Like any anthology, I enjoyed some of the stories and didn't care for others but overall a great group of new voices and I look forward to seeing these author's rise!

I literally don't remember requesting this one, and since I'm not particularly into adult fantasy, I'm not sure why I did. I probably will never get to this and I'll own it.

A book for discover the futur great name of fantasy book. Objectif granted! I enjoy some of this author and I follow their work until now.
Un livre pour découvrir les nouveaux grands noms de la fantasy. Objetcif atteint! J'ai beaucoup aimé certain de ces auteurs et je vais suivre leurs travail.

Edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman, The New Voices of Fantasy clearly is an accomplished work. It does what it has surely set out to do: offers a strong and relatively diverse overview of some of the most interesting perspectives in the field today. Still, it is not without some problems of its own.
So, if I were to be (sort of) blunt, there are some stories by writers whose strength clearly does not lie in short story writing.

But let’s go back to the beginning. I am not particularly sure that the “new” part of the title is fully deserved: the authors showcased may not be the bigges names or luminaries of the field and it’s entirely probable that their star will only continue to rise, but, say, Hannu Rajaniemi has been publishing for over a decade now. Still, quite a few of the authors seem to fit the call well: they debuted in the last few years and have accomplished enough to have “voices” of their own. (I have heard about quite a few, particularly the recent nominees for some of the most recognisable awards in the field. I was happy to make my acquaintance with more.) As to the fantasy… the genre is not treated particularly restrictively here (to me, for instance, Sachs and Malik in particular were on the verge of falling right off the fence), but that’s hardly a bad thing: in fact, I wouldn’t have minded more experimentation with form to justify the title.

To go into more detail, let me approach the collection story after story, more or less. The volume opens with Alyssa Wong‘s Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers; one of the stories I’ve actually known before reading them in this collection. A monstress who devours feelings and thoughts of her victims struggles to combine her taste for evil with her feelings for a more innocent and wholesome friend. I actually enjoyed it more on re-read: it’s still a little chaotic for my taste (…the food themes invite terrible puns, I honestly apologise), and for me, the beginning and the ending don’t exactly seem to fit the same story, but there’s real emotion, evocative descriptions and more than one way to read the story. It’s not fully polished, perhaps, compared to newest Wong, but it has staying power.

The next in line is Sofia Samatar‘s Selkie Stories Are for Losers: a short story about the child of a selkie mother, or a child abandoned by the mother, combining . I’ve reviewed it on my goodreads separately already, so just to re-iterate: it’s a true gem. I loved it on re-read more than I did when I read it first; the melancholy is palpable, the way it balances genres and themes is masterful. It’s so short, and yet creates entire universes, telling stories within stories, imbuing its characters with life. It’s a selkie story about selkie stories; it’s a love story about living with loss and living with pain. I am sure I will go back to it again, and I’m not a re-reader by habit.

After the two strong punches at the beginning, Brooke Bolander‘s Tornado’s Siren, where a tornado loves a girl, who goes off to be straight before realising that straightness isn’t that much fun unfortunately suffers by comparison to the previous two. It’s not a bad story, but it’s fairly, um, straightforward; it lacks the urgency of Wang or the complexity of Samatar. I found its protagonist’s youth (she gets married quite young and realises the marriage isn’t for her some two years later, if memory doesn’t fail me) to take away from the story from me; I think the weight of age and time might have given it more force, made her choices more difficult. In your early twenties, you can still pick up and change everything so many times. (She said from her old old old perspective of 31, when all the best things are already behind her. Not.)

The next story deals with age too, and with youth, but in a way that I found much more touching, perhaps too much so. Sarah Pinsker‘s Left the Century to Sit Unmoved is a universe unto itself: in a small village, there’s a pond. People jump into it. Some emerge; others disappear never to be seen again. I don’t know if I have much to say about it that I want to share: it was painful to read, but it was painful for how good it was. One of my favourites. I was never the kind of young person who jumps (I wasn’t even the kind of young person who does regular summersaults for fear of an accident that could befall me); and yet. Blending psychological insight, horror and fantasy, this is a story that will definitely stay with me. Highly recommended.

And then there’s Max Gladstone‘s A Kiss with Teeth, which will probably stay with me, but I’d much rather it wouldn’t. I honestly don’t care if Dracula’s son has AD(H)D and if it takes a lot of effort not to murder young women. I honestly don’t feel the need to read even well-written stories about “sympathetic” murderous stalkers. I don’t care for predator-prey fantasies starring married dudes who feel entitled to excitement they are no longer getting from settled life. I think it was ill-conceived.

An antidote to that toxic masculinity came next. Ursula Vernon‘s Jackalope Wives deserves all the accolades it has won and then some. Merging humour and horror, this story does mood and character justice. It’s a little Pratchett, a little Gaiman (in his better moments) and a lot of original and memorable writing all its own. I look forward to reading a lot more from Vernon.

E. Lily Yu was the first author entirely new to me in this collection. And what a meeting! The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees was an unexpected delight. From the antropomorphic insects to the original framing story with humans, I couldn’t put it down and when the story was over I wished it could have been longer. Second new author, A.C. Wise, didn’t disappoint either: her original metafictional The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate can be read on so many levels, and manages that feat without introducing as much as a single “proper” character. And yet, it writes a world that gives food for thought; it meditates on parenthood, and misogyny, and responsibility.

Alas, this, for me, was a breaking point of sorts, and the latter half of the collection failed to rise to the same heights (with some exceptions). I found Maria Dahvana Headley‘s Valentine’s Day walking New York buildings in The Tallest Doll in New York City unmemorable and, in a way, boring to read about. Hannu Rajaniemi‘s The Haunting of Apollo A7LB is quite readable, but entirely too obvious and one-note (its ending is beyond predictable). Kelly Sandoval‘s The One They Took Before, while hardly bad, suffers from the same problem: its ending is almost too fitting and too conclusive, making it quite obvious that last moment is the raison d’etre of the whole thing (though my lack of interest in all things fae may be to blame). JY Yang‘s Tiger Baby didn’t quite do anything terribly exciting or new with its changeling premise. I honestly can’t quite figure out how Ben Loory‘s The Duck makes sense in the context of this collection, and its ending is almost offensively boring (to say any more would be a spoiler but… I was unimpressed).

A little better was Amal El-Mohtar‘s Wing, which, like any El-Mohtar, is beautiful and poetic, but more of a prose poem than a story; I wish it had more heft.

Oh, I seem to have skipped one. Namely, Chris Tarry‘s Here Be Dragons. Skipping it is what I would recommend, actually. There’s some potential in that story about gender roles in a semi-fantasy world of absentee fathers / dragon hunters who are actually conmen, and their abused working mother wives, and their abused children. Unfortunately, the potential is lost in one of the worst story endings I’ve read in a while. Ultimately, the critique of toxic masculinity that could have been is undermined, and any change for the better is only ever illusory and temporary. What a pity, and not as funny as the author may have hoped.

And on to the last stretch. I’m not quite sure how I feel about Adam Ehrlich Sachs’s trio of father-son stories / philosophical parables, aka The Philosophers. I found “Our System” to be eye-roll inducingly pretentious, to be quite honest, and hardly fresh. But then, “Two Hats” had its odd appeal, and the conclusion, “The Madman’s Time Machine”, was charming and clever. Overall, I’m not sure I’d classify them as even remotely fantasy – they’re very American post-postmodern fiction – but at least they were fun to read. Unlike Eugene Fischer‘s My Time Among the Bridge Blowers, which was the only story I just couldn’t connect to on any level from the beginning until its end. I’m quite into postcolonial fiction, and metafiction, but I legitimately spaced out reading this story, and if I had to explain or summarise its plot, I’d flunk the test. I can’t even tell if it was or wasn’t good. Oh well; not everything is for everyone.

And then there was the story that was for me from beginning until its end. I’ve already read Carmen Maria Machado‘s The Husband Stitch, but this time, knowing its conclusion even more exactly than before (since, of course, in this story about a woman wearing a mysterious ribbon on her neck, the ending is preordained in a way), every beat was felt more fully. It has everything: strong critique of ways in which women willingly suborn themselves to men, visceral description of sex in all its joy, dirt, creepiness, betrayal and danger (which is why I would never call it “sex positive” – it contains a lot of sex, but this is not sexuality imbued with positive value in itself; it is sex as part of life but an indubitably dangerous one, one that can cheat and mislead, one that can and often does involve violence and abuse, and that can serve to disguise that violence; vide the title), urban legends within stories within stories, playing with form, breaking the fourth wall, and voice, such an amazing, strong, uncomparable VOICE.

