another tale that stuck in my memory is Hopkinson’s take on Shakespeare’s Tempest. In “Shift”, we follow Caliban and Ariel as one tries to lead a free life and the other, while driven by the same motive of freedom, looks to have him imprisoned again. This read like a folktale, or a dream. The distinct voices, the characterisation, the language – everything about this story was magical.

While writing this, I just remembered the heartbreaking “Old Habits”, a ghost story about the people who died in a shopping mall. Not only do they have to come to terms with being dead and having lost their sense of smell, taste, and touch, they also have to relive their death every day, as it occurred. The ending wasn’t really surprising but the journey there was heartbreaking.

The reason I mentioned Hopkinson’s older work being better is that the only previously unpublished story in the collection, “Flying Lessons”, was disappointing, and so short it felt like she had to put it in just to give us something new. I also greatly preferred her older novel Midnight Robber to the Nebula winning Sister Mine. Now that small gripe is out of the way, let me say that I adored almost all of the stories featured here, especially because they are so different in theme and style. Although Nalo Hopkinson mentions in the foreword that the only connecting tissue between these stories is, well, her being their author, I disagree. As varied as the collection is, I believe its stories are also connected by their diversity. Almost all characters are people of color, there were at least three stories featuring queer couples, and several characters with disabilities. Hopkinson also puts a distinct flavor of Caribbean myth in everything she writes and I can’t get enough of it.

Regardless of their publication dates, I preferred the stories featured in the first half of this collection. For some reason, the last few stories just didn’t work for me, perhaps with the exception of Hopkinson’s foray into Bordertown. I had heard about this shared universe before, although I don’t know any of the characters or world-building it’s based on. “Ours is the Prettiest” is Hopkinson’s contribution to Welcome to Bordertown and I believe it speaks for her that I enjoyed the story immensely, despite not knowing Bordertown and its inhabitants. This story served up an interesting twist that had more to do with character than, say, a shocking plot element. Well done, indeed!

Despite the few stories that I didn’t find very memorable and others that I simply disliked – Hopkinson’s twist on Bluebeard could have been executed better and wasn’t very original – the collection overall was just wonderful. Whether she explores strange plants, runaway chickens, shopping mall ghosts, or my favorite story from Unnatural Creatures, “The Smile on the Face”, Hopkinson is one of the most intriguing voices in fantasy and I intend to keep reading whatever she publishes.

MY RATING: 8/10 – Excellent

Second opinions:

• The Skeptical Reader
• Civilian Reader

Theodora Goss – In the Forest of Forgetting

I came across Theodora Goss’ name via TV Tropes. Searching for “Mythpunk”, a term coined by Cat Valente (you can see where this is going, can’t you?), Goss was mentioned as a good example of mythpunk writers. It’s easy to see why I pounced on her books once I’d heard her mentioned in the same breath as my favorite writer and even recommended by her at one point. Pouncing was a good decision, I now have another favorite to add to my list!

IN THE FOREST OF FORGETTING
by Theodora Goss

Published by: Prime Books, 2006
Hardcover: 284 pages
Short story collection
My rating: 9/10

First sentence: This rose has twelve petals.

A collection of sixteen postmodern gothic fairy tales from award-winning author Theodora Goss, first published in 2006 by Prime Books and finally made available as an ebook by Papaveria Press. These stories are a treasure for all of those who are already passionate about Theodora Goss’s work, as well as for those who have yet to discover it.

Theodora Goss’ first major short story collection showcases such stories as “The Rose in Twelve Petals,” “The Rapid Advance of Sorrow,” “Lily, With Clouds,” “In the Forest of Forgetting,” “Sleeping With Bears” and many more. Also includes an introduction by Terri Windling and cover by Virginia Lee.

I should have seen this coming but I am utterly, utterly in love. Theodora Goss is my new writer crush and this collection more than impressed me. I expected mostly fairy tales and mythology played with in interesting ways, and I did get that. But there is so much more to be found here. What struck me most was the stories’ readability. Unlike Valente’s prose, Goss writes almost as if she were sitting across from you, telling you these stories out loud. I planned to read a story or two per night and that worked for the first two days. After that, I ate up the rest of the collection in one sitting.

