The kid read Dragonsong and liked it, so I went looking for more Pern material that might be suitable for young adults. This short story collection isn’t it; the stories cover bullying (The Smallest Dragonboy), reinforcing traditional gender roles (Ever the Twain), and deep dives into the series and society of Pern which I don’t feel like dragging the kid into (The Girl who Heard Dragons, Runner of Pern). Pern was a huge part of my adolescence but I feel like it might not be aging well; certainly there’s better stuff out there these days.
Tag: type-short stories
No Man of Woman Born, by Ana Mardoll
This is a selection of short stories in which fables and fairytales are written to center transgender characters, sliding them into tales with gendered prophecies – think Eowyn’s triumphant “I am no man!” moment, but let go of the gender binary. As a theme for a short story collection, it gets old pretty quickly, since the “ha, I’m neither man nor woman, watch me subvert your prophecy!” reveal is at the center of literally every story; however, given that there is almost nothing else out there that features trans characters in fairy tales, I appreciate the collection. The characters are variously trans, nonbinary, and genderfluid; the stories are uniformly sweet but not saccharine. Perfectly good reading but I did have to space the stories out a little for maximum enjoyment.
The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories, ed. Mahvesh Murad, Jared Shurin
There are some big names in here (Nnedi Okorafor, Neil Gaiman) and some that I love but may not be so famous (Amal El-Mohtar, Claire North, Saad Z. Hossain), but for me the standout stories were by authors I hadn’t previously encountered. “Reap” by Sami Shah is written from the viewpoint of a drone operator who is surveilling the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and who begins to witness some freaky supernatural goings-on. It’s brilliant, combining frightening djinn behavior with the weird disconnection of war at a distance, and the feeling of being under threat by forces you can’t comprehend. I’d give second place to “The Congregation” by Kamila Shamsie, a gorgeous and spiritual piece about longing and brotherhood. Honorable mention to “Duende 2077” by Jamal Mahjoub, in which an exorcist is called to visit a haunted spaceship. Mostly a strong collection, put together in a way that started out whimsical and got really creepy towards the end.
The Saint of the Bookstore, by Victoria Goddard
Sister Mirabelle is sent to a town to investigate mysteries of saints and miracles, and finds far more than she expected. A sweet, cozy little addition to the series that works well as an introduction, even though it occurs late in the series timeline; it adds dimension to the characters to see them through the eyes of a newcomer, and gives perspective to the crazy things they’ve been through. (And it really makes me wish there were more novels in the series! I’m not usually the kind of fan who bothers authors to write more faster, but this really does whet the appetite for more Greenwing and Dart books. Especially as she hints at a relationship that wasn’t obvious in the main storyline.)
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak and Other Stories, by Jamil Jan Kochai
This is a series of interrelated short stories, and as the collection title promises, they are haunting. The main set of characters is a family of Afghan refugees who have settled (with varying degrees of success) in California, and how they are haunted by the trauma of the war that drove them from their home. The stories are written with a wide variety of styles and structures, some more approachable than others; however, they hang together incredibly well as a collection and together illustrate many dimensions of the pain and loss felt by this family. Incredibly well done.
A Thousand Beginnings and Endings: 16 Retellings of Asian Myths and Legends, ed. Ellen Oh and Elsie Chapman
This was a really neat collection. Each short story is followed by an explanation of the myth or legend that inspired it. Some authors retell a story but in a different time and place (“The Land of the Morning Calm” by E.C. Myers, which injects Korean ghosts into an MMORPG), while others latch onto a tiny detail and expand it (“Spear Carrier” by Rahul Kanakia, which imagines an entire life for a battlefield redshirt). I don’t know a lot of the stories in Asian mythologies, and really enjoyed reading both the stories and the background segments that explained the original myths.
Hungry Hearts: 13 Tales of Food and Love, ed. Elsie Chapman and Caroline Tung Richmond
The connection between these short stories is that they all take place on Hungry Hearts Row, a neighborhood of restaurants featuring very different cuisines and very different stories. There’s some interplay between characters but only enough to unify the scene. Only a couple of the stories take the prompt literally and use food to bring characters together romantically; others were about relating to estranged family through food, or using food as a way to make peace with one’s past. I particularly liked the ones that were more out of left field, like the one where the Chinese restaurant was actually an integral part of a gang war, or the one where the Muslim superhero literally fell out of the sky in front of a food cart. Some duds, but a strong collection overall; I appreciated the wide variety of ethnicities and cultures represented in both the foods and the stories.
Wicked Wonders, by Ellen Klages
Short story collection. Klages’ narrators are often (but not always) children, and she is absolutely aces at a child’s narrative voice: authoritative, secretive, with an eye for details often missed by adults; The Education of a Witch is a prime example. The stories don’t always have fantastical elements, but they often feel as if they could, even the ones firmly grounded in fact. I loved Mrs Zeno’s Paradox, which clearly grew from watching someone help themselves to just half of whatever piece of food is left, as well as Amicae Aeternum, in which two girls find a way for their friendship to survive separation and reach into eternity.
Stories of the Raksura vol. 1, by Martha Wells
The two stories in this collection are “The Falling World,” in which Moon has to mount a rescue party when Jade disappears; and “The Tale of Indigo and Cloud,” about the founders of Jade and Pearl’s court. In the world of the Raksura, queens are the biggest and baddest, with the biggest teeth and claws, so touchy that negotiations between courts are carefully ritualized dances of insult calibrated to fall just shy of actual violence; their counterparts, the male consorts, are expected to be more docile and nurturing, and find their way through negotiation and diplomacy. The first story explored the delicacy of the power balance in Indigo Cloud, and I liked seeing how everyone had to balance their desire for stability against their need to go after Jade; the second story was my favorite, as it was all about people trying their best to do the right thing without falling afoul of politics and the Raksura version of honor.
Someone in Time: Tales of Time Crossed Romance, ed. Jonathan Strahan
Short story collection, all about time traveling and falling in love. Some authors took the assignment literally (Theodora Goss’s A Letter to Merlin, in which time-traveling agents, sent to influence the behavior of historical figures, try to communicate with one another); others take a more roundabout route (Zen Cho’s The Past Life Reconstruction Service, in which people get to relive their past lives in search of answers for their present lives). Other standouts were Sam J. Miller’s Unabashed, or: Jackson, Whose Cowardice Tore a Hole in the Chronoverse, a poignant and unforgettable wail of pain; and Time Gypsy by Ellen Klages, which creates one of those beautiful perfect cause-and-effect time-travel loops while also pulling in themes of feminism, gay rights, and found family. Really great collection overall.