And to think it’s not even, in my humble opinion, the best Machado can write.

Machado’s story, to me, would have been a great note to end the collection on. Alas, instead, the last (honorary, I suppose) spot is instead given to Usman T. Malik‘s (very magic realist) The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn. It’s a very strong (very long) story. It has a lot to say about identity, memory, forgetting, immigrant experience, kinship. It is also astonishingly (to me) gender-biased. Its story of a grandson re-connecting with his heritage through late grandfather’s life story, gaining access to the future and in the process losing the past, would have worked as well without the stereotypical portrayal of women and their relegation to the role of mothers to future (male) generations. Sara, the protagonist’s partner, has a name, and a job, and even a family history, but she is completely flat and two-dimensional on the page. She sends the hero off on his “manventure” and awaits his return with the prize of his future son. Men of this story consume women and enter into true relationships with other men. A pity; it could have been truly excellent otherwise, if I weren’t left growing increasingly annoyed by the story’s treatment of women.

The best stories of this collection would have been enough to justify its existence; other good stories made for gripping reading; I think a few stories could have been cut resulting in a stronger average, but it was certainly interesting to see what’s happening in the genre right now, according to the editors. What it seems to be is blending of boundaries between literary and genre fantastical stories (as well as horror); significant amount of interest in queer and underprivileged perspectives; a diversity of both authors and subject matter; attempts at grappling with toxic masculinity (unfortunately, not always successfully). That, on the whole, seems to bode quite well. I certainly have been reminded of and acquainted with a few authors to look out for in the future.

I love anthologies for a lot of reasons. It's always nice to find new authors to follow. I enjoy short fiction as a break after having so many back to back longer pieces (or trilogies + series); especially in the speculative fiction genre, I can't remember the last time I picked up a new truly one-off standalone novel. It's always exciting even with known authors to see how they react to and solve the different problems inherent in short fiction. I also use anthologies as 'crib notes' to cheat a bit and find out what and where my favorites have published before, for further reading. In short, it's -exactly- the same reasons supermarkets give out taste samples. They know you're hungry, you taste one chili-cheese-nugget and go buy a 5 pound bag. *cha-ching!* Everyone goes home happy.

I love Peter S. Beagle. I've loved (and read, and owned) pretty much everything he's ever published. He's permanently on my shortlist to automatically buy whatever he puts his name on.

I have loved so many Tachyon press books that again, basically anything they stick their imprint on, I'll line up at the bookstore, wave my filthy lucre and hop up and down impatiently. Tachyon's catalog is impressive and a no-fail reading list for speculative fiction fans. It would be fun to just start at one end of the list and read to the other end.

So getting this book was an automatic "Yes, please, with sugar on top"!

There's something for everyone in this anthology. I found myself checking my reading notes and except for two entries which were '2/5' for me personally, they were all easily in the 4-5 range.

There are 19 stories in the collection, with background info and a short bio included in the intro for each one.
Table of Contents:
“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong
“Selkie Stories are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar
“Tornado’s Siren” by Brooke Bolander
“Left the Century to Sit Unmoved” by Sarah Pinsker
“A Kiss with Teeth” by Max Gladstone
“Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon
“The Cartographer Wasps and Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu
“The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate” by A. C. Wise
“The Tallest Doll in New York City” by Maria Dahvana Headley
“The Haunting of Apollo A7LB” by Hannu Rajaniemi
“Here Be Dragons” by Chris Tarry
“The One They Took Before” by Kelly Sandoval
“Tiger Baby” by JY Yang
“The Duck” by Ben Loory
“Wing” by Amal El-Mohtar
“The Philosophers” by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
“My Time Among the Bridge Blowers” by Eugene Fischer
“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado
“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik

Most anthologies have a thematic cohesiveness. This one's stated purpose was to pass the baton to the next generation of authors and though many of the authors included are well known, they are the 'up and coming' or relatively newly arrived standard bearers.

There are some exquisitely written pieces in this anthology. All of them are worthy.

Four stars!

It is so exciting to read material from new authors. I like some stories. Some were just good. Some were really not to my tastes. I am looking forward to finding more work of a few.

Edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman, The New Voices of Fantasy is a solid collection of short stories introducing new and familiar readers of fantasy to relatively new writers to the genre. I say relatively, because a good portion of these appear to have been originally published in 2014 and 2015, and it's 2017 now, so that's a few years ago now. However, I feel like I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction and follow quite a few of these writers on social media (and follow writers who have introduced some of these writers to me), so those who are either not active on social media or casual readers of the genre will find these to be "new" writers!

My favorite stories in the collection are: Brooke Bolander's "Tornado's Siren" that's about a tornado who falls in love with a girl; Max Gladstone's "A Kiss With Teeth" that's about Vlad the Impaler living in the modern age and the struggles he faces in deciding whether or not to remain appearing like a human or to give into his vampiric tendencies; and Ursula Vernon's "Jackalope Wives" that's about shapeshifters that brought me to near-tears by the end with longing.

Several of the stories verge on the science/speculative fiction aspect, but genre is something so easily malleable and never a definite thing. It's a perfect fall read as so many of the stories are terrifying, dark, and beautiful.

It had me at Fantasy. And the cover because look at it! This anthology is a collection of short stories by nineteen breakout writers in the genre. I didn't know any of these authors going in, but I now have a few I'm watching out for in the future.

I'm a big reader of epic fantasy so it did take me by surprise when I realized these stories were more on the contemporary side of things. I'm also so used to reading long books that many of the stories felt too short/underdeveloped for me.

Here's a breakdown of my individual ratings:

Hungry Daughter of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong | ★★★★

This story is about a world where certain people have the ability to read people's vile thoughts and feed off of them. This was one of my favourites stories. I was a fan of Wong's word choice, vivid imagery, and chilling prose. I felt and saw what the character did and I was glued to the story from start to finish. I was quite sad when it ended because I wanted more of it. I hope Wong goes back to this with a full length novel because it's hands down one of the best fantasy x horror stories I've read.

Selkie Stories are for Losers by Sofia Samatar | ★★

I don't think I really understood what this story tried to achieve. It's about a woman who works at a restaurant and whose mother disappeared. This then reminds the woman about selkies and their disappearances, and how this may affect a potential relationship with a coworker.

Tornado's Siren by Brooke Bolander | ★★

A tornado falls in love with a girl and follows her at different points in her life, resulting in disaster each time. I loved the idea but found the execution lacking.

Left the Century to Sit Unmoved by Sarah Pinsker | ★★★

A story about a place where people jump in a pond with no certainty of ever coming back up. Some people disappear with only their clothes to leave behind, while others tempt fate and jump just to see if they'll have the same fate or not. There's no rhyme or reason to the disappearances and the story ultimately focuses on why people still jump in. Overall, mysterious and intriguing.

A Kiss with Teeth by Max Gladstone | ★★★★

I really liked this one. I haven't read a vampire story after the Twilight and Shadowhunter series so this was quite refreshing. This story focuses on a vampire living his day to day life with his human family. He has to keep reminding himself things he should be doing to avoid raising suspicions, such as breathing or controlling his strength. It might sound boring and nothing out of the ordinary, but I enjoyed Gladstone's style of writing and really loved the ending.

Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon | ★★★★★

I absolutely loved this one! Jackalopes are mythical animals from North American folklore that look like a jackrabbit with antler horns. In this story, jackalopes often have a night of dancing where they 'shed' their skins and look like beautiful women. A young man steals the skin of one of the jackalopes and partially burns it in the process. He then turns to his grandmother for help and I just love what Vernon writes about human nature.

The Cartographer Wasps and Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu | ★★

I could not get into the story. For some reason it just didn't connect with me.

The Practical Witch's Guide to Acquiring Real Estate by A. C. Wise | ★★★

This was amusing and entertaining! While there was no plot or action, I appreciated the humour in this one.

The Tallest Doll in New York City by Maria Davana Headley | ★★★

An adorable Valentine's Day story about buildings falling in love and what it's like for the people inside them to witness it all. It was predictable and a little cheesy, but I loved the idea.

The Haunting of Apollo A7LB by Hannu Rajaniemi | ★★★★

This was another favourite! An old spacesuit is haunted by its previous owner, resulting in unexpected and troublesome acts for its new owner.