The first story, “The Rose in Twelve Petals”, does exactly what it says on the tin. It plays with fairy tale tropes but, while enjoyable, didn’t surprise or overwhelm me. Except then Goss takes on cancer as a subject, and communism, and racism. Don’t think for a second that any of these heavy topics are used like a hammer or for preaching, no, they are gently played with. Goss wraps heavy themes in light words and lets her readers make up their own minds about what it all means. Both “Lily, With Clouds” and “In the Forest of Forgetting” were powerful yet very different stories about cancer, although the first one is much more about ignorant, arrogant sisters with no room for imagination. It’s also about art and how it can change a person’s life. I adored these stories so, so much.

But then “Miss Emily Gray” came along and completely swept me off my feet. Its teenage protagonist gets a little more than she hoped for – for a long time, you can’t be sure if her father’s new wife is an evil stepmother, a wicked witch, or a misunderstood lady. But it is a lot of fun finding out. I also think, Goss writes teenagers extremely well.

“Look at Alice, and Ozma. Literature, at least imaginative literature, is ruled by adolescent girls.”

Until I let Google enlighten me, I didn’t know that Theodora Goss is a Hungarian American writer – but I might as well have guessed. There are several stories that are set in Hungary or feature Hungarians (sometimes Hungarians living elsewhere) and that convey a real sense of place without long lectures or exposition. With that come references, some more obvious than others, to the Soviet Union and Communism’s effect on freedom in general and art in particular. Sometimes, it’s just a throwaway line that sets the scene, sometimes we get a fuller image of how artists were restrained in their creativity. These snippets all paint a full and bright picture – which is why this book counts as a stop on my literary world trip.

I am haunted by ghosts, invisible, impalpable: the ghosts of silver spoons and margarine tubs, the smell of paprikás cooking on Sunday afternoons. The ghost of a country.

However, this is only a small part of the collection’s diversity. One story,  “A Statement in the Case”, is a statement given to the police about a rather mysterious death, we discover distant memories of a dying ballerina in “Death Comes for Ervina”, and there is a recurring character in several stories who I suspect may not be entirely human…

As much as I loved the stories that explore culture, art, death, and cancer, it will always be one particular kind that speaks to me most: the one about the other world, existing just next to ours. In “Pip and the Fairies“, Philippa, the heroine in her mother’s childrens’ book series, returns to her childhood home after many years of being a rich and successful actress. She remembers what inspired her mother to come up with “Pip” and her trips to fairyland – or was it the other way around? Did her mother’s books create her memories? We can’t know for sure but whether it’s all pretend or real magic, it’s wonderful to read.

This is the sort of thing people like: the implication that, despite their minivans and microwaves, if they found the door in the wall, they too could enter fairyland.

The collection ends with a beautiful tale about teenage girlfriends who decide one day to become witches and take lessons with Miss Gray. Their adventures tie together some of the previous stories, but can also be read on their own. Considering that these stories all somehow fit together, I’m sure I missed at least half the connections and clues, reading a story here and there, without giving much thought to the bigger picture. But that just makes me look forward to my first re-read even more. Theodora Goss lets you travel across borders, both real and imaginary, and leads you through story after story in a light, conversational tone. She is like Cat Valente’s less flowery sister. I’ll see you after I’ve bought her entire backlist of books.

MY RATING: 9/10  – Close to perfection!

Catherynne M. Valente – Indistinguishable From Magic

You all know I go a little coo-coo when it comes to Cat Valente’s books, right? So I pre-ordered this sometime last year, as soon as I found out it would be published. Now imagine my shriek of joy when I got an e-ARC in my mailbox. Yes, it was loud. The boyfriend thought I had seriously injured myself. And then I sank into a cloud of words and didn’t come up for air until I was finished.

INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM MAGIC
by Catherynne M. Valente

Published by: Mad Norwegian Press, 6 May 2014
Paperback: 244 pages
Standalone non-fiction
Review copy from the publisher
My rating: 8/10

First sentence: These days, it’s almost a Cartesian axiom: I am a geeky postmodern girl, therefore I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

In Indistinguishable from Magic, more than 60 essays by New York Times-bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland) are brought together in print for the first time, sharing Cat’s observations and insights about fairy tales and myths, pop culture, gender and race issues, an amateur’s life on planet Earth and much more. Join Cat as she studies the fantasy genre’s inner clockwork to better comprehend its infatuation with medievalism (AKA “dragon bad, sword pretty”), considers the undervalued importance of the laundry machine to women’s rights in locales as wide-ranging as Japan and the steampunk genre, and comes to understand that so much of shaping fantasy works is about making puppets seem real and sympathetic (otherwise, you’re just playing with dolls).

