A review by roxanamalinachirila
The New Voices of Fantasy by Eugene Fisher, Brooke Bolander
3.0
I usually enjoy short story anthologies - you get a collection of all sorts of things, some better, some less good. I often compare them to finding a chest full of stuff in the attic and being excited to discover trinkets and gems and stuff that kind of sucks, but you can't have it all in life.
Well. This chest felt a bit like a dud, even though it started off exciting.
I see a few other reviewers say the "new" in the title is a bit deceiving, because this is a book published in 2017 which contains stories published 2014 and 2015 - this issue didn't bother me, really. I've read Homer and Dickens and H.G. Wells, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Ursula K. LeGuin, so I think a "new voice" can belong to anyone who started publishing in the past decade or so.
No, what bothered me was that these stories... lacked luster? Felt tame? Felt strangely similar in their approach, even if they were very different? For some time, I couldn't put my finger on it, but the collection made me feel a bit bored overall, even if I enjoyed some of the stories.
I don't usually review on a story-by-story basis, but I'm on vacation, so I did just that. And after thinking of each of them in turn, I realized what it was that bothered me: a number of these stories have Points. And by that, I mean that they have one thing they want to say, and tend to focus on that. You might read about ducks, or ribbons around one's neck, or old philosophers, but there isn't a lot of magic there. Many of the stories aren't so much stories, as they're allegories, which takes away from the richness they might have otherwise held.
Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong
I really enjoyed this one. When I started reading this book, it struck me with its grittiness and its innovative imagery - a sort of vampire who feeds off people's souls enjoys eating petty criminals, to feel the taste of their vileness. But when she discovers a murderer, she becomes addicted. It's so well-written that I didn't mind reading it twice.
And I read it twice because...
Selkie Stories are for Losers by Sofia Samatar
As this book informed me, Sofia Samatar wrote "A Stranger in Olondria", a novel which I'd started reading on my Kindle and hadn't finished yet. Remembering the novel, I went and finished that one first and ended up loving it in a strange way, before returning to this story collection (and re-reading the first story).
However, while I really enjoyed Samatar's novel, this story didn't really touch me. It's interesting, but I didn't feel it too deeply.
Tornado’s Siren by Brooke Bolander
A tornado falls in love with a girl. The girl rejects the tornado. Later on, she decides she misses the tornado. If this were about a boy and a girl, there would be nothing special here, so it felt like a one-trick story without much to offer beyond the gimmick.
Left the Century to Sit Unmoved by Sarah Pinsker
There's a pond which sometimes makes people who jump into it vanish without a trace. But people keep jumping into it anyway. It's an interesting story, well-written, pondering, psychologically intriguing.
A Kiss with Teeth by Max Gladstone
Vlad the Impaler, a vampire, is now married and has a child. He's trying to pretend he's normal, so he moves slowly, he acts slowly, he acts normal. It's somewhat fun, but it's the same old, same old "we're a married couple in a bit of relationship trouble, and there's some trouble with the son, and there's another woman on the horizon" thing. I'm a bit bored of that.
Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon
To me, this was the best story in the volume. Do you know those fairy tales, in which men fall in love with otherworldly women who turn into animals, so they hide the women's skins, who are now unable to shapeshift? And then those women marry them? Well, this is a take on that.
A young man falls in love with a jackalope (a cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope), and decides to take her skin away and burn it - and she probably wants to be with him, too. However, he botches things up badly, ending up with a half-animal, half-human woman, and he takes her to his grandmother, begging her to fix everything, and running away from responsibility.
The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu
This is a story that's probably about some sort of real-world politics, but I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to be. Anyway, the wasps are determined, imperialistic, ruthless bastards, and bees are an old-style, hierarchical community. When the latter are conquered by the wasps, they start taking on their new masters' culture, but botch it at all up.
The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate by A. C. Wise
This is exactly what it says in the title. It's cute, but nothing special.
The Tallest Doll in New York City by Maria Dahvana Headley
It's Valentine's Day and some buildings in New York are falling in love and taking strolls together. It's an... interesting... story, I guess, but it felt just odd to me. Especially the bit about two buildings having sex, unless I misread that.
The Haunting of Apollo A7LB by Hannu Rajaniemi
A haunted astronaut suit comes to visit the woman who made it - probably because the astronaut had been in desperate love with her, even if they ended up marrying different people, since he was white and she was black.
I keep hearing Hannu Rajaniemi is unreadable, but this story was quite nice (and readable), and cute.