Here Be Dragons by Chris Tarry | ★★

I had high hopes for this one, mainly because it was the only story that somewhat resembled epic fantasy. It focuses on two men with past reputations as 'dragonslayers' and what their life is like now that they're jobless and stay-at-home dads. There was character development for one of the characters, but the ending ruined it all for me.

The One They Took Before by Kelly Sandoval | ★★★★

I loved this one too. It's about a woman who now lives in the real world, after she lives in a world with magic. The story slowly unravels her past and what happened, and constantly touches on her struggles of wanting to go back while knowing it's better if she doesn't.

Tiger Baby by JY Yang | ★★

I wasn't a fan of this one. It's about a woman who believes her true form is that of a tiger. It sounds interesting at first, and I think it ends on a hopeful note, but something is just so sad about it all.

The Duck by Ben Loory | ★★★

A duck falls in love with a rock, and everyone makes fun of him for it. I love how this touched on themes of friendship and acceptance, and I would love to see this illustrated. Cute, touching, and impactful.

Wing by Amal El-Mohtar | ★★★★★

This was so beautiful. It's about a girl with a necklace of a book, and people often ask her what's written inside it. 'It's a secret' she says and they often leave her after that. I love the idea of keeping parts of ourselves, our deepest dreams and desires, and waiting until the right person comes along, to see if we want to share it with them.

The Philosophers by Adam Ehrlich Sachs | ★★

Three short stories focusing on father and son relationships and the cyclical nature of passing things from one generation to another.

My Time Among the Bridge Blowers by Eugene Fischer | ★

I don't think the story was bad, I just found it so boring that I often tuned out just for the sake of finishing it. I can't even tell you what I got from it, because it was that unremarkable.

The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado | ★★★★

This one was quite sexually explicit and as someone who's always preferred fade-to-black scenes when it comes to sex, I often felt uncomfortable reading this. That aside though, this story was brilliant and powerful. It's about a woman who gives everything to the men in her life, but it never seems enough. Very thought provoking ending.

The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T. Malik | ★★

A man is fixated on a story his grandfather told him as a boy, so he goes on a quest to find out if there's any truth in it. I think this is the longest story in the whole collection, and it bored me the longer it went. The story had potential, but I couldn't connect to the characters and I couldn't care less.

This was a mixed bag of goodies with stories I loved and ones I didn't. I also think it was more a 'it's not you, it's me' kind of experience, because I just prefer a different kind of fantasy. I recommend all stories I rated 4-5 stars, of course. They're certainly worth checking out.

Tne New Voices of Fantasy is an anthology collecting all sorts of fantastical tales by new(er) fantasy authors: all the stories present in this anthology were previously published in several venues in the last few years You probably have read or at least heard about some of the authors featured in this anthology such as Max Gladstone, Alyssa Wong, Hannu Rajaniemi, Usman T. Malikin, they are all fairly new authors (even if some have been published a lot of things in the last five years) and this anthology is great opportunity to discover really interesting works by auhtors new to you!

This anthology is composed of very different types of fantasy and all the authors here have their own style and stories to tell but, even each short was different from one another, I really enjoyed how well The New Voices of Fantasy flowed . I enjoyed most of the stories which is not always an easy feat for me and I discovered or re-discovered amazing stories. If you think fantasy is only about elves, trolls and witches, you will be impressed to see how extraordinary diversed this collection of stories is. If the future of the genre is sampled in this book, we are in for a treat!

★★★★



Table of Content & Individual Reviews


“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong – ★★★★ – RE-READ
Well, this is now the third time I read this story and the third time I talk about it on my blog! It follows the story of a girl who uses Tinder in order to find the worst dates possibles and feed off their impure thoughts. Until the day her date isn’t a petty criminal but an actual murderer, the one thing her mom warned her against: once your tasted those thoughts, you can’t go back.
I have to say that this story is not the most re-readable story, it is very good but, the third time I was a bit bored since I knew and remembered all the twists and turns. However, I am still glad this story is featured here since it is a very interesting story and I really admire Alyssa Wong’s writing. It’s definitely a great opener (and even more so if it’s the first time you read it!).

“Selkie Stories are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar – ★★★★
This tale is a mesh of stories all focused on the selkie’s myth, creatures able to shed their skins to turn into humans. The writing of this story was amazing and I really enjoyed the quiet and eerie tone of this story. I was a bit confused at the beginning but after a few pages, I was hooked. I definitely need to read more of Samatar’s works (short fiction and novels!).

“Tornado’s Siren” by Brooke Bolander – ★★1/2
It’s a story of a tornado falling in love with a teenage girl. It had a light hearted tone but I found it a bit underwhelming as a whole.

“Left the Century to Sit Unmoved” by Sarah Pinsker – ★★★★
Set in village where a local pond has the bad habit of swallowing people, we follow a group of teenagers as they try to overcome several of their problems, it is a very short but powerful story about love and grief.

“A Kiss with Teeth” by Max Gladstone – ★★★★★ – RE-READ
This modern retelling of Vlad the Impaler follow him as he is trying to live a normal and boring life raising his kid as well as he can while controlling his vampire urges (such as draining of blood his son’s schoolteacher). This was also a re-read and I loved this story as much as the first time, everything about this story worked for me, the writing, the tone, the pacing and the characters were all exactly to my taste! I really need to seek out more stories by Gladstone.

“Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon – ★★★★
This short story is a whimsical tale about jackalopes, creatures able to turn into beautiful girls. Of course, many mens desire them as they are inacessible and magical, however, the only way to caught them is to steal their rabbit coats to force them to remain in their human forms. Jackalope Wives follows the story of such a trapped creature and it is heartbreacking and beautifully written. It was the second Ursula Vernon’s story I read and I really need to read her other works!
“The Cartographer Wasps and Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu – ★★★★
This story follows the interactions between bees and wasps and how one oppress the other, all of this caused by human interventions. I can’t say that I understood everything about this story by the writing was gorgeous and I would have a read an entire book about the subject.

“The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate” by A. C. Wise – ★★ 1/2
The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate is exactly what it clamied to be: a section by section guide on how to acquire a house when you are a witch! It was lighthearted but a lot of jokes fell a bit flat for me. Compared to the other stories of this collection, this was underwhelming.

“The Tallest Doll in New York City” by Maria Dahvana Headley – ★★
Set in a New York where all the buildings can move on their own, this little story follows the love affair between the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. This story left me a bit indifferent, it might have grabbed my interest more if I could visualize this version of New York better but the first half of the story confused me a lot and after that, I just didn’t care. However, it might just be a personal thing, I have read a few other reviews of this anthology is this story seems to be the favorite of everyone so take that with a grain of salt.

“The Haunting of Apollo A7LB” by Hannu Rajaniemi – ★★★★
A woman has to deal with her dead lover when his old spacesuit comes knocking at her door.This very ell written short story deals with important topics such as love, living our dreams and gender discrimination.

“Here Be Dragons” by Chris Tarry – ★★★
Following two losers who gain money by pretenting to be dragonslayers, this story had very interesting discussions on parenthood. It is probably the most “typical” fantasy story of this collection as it is set in a clearly secondary world and it features classic elements such as dragons and quests. However, it was really interesting to see how the tropes were reversed in this story.

“The One They Took Before” by Kelly Sandoval – ★★★
A woman cannot stop herself from investing all the magical things happening around her and we are here to find out why. This story is about grief, love and finding yourself back after a traumatizing experience. It would have worked better for me if it had been longer because I would have preferred to have some information delivered more slowly but I still liked this story.

“Tiger Baby” by JY Yang – ★★★ 1/2
Felicity has always seen herself as tiger trapped in the wrong body and her boring human life is slowly driving her insane. This story is about dreams and following them in a world where no one want you to be truly yourself. I have mixed feelings about this story, I liked the fact that the main protagonist is middle aged since usually those stories target younger characters but at the same time I had issues connecting with this protagonist as she was pretty unlikeable and crazy. But still, it was an interesting story and I’m glad I read it, I usually like JY Yang’s stories so it was nice to see one of their stories in this anthology.

“The Duck” by Ben Loory – ★★★★
The Duck is the shortest story of the anthology, it’s a couple of pages long and it follows a duck who is in love with a rock. This was a delight to read even if I’d say half of it went over my head, the writing was gorgeous and since I never heard of Ben Loory, I am very glad for the discovery!

“Wing” by Amal El-Mohtar – ★★★★
The more I read Amal El-Mohtar’s works, the more I admire her. Her writing is something from an another world, I swear to god, I don’t know how she does it. This little piece is about secrets and trust and you should read it.