Also featured: Cat takes a hard look at why she can’t stop writing about Persephone, dwells upon the legacy of poets in Cleveland, and examines how stories teach us how to survive – if Gretel can kill the witch, Snow White can return from the dead, and Rapunzel can live in the desert, trust that you can too.

Mad Norwegian Press are known (by me, at least) for such collections as Chicks Dig Time Lords and Whedonistas and the feshly-Hugo-nominated Queers Dig Time Lords –  book-shaped love letters to fandom. But they also publish collections of essays by single authors. Having been to her blog a couple of times, I know that I enjoy Cat’s non-fiction almost as much as the made-up stories she shares with her readers. The release of Indistinguishable From Magic has been pushed back a couple of months but, trust me, you want to get your hands on this!

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke

My approach to collections is usually to read them front to back and then maybe go back to my favorite pieces and re-read them. I went the same way about Indistinguishable From Magic, except I went back all the time to highlight passages, and jot down book recommendations, and make notes to look this or that thing up on the internet later. It is a treasure cove of geeky goodness.

But most impressively, this book made me feel more accepted and more understood than anything else I’d read before. Growing up as someone who loves fantasy books wasn’t particularly harrowing on me. I always had friends and they accepted my quirks as a given, not questioning why I would be into that weird stuff about made-up worlds, why I would name my pets after Hobbits and characters from Labyrinth. But still, there was nobody around who shared that obsession. Then the internet happened and suddenly, I wasn’t so alone anymore. Cat Valente gets that. Oh, how she gets it.

I choose magic. I choose invented histories. I choose epic battles between armies of wolves and spriggans. I choose witchraft, ray guns, AI, and dark gods. I choose swashbuckling, cruel queens, and talking beasts. I choose cross-dressing orphan heroines. I choose unreliable narrators. I choose my friends.

Whether I share her opinion on the importance of folklore or not (I do), whether I agree with her paper – “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” – on Alice, Dorothy, and The Nutcracker‘s Clara, I couldn’t help but feel like I was talking to a friend. In fact, if I hadn’t admired and envied her before, after this collection, I want to be her best friend. Someone I can call late at night to talk about that old Doctor Who episode that made me cry again, or how underrated Flora Segunda is. I think she’d just get it, happily brew herself a cup of cocoa and discuss the night away.

While the collection is structured by topic – pop culture, gender in SFF, publishing – every section overflows with love for the genre and the community. Yes, there are rants about our failings, and pleas to behave like decent human beings – within fandom and outside of it – but the overwhelming feeling I got was this endless love for fantasy and science fiction. That’s something I can get behind.

Cat Valente also reveals a fair bit of herself through her writing. It depends, of course, on how you read her articles and how much you know about her already, but the fact that she can’t let go of Persephone speaks volumes. Her experience as an army wife, living in Japan, keeps coming up and if you’ve read a bit of her short fiction you’ll recognize sides of Cat in them that suddenly make all the more sense. You understand that behind that achingly beautiful prose is a full person with dreams and a past, and all the puzzle pieces fall together. So in a way, this is probably the Valente work in which she is most vulnerable and open about herself as a writer and as a human being. Obviously, I love her all the more for being that brave.

While Indistinguishable from Magic, as a book should, starts with a foreword, I will end this review with it. Unsurprisingly to anyone who knows a little bit about Cat Valente, the foreword is written by her friend Seanan McGuire. I have no words for how jealous I am of their friendship. The introduction not only shows off McGuire’s own hand at writing poetic prose but it shines with love and friendship and respect. And while I don’t know Cat Valente personally, I believe every word Seanan McGuire says about her. It is obvious from Valente’s prose that she must at least have a little bit of magic in her, eaten some of those pomegranate seeds, been sprinkled with just a thimble-ful of fairy dust.