Here Be Dragons by Chris Tarry
Two men have a thing going on: they pretend to be dragon slayers. They go into town, create a fake dragon attack, then rescue the town from the dragon and collect a large and comfortable fee for it.
The main character was the "knight" of the tale, and his partner was the mechanical genius who invented all sorts of crazy fake dragon stuff to fool villagers. Alas, they got found out and their "business" failed. So they went back home to their wives and their children. The main character came to enjoy being a father, but didn't want to let it show, while the mechanical genius just hated everything about it.
The story was interesting, but, like many others in this collection, it didn't quite do it for me. There was something missing.
The One They Took Before by Kelly Sandoval
She was taken by the fairies in order to sing for them, and she hated it. Now that she was allowed to leave them, she longs for their world again, trapped between two worlds, and no longer quite sane.
Tiger Baby by JY Yang
A woman dreams about being a tiger - and she *knows* she's one deep inside. But maybe she's wrong.
The Duck by Ben Loory
A duck fell in love with a rock. A lady-duck helped him out. This felt like it should have a moral attached at the end, because it's explicit enough in its lesson.
Wing by Amal El-Mohtar
Another story that feels like it should have a moral attached at the end, because the lesson was explicit. A young woman has a tiny book of secrets around her neck and she waits until the right man with a book of secrets around his neck comes along to open it.
The Philosophers by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
Three absurdist stories about fathers and sons, exploring the paternal relationship in an allegorical fashion.
My Time Among the Bridge Blowers by Eugene Fischer
A very boring story about a man who travels to a village of air mages. It's advertised as doing the Victorian Style Thing, but somehow it feels fake, as if it were written by someone who doesn't really enjoy Victorian fiction at all. Or maybe I'm wrong and I had this feeling because I was mostly bored.
The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado
This is a story intertwined with urban legends and commentary on people's expectations from women. It felt a bit didactic in the latter endeavor (are you trying to educate me about women's feelings, story?), but the urban legends thing worked quite well.
The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T. Malik
The longest story of the bunch (a full quarter of the book!), but more interesting than most. A grandfather tells his grandson a story about a pauper princess who sold tea in a stall in a land far, far away. A few years after that, when the grandfather dies, the grandson discovers that the princess might be his grandmother, and there might be a huge secret his grandfather had hidden from him, so he travels to the old land to discover it. And it's quite magical.
Well. This chest felt a bit like a dud, even though it started off exciting.
I see a few other reviewers say the "new" in the title is a bit deceiving, because this is a book published in 2017 which contains stories published 2014 and 2015 - this issue didn't bother me, really. I've read Homer and Dickens and H.G. Wells, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Ursula K. LeGuin, so I think a "new voice" can belong to anyone who started publishing in the past decade or so.
No, what bothered me was that these stories... lacked luster? Felt tame? Felt strangely similar in their approach, even if they were very different? For some time, I couldn't put my finger on it, but the collection made me feel a bit bored overall, even if I enjoyed some of the stories.
I don't usually review on a story-by-story basis, but I'm on vacation, so I did just that. And after thinking of each of them in turn, I realized what it was that bothered me: a number of these stories have Points. And by that, I mean that they have one thing they want to say, and tend to focus on that. You might read about ducks, or ribbons around one's neck, or old philosophers, but there isn't a lot of magic there. Many of the stories aren't so much stories, as they're allegories, which takes away from the richness they might have otherwise held.
Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong
I really enjoyed this one. When I started reading this book, it struck me with its grittiness and its innovative imagery - a sort of vampire who feeds off people's souls enjoys eating petty criminals, to feel the taste of their vileness. But when she discovers a murderer, she becomes addicted. It's so well-written that I didn't mind reading it twice.
And I read it twice because...
Selkie Stories are for Losers by Sofia Samatar
As this book informed me, Sofia Samatar wrote "A Stranger in Olondria", a novel which I'd started reading on my Kindle and hadn't finished yet. Remembering the novel, I went and finished that one first and ended up loving it in a strange way, before returning to this story collection (and re-reading the first story).
However, while I really enjoyed Samatar's novel, this story didn't really touch me. It's interesting, but I didn't feel it too deeply.
Tornado’s Siren by Brooke Bolander
A tornado falls in love with a girl. The girl rejects the tornado. Later on, she decides she misses the tornado. If this were about a boy and a girl, there would be nothing special here, so it felt like a one-trick story without much to offer beyond the gimmick.