“The Philosophers” by Adam Ehrlich Sachs – ★★★
This is a collection of three separate stories about fathers and sons. It was interesting but I don’t have a lot of things to say about them since I mostly forgot the details of each mini stories. I do remember that the writing was good though so there is that.

“My Time Among the Bridge Blowers” by Eugene Fischer – ★★
A tale about colonialism that could have been much more interesting of the main character wasn’t such a self-centered idiot. It was obviously done on purpose but reading from this perspective wasn’t fun at all and I was bored from the start which is a shame since the themes of this story were pretty interesting.

“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado – ★★★★★ – RE-READ
This was my second time reading this phenomenal story and it left me in tears like the first time. I don’t even want to say what this story is about because I think it would spoil the pleasure but it is about life and expectations put on women since their birth, it’s about of the society shapes you, consent, motherhood and the freedom to be who you want. Amazing, amazing, amazing.

“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik – ★★★★★ – RE-READ
Following a man who grew up listening to his grandpa’s tales about princessed, jinns and eucalyptus trees, this novella is a powerful story of love, between lovers, family members and to your home. Highly recommended.

A collection of the most outstanding and exceptional stories of new Fantasy writers. These are individual stories that will intrigue you, excite you, and give you a broader sense of the current direction of the genre. Well worth the read, a masterpiece collection.

This is an incredibly refreshing short story collection that shows just how versatile the genre of fantasy is. Full of inventive and varied takes on fantasy, every story has a unique point of view and is a unique experience. For every person who enjoys fantasy, there should be something in this anthology for you.

Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong: 5/5
Dark, encompassing, innovative, and grotesque, this story was like nothing I've ever read before and possibly nothing I'll read again. The lore of Wong's world is fascinating and amazingly developed in such a short time, and it drew me in completely. The ending, while appropriate, left me desperately wanting more.

Selkie Stories Are for Losers by Sofia Samata: 3/5
I feel bad for not enjoying this story much because it's obviously well written and there's nothing wrong with it, per se, it just didn't grab me. The mixture of a coming of age feel and the selkie story aspect felt muddled at time and in the end I felt underwhelmed. Probably a matter of personal preference rather than the fault of the author.

Tornado's Siren by Brooke Bolander: 4/5
It's a story about a tornado who falls in love with a human girl, and if that sounds silly and ridiculous, it is, but Bolander embraces the absurdity and somehow, it works. Not mindblowing, perhaps, but charming and entirely novel.

Left the Century to Sit Unmoved by Sarah Pinsker: 4/5
I always find it impressive when not much happens in a story, but it still draws you in, and this is one such story. I feel like calling it a "story" is a bit of a stretch, because there's not much plot, but the exploration of a tiny bit of the supernatural (the pond) in a completely mundane world is executed quite well.

A Kiss With Teeth by Max Gladstone: 4.5/5
This is probably one of my favorite takes on vampires that I've ever read. The writing is melancholy, very vaguely reminiscent of the feel that I got from the film Only Lovers Left Alive (but better, since I liked this story and hated that movie). Gladstone makes vampires seem incredibly human in their non-human-ness, and the exploration of family and what happens after the dramatic vampire novels is great.

Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon: 5/5
I don't necessarily love actual deserts, but I have a soft spot for stories set in the desert, because if done well, you can feel the dry heat and the arid beauty through the writing, and Vernon certainly carries that off. A clever take on a classic story (and even better, one where the careless and self-important teenage boy gets punished for his mistakes rather than forgiven or rewarded), I was completely drawn in by this story, which was easily one of my favorites in the anthology.

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu: 5/5
I was intrigued at first by the title, which I thought was a metaphor of some sort, and even more intrigued when I realized that the title was in fact, not a metaphor at all (at least, not any more than the whole story, which is actually about wasps and bees, is a metaphor). This is one of the most creative and unique stories that I have ever read, and it made my heart ache (in a good way).

The Practical Witch's Guide to Acquiring Real Estate by A.C. Wise: 2/5
Although I appreciated the semi-whimsical writing style and what the author was trying to do, it just didn't really work for me. I feel like it's hard to make a fake manual into a solid short story, and this one, which definitely was not really a story, fell a bit flat.

The Tallest Doll in New York City by Maria Dahvana Headley: 3/5
I can't really seem to think of much to say about this one. It's a novel concept, well written, kind of interesting, but I didn't get into it but so much, and I have to say that the idea of buildings having sex is a bit hard for me to understand or enjoy reading about.

The Haunting of Apollo A7LB by Hannu Rajaneimi: 4/5
Not really the happiest story I've ever read, but quite touching and quite good, with a main character whose mental and emotional fortitude, even in old age, is inspiring.

Here Be Dragons by Chris Tarry: 5/5
The writing in this was just fantastic. It's an amazingly fresh take on the dragon slayer genre, and impressively unafraid to lay bare the flaws of its characters. Although I was frustrated at the end, I was frustrated because it wasn't necessarily what I wanted to happen, but it was definitely what was going to happen. I can't say much more than that, but I would definitely recommend giving it a read.

The One They Took Before by Kelly Sandoval: 4/5
Subjectively, I didn't much care for this because I don't personally like stories that carry a dark and depressed tone the entire way through, and the Faerie World that was in this story was terrifying to me in a way that I don't really like to be scared. But objectively, this was a well crafted and well written story, and I have to give it credit.

Tiger Baby by JY Yang: 2/5
I just found this one boring. There were bits and pieces of the writing that were quite clever and stood out as such, but on the whole I found it boring and without much plot to speak of.

The Duck by Ben Loory: 4/5
Incredibly, incredibly strange. There's a duck who's in a love with a rock that's maybe not actually a rock? This story contains some of the most unique writing I've seen in a short story in a while, and it's definitely strange, but I think Loory pulled it off, and I enjoyed it for what it was.

Wing by Amal El-Mohtar: 3/5
There is some absolutely beautiful writing in this story, but beyond that, after finishing it I wasn't sure quite what happened and what was more telling is that I didn't quite care enough to go back and figure it out.

The Philosophers by Adam Ehrlich Sachs: 4/5
These three riffs on family and philosophy are quite clever and quite well done. The subject matter isn't really one that I like, because I don't like philosophy, death, and time paradoxes, but I have to give credit where credit is due.

My Time Among the Bridge Blowers by Eugene Fisher: 5/5
Not much really happens in this story, but it's such an interesting take on colonial fiction (in a way that thoroughly satirizes the colonizers, as it should be), mixed in with fascinating little bits of worldbuilding that were completely novel to me (the Hiatha and their physics-defying breathing abilities, the fact that the people of the "civilized" world all had tattoos that behave differently than normal tattoos, etc). The narrator was an absolute buffoon in the way that incredibly educated people with no sense of perspective on their own position are, and the author captures all of this in an incredibly incisive and biting way. I need to look into more of this author's work, for sure.

The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado: 5/5
Because this is a take on an existing horror story that's been around for ages, I knew what was going to happen from the get-go, but interestingly enough, that didn't spoil my enjoyment of the story at all. The prose is haunting and engaging, and Machado takes the story of the girl with the green ribbon and makes it into a new and immersive experience.

The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T. Malik: 5/5
I can completely understand why they chose this story to end the collection, because I don't think that anything could really follow this. For a short story, the plot of this story is incredibly wide and sweeping across two continents, several countries, and five generations (not to mention across different planes of reality). I didn't understand all of it because it got highly metaphysical at times and to be honest, slightly disturbing, but it was all beautifully written and the incorporation of the author's own culture and experiences is gorgeous.

This is not fantasy in the sense of “imaginary adventures in secondary worlds”. This is fantasy in the broader sense of “writing about impossible things”. A lot of the stories in the collection take place in the real world and combine pressing personal/social issues with strange, fantastic occurences. At worst, they are brief flights of fancy or allegories where you think “oh, right, X stands for Y” – but that’s only a handful. At best, they create complex knots of meaning that cannot be reduced to a simple moral, ones that you’ll be able to tease out over many evenings, while feeling them instantaneously on a gut level. The anthology as a whole goes to the very limits of what fantasy can do.

A lot of the stories are award-nominated or -winning, so I feel they merit going through one by one. Here’s what I thought about all of them.

Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers, by Alyssa Wong – a vampire story with a twist: the protagonist feeds on dark, violent impulses and thoughts. She swallows the darkness, but the darkness threatens to swallow her when she feeds on thoughts of a killer. I loved her complexity: she is broken and flawed, and pushes people away, but we learn a lot about what made her be that way. The story has great wordlbuilding, slowly opening to show us a glimpse of a whole society of people (beings?) that are like the main character. With all the darkness, the story never loses its humanity: it’s a very touching tale about the struggle to allow yourself to be loved.