 She is a poet and a poem, wrapped up in the same star-and-moon-tanned  palimpsest skin. She contains many contradictions. She’s the serious mermaid explaining to you why trading fins for feet was a feminist action, and why the sacrifice of a voice is sometimes a simple thing, because there are so many kinds of voices, child; the sea witch left you fingers, left you figures, left you everything you’ll ever need to make this tale your own. She’s the laughing gingerbread witch standing by the chicken coop, feathers in her hair and a promise on her lips that you may or may not want to hear, because promises are prophecies, in their own way, in their own time. She is her own once upon a time, and her own happy ending, and those are two of the best things in the world to be.

MY RATING:  8/10  –  Excellent

Catherynne M. Valente – The Bread We Eat in Dreams

You know what’s coming.

THE BREAD WE EAT IN DREAMS
by Catherynne M. Valente

Published by: Subterranean Press, 2013
Hardcover: 340 pages
Story Collection
My rating: 8/10

First sentence: She walks into my life legs first, a long drink of water in the desert of my thirties.

Subterranean Press proudly presents a major new collection by one of the brightest stars in the literary firmament. Catherynne M. Valente, the New York Times bestselling author of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making and other acclaimed novels, now brings readers a treasure trove of stories and poems in The Bread We Eat in Dreams.
In the Locus Award-winning novelette “White Lines on a Green Field,” an old story plays out against a high school backdrop as Coyote is quarterback and king for a season. A girl named Mallow embarks on an adventure of memorable and magical politicks in “The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While.” The award-winning, tour de force novella “Silently and Very Fast” is an ancient epic set in a far-flung future, the intimate autobiography of an evolving A.I. And in the title story, the history of a New England town and that of an outcast demon are irrevocably linked.
The thirty-five pieces collected here explore an extraordinary breadth of styles and genres, as Valente presents readers with something fresh and evocative on every page. From noir to Native American myth, from folklore to the final frontier, each tale showcases Valente’s eloquence and originality.

I’m still not a big short story reader, and I have found I prefer anthologies that collect many authors’ works surrounding a certain theme, rather than stories by just one writer, covering more topics. But Catherynne Valente turns everything she touches into gold. The variety of styles, themes, and characters collected in The Bread We Eat in Dreams shows off her unique talents and that she is one of the brightest stars in SFF writing at the moment.

As I say, I haven’t read many short story collections but never have I heard of one that starts so perfectly on the right note as The Bread We Eat in Dreams. In “The Consultant”, the titular character explains how we are all part of a fairy tale, we just don’t see it. How the popular cheerleader can be Cinderella, how the college professor’s student girlfriend can be the Little Mermaid, how any couple trying to have a baby can be Sleeping Beauty’s parents. It may be about fairy tales and how the pervade our lives but the style is that of a noir detective, solving desperate dames’ problems for them. It works beautifully.

She walks into my life legs first, a long drink of water in the desert of my thirties. Her shoes are red; her eyes are green. She’s an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris. She mixes my metaphors like a martini and serves up my heart tartare. They all do. Every time. They have to. It’s that kind of story.

The second story in the collection was also my favorite. It’s about Coyote, the trickster god, as a quarterback in high school. I loved everything about this story and would gladly nominate it for a Hugo if it hadn’t been published a few years ago. You can read “White Lines on a Green Field” on Subterranean Press’ homepage. I highly suggest you do.

Some of the stories and novellas I’ve read before. The poem “The Melancholy of Mechagirl” is the only piece of poetry by Valente that’s ever really gotten to me. I’m not much of a poetry fan. The other poems in the collection didn’t impress me much but that may be much more my own fault (for not understanding them or clicking with them properly) than Valente’s.
“Fade to White” and “Silently and Very Fast” (which I’ve written about here) as well as  “The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland – For A Little While” are still as hauntingly beautiful as they were when I first read them.

Among the stories that were new to me, some really struck a chord.  “How to Raise a Minotaur” reads like a metaphor for a childhood of abuse, living with parents who don’t understand you. “Twenty-Five Facts About Santa Claus” is as funny as it is touching, and – another favorite – “We Without Us Were Shadows” tells of the Brontë siblings stepping into their own wild imagination.