Left the Century to Sit Unmoved by Sarah Pinsker
There's a pond which sometimes makes people who jump into it vanish without a trace. But people keep jumping into it anyway. It's an interesting story, well-written, pondering, psychologically intriguing.
A Kiss with Teeth by Max Gladstone
Vlad the Impaler, a vampire, is now married and has a child. He's trying to pretend he's normal, so he moves slowly, he acts slowly, he acts normal. It's somewhat fun, but it's the same old, same old "we're a married couple in a bit of relationship trouble, and there's some trouble with the son, and there's another woman on the horizon" thing. I'm a bit bored of that.
Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon
To me, this was the best story in the volume. Do you know those fairy tales, in which men fall in love with otherworldly women who turn into animals, so they hide the women's skins, who are now unable to shapeshift? And then those women marry them? Well, this is a take on that.
A young man falls in love with a jackalope (a cross between a jackrabbit and an antelope), and decides to take her skin away and burn it - and she probably wants to be with him, too. However, he botches things up badly, ending up with a half-animal, half-human woman, and he takes her to his grandmother, begging her to fix everything, and running away from responsibility.
The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu
This is a story that's probably about some sort of real-world politics, but I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to be. Anyway, the wasps are determined, imperialistic, ruthless bastards, and bees are an old-style, hierarchical community. When the latter are conquered by the wasps, they start taking on their new masters' culture, but botch it at all up.
The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate by A. C. Wise
This is exactly what it says in the title. It's cute, but nothing special.
The Tallest Doll in New York City by Maria Dahvana Headley
It's Valentine's Day and some buildings in New York are falling in love and taking strolls together. It's an... interesting... story, I guess, but it felt just odd to me. Especially the bit about two buildings having sex, unless I misread that.
The Haunting of Apollo A7LB by Hannu Rajaniemi
A haunted astronaut suit comes to visit the woman who made it - probably because the astronaut had been in desperate love with her, even if they ended up marrying different people, since he was white and she was black.
I keep hearing Hannu Rajaniemi is unreadable, but this story was quite nice (and readable), and cute.
Here Be Dragons by Chris Tarry
Two men have a thing going on: they pretend to be dragon slayers. They go into town, create a fake dragon attack, then rescue the town from the dragon and collect a large and comfortable fee for it.
The main character was the "knight" of the tale, and his partner was the mechanical genius who invented all sorts of crazy fake dragon stuff to fool villagers. Alas, they got found out and their "business" failed. So they went back home to their wives and their children. The main character came to enjoy being a father, but didn't want to let it show, while the mechanical genius just hated everything about it.
The story was interesting, but, like many others in this collection, it didn't quite do it for me. There was something missing.
The One They Took Before by Kelly Sandoval
She was taken by the fairies in order to sing for them, and she hated it. Now that she was allowed to leave them, she longs for their world again, trapped between two worlds, and no longer quite sane.
Tiger Baby by JY Yang
A woman dreams about being a tiger - and she *knows* she's one deep inside. But maybe she's wrong.
The Duck by Ben Loory
A duck fell in love with a rock. A lady-duck helped him out. This felt like it should have a moral attached at the end, because it's explicit enough in its lesson.
Wing by Amal El-Mohtar
Another story that feels like it should have a moral attached at the end, because the lesson was explicit. A young woman has a tiny book of secrets around her neck and she waits until the right man with a book of secrets around his neck comes along to open it.
The Philosophers by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
Three absurdist stories about fathers and sons, exploring the paternal relationship in an allegorical fashion.
My Time Among the Bridge Blowers by Eugene Fischer
A very boring story about a man who travels to a village of air mages. It's advertised as doing the Victorian Style Thing, but somehow it feels fake, as if it were written by someone who doesn't really enjoy Victorian fiction at all. Or maybe I'm wrong and I had this feeling because I was mostly bored.
The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado
This is a story intertwined with urban legends and commentary on people's expectations from women. It felt a bit didactic in the latter endeavor (are you trying to educate me about women's feelings, story?), but the urban legends thing worked quite well.
The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T. Malik
The longest story of the bunch (a full quarter of the book!), but more interesting than most. A grandfather tells his grandson a story about a pauper princess who sold tea in a stall in a land far, far away. A few years after that, when the grandfather dies, the grandson discovers that the princess might be his grandmother, and there might be a huge secret his grandfather had hidden from him, so he travels to the old land to discover it. And it's quite magical.