Selkie Stories are for Losers, by Sofia Samatar – this story shares a few elements with the previous one: it is also about the relationship between mothers and daughters, about stuff that screws you up. The protagonist embarks (tentatively) on a new relationship, all the while remembering how her mother, a selkie, abandoned her. The narrative is quite fragmented, woven through with different stories about selkies and the narrator’s thoughts and responses to them – the result is aching, urgent and full of longing and resentment. As much as you wish the protagonist could be healed, you fully understand why she won’t, at least not any time soon. A sweet and quietly heartbreaking story.

Tornado's Siren, by Brooke Bolander – a tornado falls in love with a girl. At first she runs, trying throughout the years to lead a “normal” life, not even realizing how stiffling it is for her. The main idea feels a bit like a clever spin on The Wizard of Oz, and it’s a fascinating concept, but the story suffers in comparison to the previous two stories, as it’s not nearly as complex. And the message ends up being very simple as well: don’t be afraid to lead a different life.

Left the Century to Sit Unmoved, by Sarah Pinsker – there is a pond outside the town. When people jump in, sometimes it swallows them and they never return. People jump in anyway. Much like that pond, the story is simple and unassuming on the outside, but quietly opens onto vast reservoirs of emotion. Accepting loss, feeling young and on the cusp of growing up, being alive. Rather than telling you about all those things, the story makes you feel them, with all of their enormity. One of the best stories in the collection for me, thanks to its sheer evocative power.

A Kiss With Teeth, by Max Gladstone – a vampire leads a quiet, suburban life with his wife (former vampire hunter) and son. He’s feeling dissatisfied with his life, but tries to contain those feelings. Then, when his son struggles at school, he meets one of his teachers and starts to get the cravings. Much as I like the portrait of marriage this story presents in general, the resolution to the protagonist’s issues, and the whole concept of suburban vampire, the relationship between the real-life issues the story portrays and the fantasy elements is quite simple, so this one is not as good as the more thorny and complex stories mentioned earlier.

Jackalope Wives, by Ursula Vernon – the jackalope wives take off their skins and, as beautiful women, dance in the night. A young man tries to steal and destroy the skin of one of them – with disastrous results. Grandma Harken – a brusque, no-nonsense figure – takes it upon herself to fix the resulting mess. The story is steeped in American folklore, at times feeling not unlike American Gods, but deeper, more mysterious. Like it was part of folklore itself, rather than just a post-modern variation on it. Very good and very touching.

The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees, by E. Lily Yu – a story of political turmoil, imperialism and striving towards a utopia. And yes, it really is about wasps and bees. This again feels like a more complex story, without easy correspondences – this is not Animal Farm – but with a lot to say about how the seeds of change might be sown, even when its initiators perish in the process. A tale as glorious as the revolution.

The Practical Witch's Guide to Acquiring Real Estate, by A.C. Wise – exactly what it says on the tin, and not much more. There are several tiny tales, or anecdotes, embedded inside, and I wish there were more of them, because they demonstrate what could have been done with the premise. Other than that, I don’t have much to say about this one.

The Tallest Doll in New York, by Maria Dahvana Headley – on Valentine’s Day, the buildings come alive. This is a sweet, charming story, where everything works as it should. A nice, satisfying breather after the first half of the collection.

The Haunting of Apollo A7LB, by Hannu Rajaniemi – by turns funny and quite touching, this is a story of a haunted space suit that comes to visit a person important to both it and the person who once occupied it. I like the light infusion of racial politics that helped to deepen the story a little.

Here Be Dragons, by Chris Tarry – two wandering conmen pretending to save towns from dragons of their own making return to their families and struggle with settling down. As much as I like stories that deal with masculinity (because it is in crisis and we – by which I mean men, who much too often try to put that burden on the shoulders of feminists as a way of impeding the struggle for women’s rights – should be analyzing it and proposing ways out), this was a bit challenging for me to read, because I like stories where people do manage to change and adapt and become better. This story, while it did a very good job with portraying the narrator’s struggles with his new role as stay-at-home father and homemaker, as well as the temptations that his old lifestyle offered, did not give me that.

The One They Took Before, by Kelly Sandoval – a woman thrown out of Faerie browses Craigslist in search of hints of their presence. This is an affecting story of loss, trauma and addiction. In that last respect it bears passing similarities to Here Be Dragons, while the emotional tone was more like Selkie Stories are for Losers. The contrast between the subtle, wondrous magic of faeries and the mundane realities of internet advertisements worked well, and the portrayal of the protagonist’s struggle no to give in to the allure of her past was very affecting.

Tiger Baby, by JY Yang – a young woman working a boring job dreams of being a tiger. Loved the quotes from Blake’s The Tyger woven into the narrative, as well as the evocation of the protagonist’s feelings of disaffectedness and disconnect from her job and family life – as much as I thought the text looks down a little on those who adapt and somehow push on through the dreary realities of life, I felt on a visceral level the main character’s desire to escape in a way that I didn’t in Tornado’s Siren. The ending was surprising and funny, with the protagonist’s wishes coming true, although not quite in the way she expected them to.

The Duck, by Ben Loory – a duck falls in love with a rock. This is a very short story, written in a children’s-book style (and with a similarly simple message) that throws enough weirdness and even genuine pathos into the mix that it doesn’t outstay its welcome, even though it really is quite simple in the end.

Wings, by Amal El-Mohtar – this is Amal El-Mohtar, so of course it’s poetic and extremely well-written, but it didn’t speak to me at all. It seems to me that it was about fleeting moments of instantaneous connection, when the right person (not necessarily in the romantic sense) comes along and you instantly click, but it was too impersonal. We never learned anything about the main character – maybe that was part of the point, as she only ever told her secrets to one person, but in that case, well – I’m not going to feel guilty for not connecting with her. I tried.

The Philosophers, by Adam Ehrlich Sachs – three very short stories about fathers and sons, and philosophers. I love, love, love this sort of thing, which brings to my mind short pieces of Calvino and Borges. In this instance, they are all very well executed, slightly absurdist parables that illuminate some aspects of the themes of the whole, but defy succinct interpretation. My favourite of the three was The Madman’s Time Machine, which plays with the Grandfather Paradox in a very interesting way.

My Time Among the Bridge Blowers, by Eugene Fischer – a pointed satire on “benevolent” colonialism, written as a diary from an expedition a man undertakes to a remote mountain village of the titular Bridge Blowers. He is generally a good person and quite oblivious to the problems of his attitude, and the narrative does a stellar job of portraying the dissonance between how he sees himself and his actions and how he comes across to the villagers. A quietly funny story with a lot to say.

The Husband Stitch, by Carmen Maria Machado – a woman with a ribbon that she never takes off her neck (if you’re into urban legends, you probably know what’s up with that) tells a story of her marriage. A wonderful, sex-positive, bittersweet and scary story that excels at portraying the small horrors of patriarchy, where men (even, as the story explicitly points out, and it’s that insight that makes it brilliant and absolutely soul-shattering, good men) feel entitled to the entirety of a woman’s body and soul. The Husband Stitch was thoughtful and excellently written, and now I am very happy that I have Carmen Maria Machado’s short story collection on pre-order. Also, men should be forcibly made to read that story (and, I don’t know, write a 3,000-word essay on it to demonstrate they understood).

The Pauper Prince and the Eucaliptus Jinn, by Usman T. Malik – a grandfather tells his grandson a story that launches the latter on a search for his legacy and, possibly, the key to metaphysics. This story introduces a huge imbalance into the collection (at over 20,000 words it takes up a quarter of the whole book and qualifies more as a novella than a short story), but I get why the editors wanted to put it in the book. The main character’s (a Pakistani American) struggles with his identity are portrayed in a very affecting way, and the story successfully mixes his personal quest to get to know his family history with the fate of a much larger (though largely unseen *wink wink*) part of the world. Reminiscent of Gaiman and G. Willow Wilson, but very good in its own right.

In short: this is 100% the sort of anthology that you would expect Peter S. Beagle to put together. If you know and love his writing, read it. If you want to broaden your understanding of what fantasy can do, read it.

PS. An overwhelming majority of the stories gathered here have been published first in online magazines. That tells you a lot about where to find the best speculative fiction nowadays, I think.

This is a good collection of short stories by a great collection of authors - some were familiar, others were new to me.