There is a story about a teenager who played the (non-existent) fairy Fig in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There is a brilliant take on Red Riding Hood that shows something Cat Valente keeps saying in interviews: If you are in a fairy tale, if you are Hansel or Gretel, Red Riding Hood or Rapunzel, even after you survive the terrible things that happen in the fairy tale, you will never be okay afterwards. Valente’s Red Riding Hood is just that character. She survived but she is broken, she carries the wolf with her wherever she goes, but she doesn’t want it to define her. It’s a beautiful piece of writing.

Stefan Raets reviewed the collection for tor.com and he keeps mentioning author’s notes that accompany each story or poem. These don’t exist in my edition (I got the 40$ trade edition instead of the limited one, maybe that’s the reason?) and I would really have enjoyed them, especially with the stories whose mythology I’m not already familiar with. I’m fine with Greek and Norse gods, some African and Native American mythology, but I’m completely lost when it comes to Japanese spirits and gods and fairy tale creatures. A little help would have been appreciated. EDIT: Aaaaand I found them online. Should have looked there before I read the entire damn thing.

The one tiny thing that annoyed me was this German passage in “The Red Girl” (the Red Riding Hood story):

Die Wahrheit ist ich laufen immer und der Wald beendet nie. Die Blätter sind rot. Der Himmel ist rot. Der Weg ist rot und ich bin nie allein.

Now would it have killed you to have someone who speaks German proof-read that? At least conjugate your verbs… for goodness’ sake, I’d have fixed it for you for free. And for those who are curious about what it means, here’s my ad hoc translation:

The truth is I’m always running and the forest never ends. The leaves are red. The sky is red. The path is red and I’m never alone.

That minor flaw aside, I believe Subterranean Press have outdone themselves with this collection. It not only combines some of the best, mostly myth-inspired tales by a phenomenal writer, it’s also simply beautiful to look at. The illustrations by Kathleen Jennings may be small but they capture each story’s essence. And don’t even get me started on that wrap-around cover. It’s gorgeous. As is the entire book. It now sits proudly on my Cat Valente shelf where I believe it in the best company possible. The shelf is overflowing with longing and myth and love for all things magical.

Table of Contents:

• The Consultant
• White Lines on a Green Field
• The Bread We Eat in Dreams
• The Melancholy of Mechagirl
• A Voice Like a Hole
• The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland—For a Little While
• How to Raise a Minotaur
• Mouse Koan
• The Blueberry Queen of Wiscasset
• In the Future When All’s Well
• Fade to White
• The Hydrodynamic Front
• Static Overpressure
• Even Honest Joe Loves an Ice-Cold Brotherhood Beer!
• Optimum Burst Altitude
• The Shadow Effect
• Gimbels: Your Official Father’s Day Headquarters
• Flash Blindness
• Blast Wind
• Ten Grays
• Velocity Multiplied by Duration
• Aeromaus
• Red Engines
• The Wolves of Brooklyn
• One Breath, One Stroke
• Kallisti
• The Wedding
• The Secret of Being a Cowboy
• Twenty-Five Facts About Santa Claus
• We Without Us Were Shadows
• The Red Girl
• Aquaman and the Duality of Self/Other, America, 1985
• The Room
• Silently and Very Fast
• What the Dragon Said: A Love Story

Nnedi Okorafor – Kabu-Kabu

Making a resolution to read more diversely, to discover authors from places other than Europe or North America, is one thing. Actually discovering them is another story. I didn’t think I would be this glad to read fantasy by writers from different places of the world. But Nnedi Okorafor swept me away with the amazing Who Fears Death and, while very different from that novel, the short stories in Kabu-Kabu have cemented my appreciation for her as a writer.

KABU-KABU
by Nnedi Okorafor

Published by: Prime Books, October 2013
ISBN: 160701405X
ebook: 264 pages
Short story collection
review copy via NetGalley
My rating: 7/10

First sentence: Lance the Brave stood on the edge of the cliff panicking, his long blond hair blowing in the breeze.

Kabu Kabu – unregistered, illegal Nigerian taxis – generally get you where you need to go, but Nnedi Okorafor’s Kabu Kabu takes the reader to exciting, fantastic, magical, occasionally dangerous, and always imaginative locations. This debut short story collection by award-winning author Nnedi Okorafor includes notable previously-published short work, a new novella co-written with New York Times bestselling author Alan Dean Foster, and a brief forward by Whoopi Goldberg.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk about the danger of the single story still rings in my ears every time I read a book or story featuring a non-white protagonist. This collection by Nnedi Okorafor – go read the beautiful Who Fears Death – is the exact opposite of the “single story”. The range and diversity of these short stories is like a breath of fresh air. Given Okorafor’s own background, most stories feature Nigerians, but not exclusively. Some are set in Nigeria, some in America, some in completely different places. Most of her protagonists are women, but again, they are as diverse and different as they come.

But Okorafor doesn’t romanticize Nigeria either. The tales in this collection show off a range of situations and settings, many aspects of culture and character. You will find folktale-like stories without a clear setting or time, intentionally flat characters, and horrific plots, you will find others that are clearly set during modern times, showing all the wonders and horrors of Okorafor’s chosen locations. I’ve mentioned Nigeria a lot, but it isn’t the only place featured in these stories. Just the one that she keeps coming back to.

The author’s favorite topics clearly shine through. Nigeria is one of them, windseekers another. There are not two, but three tales about windseekers, two of which tell essentially the same story. I felt a little cheated and, honestly, it gave the impression that the author’s ideas are quite limited (or that she is really obsessed with windseekers) – she also wrote a novel called Zahrah the Windseeker (which I have yet to read). In all fairness, the third of the windseeker stories, simply called “Windseekers”, did show a different side of these people, born with dada hair and the ability to fly, and I ended up liking that one best.

Of all the stories, “Spider the Artist” was easily my favorite. It is not only a great science fiction short story but would make a brilliant beginning for a novel. A young and unhappily married woman sits next to the pipeline at night and plays music. She ends up befriending one of the terrifying, robotic creatures who protect the pipeline from thieves and bond with it over their shared music. I loved every bit of this story and wouldn’t mind reading what happened after…

In “The Black Stain”, the author changes her tone to that of a cautionary tale. There is little characterisation, events happen quickly, but their repercussions leave you thinking about the horrors humans are capable of inflicting on others. It is a sort of fairy-tale like origin story of Ewu, children of mixed race, who are considered demons, and another one of Okorafor’s favorite themes, seeing as Onyesonwu, the protagonist in Who Fears Death, is Ewu.

The titular story “Kabu-Kabu” was co-written with Alan Dean Foster. It is the story of a lawyer named Ngozi trying to catch a plane to go to her sister’s wedding in Nigeria. Late as she is, she jumps into a kabu kabu, a taxi that shows up out of the blue and whose driver promises to get her where she needs to go… there are just a few errands he has to run first. This story did so many things so well. Ngozi is a wonderfully relatable protagonist who mostly just asks herself WTF? The fact that she meets curious creatures and isn’t sure if she can trust her taxi driver is just a complication in a fun story with a slightly predictable ending.

As with any collection, not all stories were up my alley, and some I didn’t like at all. The bulk of them were great, although I do think short stories are not the author’s strength. Nnedi Okorafor is definitely trying to make a point with this collection. In the afterword she tells the origin of her story “The Magical Negro” and I understand that she wants her readers to see that being branded magical or exotic or barbaric is not something Africans enjoy – yet it still happens all too often in SFF fiction. But perhaps she is trying to get that point across too hard. By no means did this happen in every story, but every so often, I would feel like the author was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder to see if I understood what she’s telling me about race and gender. Yes yes, I get it! I’m on your side! Stop hitting me over the head with the morality hammer already!

I picked the book up because I absolutely loved Who Fears Death. It fits neatly into my Read Around the World challenge, and I honestly think that I learned tons of new things and broadened my horizons – even if a lot of the stories took place in imaginary or alternate settings, not the real world. Okorafor shows the good and the bad, both exploitation and hope, strength and evil of the people. And she adds a healthy dose of magic to the mix.

Recommended, although I personally look forward to cozying up with one of Okorafor’s novels again.

MY RATING:  7/10  – Very Good!

Related articles

• Akata Witch – Nnedi Okorafor (angirach.wordpress.com)
• Nnedi Okorafor is a Vengeful God (theothersideoftherain.wordpress.com)