My favorite stories were:
“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong
“Selkie Stories are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar
“Left the Century to Sit Unmoved” by Sarah Pinsker
“The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate” by A. C. Wise
“The One They Took Before” by Kelly Sandoval
“Tiger Baby” by JY Yang
“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado


That's a lot of favorites, but it attests to the quality of the stories. I definitely plan to check out more of these authors' works. If you are interested in fantasy/science fiction/genre fiction - definitely check out this collection!

The New Voices of Fantasy is a collection (edited by Peter S. Beagle) of some of the best short fiction from ‘up and coming’ fantasy authors. There’s some Nebula and Hugo award nominees and winners amongst these stories – and if awards aren’t the only indicator of quality, still they’re suggestive. The work as a whole is of a very good standard, and there’s some interesting themes explored, and questions asked – and, occasionally, answered.

There’s a range of stories here, from the hard-edged sentiment of Max Gladstone’s “A Kiss with Teeth”, where Vlad the Impaler struggles to relate both to the modern world, and to his family, to the lyrical modern mythology of Usman T. Malik’s “The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn”, or the quiet secrets and gentle romance of Amal El-Mohtar’s “Wing”. Given there are nineteen stories in the collection, there’s always going to be some that fit a particular reader more than others, but the overall quality is very high. I won’t go through them all, but there are definite highlights.

I have a lot of affection for Alyssa Wong’s “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” – a young woman who feeds off negative emotions is slowly drawn towards monstrous acts. Wong portrays a fragile, confused, powerful woman, unsure of who she is and wants to be – and the sacrifices she’s willing to make whilst working that out.

“Left the Century to Sit Unmoved” from Sarah Pinsker is a piece of fantasy in the modern day, exploring why people are prepared to take risks, to fall with and for each other. In this case, the fall is literal, as inhabitants of a town leap into a possibly bottomless pool. Not all of them return, but the exploration of why people would jump in the first place is compelling and emotionally evocative.

Ben Loory’s “The Duck” is a heartwarming piece, ostensibly about a duck who falls in love with a rock. The other ducks are perhaps less than supportive of this decision. The piece is a pleasant allegory, exploring what it means to fit in, or to deliberately not do so. It wants to examine what people are willing to do for each other, and for love, romantic and otherwise. It’s likely to raise both a chuckle and a smile or two.

Maria Dahvana Headley’s “The Tallest Doll in New York City” is an enjoyablu whimsical piece where the buildings of New York are both sentient and mobile. It’s a love story of architecture, with a thirties thread running through it. The protagonist, at least nominally, is a waiter in one of the buildings, who is also on the lookout for romance in this Valentines Day modern fable.

Those are, of course, just a sample. There’s more here, from the wry, ironic and often darkly appalling “Here Be Dragons”, tracking a pair of con-men in a sword-and-sorcery world, now trying to fit back in to village life with their wives and children, to the travelogue-esque “My Time Among the Bridge Blowers”, a story which is putatively a description of a small mountain society, but which also explores the ideas around power, formation of narrative and colonialism.

As I say, there’s probably going to be some stories here which you find better than others, but the sheer diversity of work on display here, and the excellent overall quality, make this a collection that’s certainly worth exploring.

This collection of nineteen fantasy short works, edited by Peter Beagle, is definitely worthwhile if you like speculative short fiction. Many of them left an impact on me, and a few are true standouts. These stories are by relatively new authors in the speculative fiction genre and are all fantasy; otherwise there’s no discernable overarching theme.

These stories have almost all been published previously over the last seven years, and several of them are Hugo or Nebula winners or nominees. While a dedicated reader of online short fiction can find many of these short works in free online magazines, it’s convenient to have them gathered together in one volume with other stories that aren’t as readily available.

A brief summary of the short stories and the novella in The New Voices of Fantasy and my ratings:

4 stars: “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong. A disturbing vampirish story with an Asian main character, lesbian overtones and highly evocative language. Nebula winner.

4 stars: “Selkie Stories Are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar. When selkie women find their sealskin and go back to the sea, what about the children they leave behind? I appreciated that it explored a different point of view without minimizing the selkie women’s initial lack of consent. Hugo and Nebula nominee.

2.5 stars: “Tornado’s Siren” by Brooke Bolander. A tornado falls in love with a young girl, following her with devotion over the years. I don’t know, it just struck me as kind of a one-note story, with a few too many strained similes (“The sidewalks sweat like her father after a jog.”).

3 stars: “Left the Century to Sit Unmoved” by Sarah Pinsker. Every once in a while, people who dive into a pond in Shay’s small town never resurface, and their remains are never found. We never do find out why people keep disappearing, but the question Pinsker is really concerned with is, why do people still jump in?

5 stars: “A Kiss With Teeth” by Max Gladstone. Vlad the vampire is married to a human (in fact, the woman who was originally hunting him down!). They have a young son, and Vlad tries to live like a regular human, denying his darker self and powers. It all starts to break down when his son starts having problems at school, and when Vlad starts meeting regularly with his son’s teacher … who starts looking incredibly appealing as a victim. One of my favorite stories in this anthology, for its wry look at the question of what it means to be yourself.

5 stars: “Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon. When grumpy Grandma Harken’s grandson catches a jackalope woman by stealing her skin and partially burning it, it’s up to her to try to fix things. Vernon’s writing in this story is fantastic, evoking a Native American-inspired mythology and mixing in humorous but sharp observations about human nature. I’ve read this short story at least five times and adore it more each time. Nebula winner.

4 stars: “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu. A fable-type of story about intelligent wasps and bees, with political overtones. Nebula and Hugo nominee.

2.5 stars: “The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate” by A. C. Wise. This is a humorous manual advising witches on the best way to get a house (buying, taming, breeding …). It’s a more complicated process than you might think! Cute, but a little weak and one-note for me. No plot.

3.75 stars: “The Tallest Doll in New York City” by Maria Dahvana Headley: One February evening in 1938, the Chrysler Building gets the romantic itch and takes off for a walk to go flirt with the Empire State Building. A sweet and warmhearted fantasia of a story; again, not a whole lot of plot.

4 stars: “The Haunting of Apollo A7LB” by Hannu Rajaniemi. A old spacesuit, haunted by the spirit of the astronaut who once owned it, takes its new (and illicit) owner for unwanted excursions. This is a deeper and more thoughtful story than I expected from the initial premise.

4 stars: “Here Be Dragons” by Chris Tarry. A couple of medieval con men, who made a good living for quite a while pretending to save villages from nonexistent dragons, are now having a difficult time settling down with the wives and kids. It’s told from the point of view of one of the men, who sees his friend’s and his own personal shortcomings, but tries to justify (or at least explain) their behavior. It’s amusing in parts, but also sobering and even appalling.

4.5 stars. “The One They Took Before” by Kelly Sandoval. Kayla feels a compulsion to check out want ads that speak of magical portals, faerie queens and mysterious disappearances. As the pattern builds up, it gradually becomes apparent why.

2 stars. “Tiger Baby” by JY Yang. Felicity has a disappointing job and an isolated life, but deep down she's certain that she's really a tiger, and one day will morph into her true tiger self. This one didn’t quite work for me.

2.5 stars: “The Duck” by Ben Loory. Another fable type of story, this one about a duck who falls hopelessly in love with ... a rock. Told in a deceptively simple fashion, it has some nice insights into friendship. Sadly, this duck just didn’t particularly rock my boat.

4 stars: “Wing” by Amal El-Mohtar. A lovely and very short story about books, and secrets, and people who truly understand you. There’s an intriguingly mysterious element in the small, thumb-sized book that the girl wears around her neck.

3.5 stars: “The Philosophers” by Adam Ehrlich Sachs. This work is comprised of three separate but thematically related stories, just a couple of pages each, about fathers and sons. They’re oddly whimsical and philosophical tales, reminiscent of stories by Jorge Luis Borges. Originally published in the New Yorker magazine.

3.5 stars: “My Time Among the Bridge Blowers” by Eugene Fischer. An explorer-scholar takes a journey to visits a remote, isolated people who have the ability to breathe air that solidifies enough for them to temporarily walk on it. This people, known as the Bridge Blowers, are very leery of visitors, since their society has been deeply damaged by colonial practices. It’s like reading a more enlightened Rudyard Kipling adventure, and what the narrator unknowingly reveals about himself and his prejudices is telling. However, I wasn’t a fan of the inconclusive ending. This is the only brand new story in this anthology.

4.5 stars: “The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado. A disturbing, sexually explicit and well-written take on the old horror folk tale about the woman who always wears a ribbon around her neck. Machado weaves in urban legends and some meta aspects, where she addresses the reader directly. This is a strong and overtly feminist tale that takes a dim view of men generally.

4 stars: “The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik. This novella begins as a folk-type tale of the old days, involving a dispossessed Pakistani princess and a jinn who lived in a eucalyptus tree, as told by a Pakistani grandfather to his grandson. It evolves into mind-bending metaphysical science fiction with cosmic implications. Nebula nominated novella..

I really enjoyed reading this anthology. A lot of the collected works submitted by these authors, as the introduction page mentions, are by writers who had participated in well-known and awesome competitions. Many have even won awards for some of their stories.

If you enjoy reading about the weird and wonderful (a tornado who is smitted by a girl, a predator who feeds on emotions as if they were living, breathing creatured, and a vampire bride who keeps a stash of holy water nearby in case her hubby annoys her) then this is something to read.

I really liked some of these stories while others were a big of a miss. But I find that tends to be the way with anthologies. There are definitely some gens in this book and some new authors to keep an eye on. Overall a good read.

[...]

The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T. Malik - 3.5/5★
I really enjoyed the writing, the cultural references, the mystycism, the historical component. Although I liked the Islamic references, there were too many specific terms, hardly explained, that I had to look for on the internet, fragmenting and disrupting my reading; this made me think that the work was targeted to connoisseurs, an aspect that I don’t appreciate in a fantastical short story. Also, I’m not sure I totally got the cosmic implications and the end part..

SFF is ...changing. Long the bastion of men, especially white men, the genre's stories and boundaries are at last making room for a greater variety of voices and points of view. 2017 has been a particular great year for that in our corner of the woods with FIYAH Lit Magazine, showcasing African American SFF; Comic Con this summer celebrated more diverse characters in comic books and films, including a superb Muslim crimefighter; the Star Trek TV series franchise is being resurrected with black and Asian female crew members, as well as the usual undefined aliens; and of course, everyone is still vibrating over the Star Wars beloved General Leia and the new strong female leads in that world. All of this means that when we had the opportunity to read the New Voices in Fantasy Anthology, we both jumped at the chance.

New Voices is not a YA anthology, although there are contributors who write for YA and MG lit included, but we wanted to look it over anyway, because we strongly support diverse voices in science fiction and fantasy. So, without further ado:

Welcome to another edition of In Tandem, the read-and-review blog series where both A.F. and I give on-the-spot commentary as we read and blog a book together. (Feel free to guess which of us is the yellow owl and which of us is purple ...who's driving this bike??)
We are...
Two writers,
& Two readers,
Exploring one book...
In Tandem.


What would you do if a tornado wanted you to be its Valentine? Or if a haunted spacesuit banged on your door? When is the ideal time to turn into a tiger? Would you post a supernatural portal on Craigslist? In these nineteen stories, the enfants terribles of fantasy have entered the building—in this case, a love-starved, ambulatory skyscraper. The New Voices of Fantasy tethers some of the fastest-rising talents of the last five years, including Sofia Samatar, Maria Dahvana Headley, Max Gladstone, Alyssa Wong, Usman T. Malik, Brooke Bolander, E. Lily Yu, Ben Loory, Ursula Vernon, and more. Their tales were hand-picked by the legendary Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn) and genre expert Jacob Weisman (The Treasury of the Fantastic). So go ahead, join the Communist revolution of the honeybees. The new kids got your back.

“This anthology represents some of the most exciting and interesting work in the fantasy field today, and anyone interested in the genre should read it immediately.” —Booklist ♦ “...a valuable snapshot of SF/F’s newest generation of writers.” —Publishers Weekly ♦ “A stellar anthology that proves not only that fantasy is alive and well, but that it will be for years to come.” —Kirkus

We received copies of this book courtesy of the publishing company, via NetGalley. You can find THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY edited by Peter S. Beagle & Jacob Weisman at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!



tanita: I don't know why, but I love, love, love anthologies. Maybe it's the little snippets of someone's work, which gives me a jumping-off point to getting to know them as a writer. Maybe it's the reality that sometimes, I don't have mental bandwidth for a long novel, but there's always time for a story. Maybe it's just that I have attention deficits. I enjoy how some stories turn out to be favorites, and others, not so much, which is always my experience - which makes even reading something I'm not sure I like A Good Thing. You were remarking the other day how hard it is to read them sometimes, though. I agree... this was both fun, and really hard!

sarah: I guess any "new voices" type of thing is going to be highly varied. It's hard for me to do more than a few stories a day... Is it weird that I find short stories require more stamina in a way than novels?
tanita: No, no - not at all. I had to put this down and come back to it repeatedly. For me, the issue with anthologies, where there are rich, fully realized stories is that I can't change lanes that fast. The finned Chevy of my imagination is hurtling down the dark freeway, weird sights blurring as I fly by... and then the story ...ends. I have to find where the car went and turn it around before I can start something new.

The stories featured in this collection were were fully realized, fully populated little worlds we spent time in. Which one was your favorite? Or, which two, probably, that you're having a hard time picking between?
sarah: I have to admit, I'm kind of a sucker for selkie stories--for anything based on myth, really--and so I think my favorite of the bunch is Sofia Samatar's "Selkie Stories Are for Losers." It also is a YA-friendly story, and was nominated for several awards. It does such an amazing job of doing what myths do best--they teach us something about ourselves, show us what already exists in our all-too-human hearts that has existed through history and across time. In the same way, the selkie has both a literal and a metaphorical role in Samatar's story.
tanita: Funny - for the selfsame reason, I kind of hate selkie stories; I find them tragically sad, which is why I loved the Samatar's story -- because her character, too, came from a place of where the story of selkies and sentient sea creatures IS traditionally tragic, and so she decided to reject those stories, in a show of bravado, despite that story being HER story. Similar in themes of loss of wildness and freedom was the story of the anarchist bees - and well done to that person for being able to portray a hivemind in a story - and of course, the Jackalope Wives... I am SO here for any Vernon story, anytime. While I had read this particular story before (which kind of detracts from the "new" voices in the title), I'm glad to see her non-kid work find a larger audience.
sarah: I also liked Ursula Vernon's "Jackalope Wives"--not surprisingly. I'm already a fan of her work for young readers (e.g. the Dragonbreath graphic novels).

Other stories I enjoyed were "Tornado's Siren" by Brooke Bolander for sheer uniqueness of concept; "Left the Century to Sit Unmoved" by Sarah Pinsker for being YA-friendly, very literary, and leaving the reader with intriguing questions; and "Here Be Dragons" by Chris Tarry for having an interesting new take on dragons and dragonslayers.
tanita: There were echoes, in "The One They Took Before," by Kelly Sandoval, of Seanan McGuire's EVERY HEART A DOORWAY trilogy that was really haunting, in combination with the weirdness of Craigslist. But, my favorite of the new-to-me pieces was Max Gladstone's "A Kiss With Teeth," which started off with me feeling pretty unsure of things... In a novel filled with pieces which will appeal to adults and teens alike, this is definitely an adult story. Parents looking back at their lives before becoming part of the Upright Citizens Brigade and remembering when once they were vampire and vampire hunter, when the night was filled with menace and promise and dangerous, obsessive romance... I adored it. I love that story because it's about maturing - and maturity is something you just don't read a whole lot about in speculative fiction, despite the thousand-year-lived vampires and the like that you get in urban fantasy. More often, you get the angst and drama of what happens when people live nearly forever and don't mature, but just... roll into later adulthood, still acting a fool. It was partly side-eyeing those types of stories, and partially celebrating settled, selfless, mature relationships. Which is super rare. Having read that, I'm very much open to finding Gladstone's other work for adults, in a way I wasn't prior to now (although, not going to lie - I have been struck by the wonderful representation on the covers of his books. I mean, look at this!).


sarah: Yes, I enjoyed the "but what happens AFTER?" approach of Gladstone's story--that was something I liked about "Here Be Dragons," too. There are so many tropes in fantasy, and that's not inherently bad, but fantastical creatures like dragons and vampires and werebeasts and whatnot have been done in the same way so many times (hence the trope, I suppose). Bringing a new approach to existing tropes is something that was well done in this anthology as a whole.

tanita: What else stood out to you about this collection in terms of theme or stylistic choices, or anything, really?
sarah: I wanted to just mention how much I enjoyed the variety and risk-taking in terms of form and storytelling approach--there were surprises at every turn, from unusual characters like bees, buildings, and ducks, to unique conceits of form like the how-to guide, Craigslist ad, and anthropological study. I really enjoyed "The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn" by Usman T. Malik for its sweeping, epic, multigenerational look at jinn mythology--great to see something that's not from the well-used Western mold. I'm already a fan of Rushdie, who similarly draws on the history and myth of the Indian Subcontinent, and I'm glad to see more writing in that vein.
tanita: Oh, yes! My main interest in choosing this anthology is that it is aimed at "new voices;" the overarching meaning, in this particular, is not solely stories I haven't yet read from "new" to the field authors, but additionally, nonwhite voices in fantasy, which brings that new vibe to the entire genre. Usman T. Malik allowed us to glimpse both old Lahore, new, busy Lahore, and the mental and physical and spiritual space in between, bridged by the character's life in the West. It was enchanting, in part because the story was about family stories, and how they stretch the truth and what we understand of truth through time. Wouldn't it be lovely, if an aging relative could remember themselves in another time, in their dementia -- and it would all be real? That... in a way would redeem old age and remakes it into something beautiful.

And, in a way, that's what the whole anthology does. Familiar bits of ephemera from our imaginations, from our urban myths and legends, from our cultures and our worlds have been transmuted into something both less familiar and more knowable, both more off-puttingly gross and horrible (and there are some prime bits of horror in this collection - eek), and more charmingly disturbing. This collection runs a good gamut. It's meaty stuff, and could easily be taken along to ease the pain of airports and train rides. It's absorbing and invites the reader to a feast of a thousand different senses. It's not our usual fare here at the Treehouse, but I'm glad we read it.

sarah: Me, too! It definitely fulfills our goal to read widely and diversely, something that we both try to do as much as possible--just not usually at the same time... In this case, though, a tandem review seemed like a good way to survey the gamut of stories in the anthology--we each responded to different ones, and as a result, hopefully, we were able to do it justice as a collection...and tempt you into picking it up, perhaps.

Thanks for joining us on our latest tandem review journey!

It was fun to read a themed SFF anthology that wasn't themed, if you see what I mean - not a book about magic, ghosts, the apocalypse (given current events I'm especially glad it wasn't about that) but which still had a focus: showcasing new voices. These are writers who've perhaps had a few stories published (in the case of Rajaniemi at least, a trilogy of novels) but who are still bringing something perceptibly different to the table - whether that be content, point of view or who they are.

Of course, what you regard as "new" will depend where you've coming from and what you read. For the record, I'd only heard of three of the authors here (Wong, Gladstone and Rajaniemi) before and I'd only read one, so for me, the book presented a lot of really new stuff and I look forward to following up many of these authors. Others may have encountered more of them before, but it's such a wide ranging collection that I hope everyone will see something new or different here.

So - what of the stories? They range from the apparent simplicity of the fairy story or fable ("Duck","The Cartographer Wasps and Anarchist Bees", “The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn”) to knotty horror ("Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers", "The Haunting of Apollo A7LB") to fantasy romance (“The Tallest Doll in New York City”) adventure (“My Time Among the Bridge Blowers”) and all points in between. Many are multilayered, reflective stories - see for example how "Pauper Prince" and "Bridge Blowers" in particular both echo and critique the kind of story they appear, on the surface. There is a lot of dialogue with the existing body of SFF work going on here, though it doesn't stop the stories themselves being immediate, entertaining and fun.

In "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" (Alyssa Wong) the balance of power - and danger - between Jen and the (frankly repellent) men she dates swings back and to, only made less stable by her supernatural abilities. Wong deftly wrongfoots the reader about where it is all going, creating something very disturbing indeed

"Selkie Stories are for Losers" (Sofia Samatar) plays games with the traditional selkie story, the unnamed protagonist both retelling examples of the story and embodying them (or is she?) It's a sweet, touching story in places ("Mona gets out, yanking the little piece of my heart that stays with her wherever she goes") but we don't know if there's a happy ending or not.

"Tornado’s Siren" by Brooke Bolander also has romance, and dash of humour as a tornado falls for Rhea (and why not?) Bolander makes this far fetched idea totally plausible and creates in Rhea a determined and self possessed hero who the reader is cheering on by the end. It's also pretty sharp: "You can't fall in love with destruction. What would that say about a person?"

"Left the Century to Sit Unmoved" (Sarah Pinsker) was my very favourite of these stories. It's an intensely moving, deeply imagined, account of a local place (a pool) and a custom (diving in from the top of a waterfall) that may or may not be linked to a series of disappearances - of what this means to one of the left behind, and of how the community bends and grows around the unexplained, like a tree enclosing a railing. Just mesmerising - at the same time totally mundane, and totally entrancing.

"A Kiss with Teeth" by Max Gladstone is a monster, rather than a horror, story, an imaging of how a vampire might fare in a domestic setting which - at the same time - has clever things to say about modern life, loneliness, the city... and even the plight of the overworked teacher. I don't think I'll soon forget the glimpse of tired Angela, in her one room apartment, at the end of a long day.

"Jackalope Wives" (Ursula Vernon) is another fairytale, loosely Native American in setting, almost a counterpoint to "Selkie Stories are for Losers". Here the transformed beast is rather different but the dynamic - about possession and control, about taming the wild - is the same. An old story in some ways but one that never stales.

"The Cartographer Wasps and Anarchist Bees" (E Lily Yu) reminded me of Animal Farm. It's a sort of fable, a story of bees and wasps, of colonialism, survival and evolution, very much a fable, deeply thought provoking and I think a tale one could return to again and again.

"The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate" (A. C. Wise) has more than a dash of humour as it informs the reader of all the ways to become a homeowner. But it becomes clear that for a witch, this isn't a matter of simply paying for a house - quite apart from the attendant dangers of local prejudice (which are spelled out in an almost unbearably sad section). No, it's more like a courtship, always with the possibility of heartbreak. Funny, yes, also sad and wise.

"The Tallest Doll in New York City" by Maria Dahvana Headley is a mesmerising little love story, set, of curse, on St Valentine's Day. Note perfect, it tales an outrageous concept and makes it works so well.

"The Haunting of Apollo A7LB" (Hannu Rajaniemi) is either a ghost story, or science fiction, or probably both. Apollo A7LB is a space suit displayed in a museum, and it seems that it's not as empty as you'd think.

"Here Be Dragons" (Chris Tarry) isn't really about dragon hunting. It's about domesticity, building a life and raising kids - and maturity. And immaturity. A very odd story, a very old story in many ways but perfectly told and among my favourites here.

"The One They Took Before" (Kelly Sandoval) might be part of an emerging genre, portraying what happens after the cool events of the fantasy story. I thought of Seanan McGuire's "Every Heart a Doorway" or Alan Garner's "Boneland" - both books that, in very different ways, explore the trauma of the survivor, as Sandoval does so well here. A striking and poignant story.

"Tiger Baby" (JY Yang) is, I think, about becoming oneself - and how this might not be quite what you expect - perhaps a common theme but here it's done in such a hauntingly beautiful way while also being so prosaic, centring on the day to day details of a life. Another of my favourites here

"The Duck" (Ben Loory) is about a duck, about love, about devotion... VERY fairytalelike, very beautiful.

"Wing" (Amal El-Mohtar) is a story about books, and people, and finding the right person, and the right book. A gem, and another of my favourites.

"The Philosophers" (Adam Ehrlich Sachs) is actually three stories, which look at aspects of the father-son relationship, making metaphors literal - about communication, about identity and being your own person - and inviting the reader to really think.

"My Time Among the Bridge Blowers" (Eugene Fischer) sees an explorer - perhaps not in our world - visiting a remote people who have an amazing talent. Can he bear to simply watch and wonder or will he interfere, setting in train future trouble for this already suffering tribe?

"The Husband Stitch"(Carmen Maria Machado) is a profound story that, slightly, broke my heart. It's a story of a life, with very little overt fantasy to it but... something... lurks in the background. One detail. One flaw in a relationship. Can you see it? Can you touch it? Will it matter, in the end?

"The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn" (Usman T. Malik) is the longest story in this book, practically a novella. It tells of a princess, a Jinn and a family legacy, drawing on a rich vein of Islamic folklore is a fresh and arresting way and using this to comment on the lives of modern-day Pakistani Americans. An absorbing story.

The collections as a whole is very strong, with something for everyone. They are all great stories, though different readers will have their favourites. Whether as a solid collection in its own right or as a sampler for these authors, I'd recommend this to anyone interested in where fantasy is going.