Like most short story collections this one was a mixed bag. Some were outstanding with wildly imaginative worlds, deep themes, and thought-provoking commentary. My particular favorites include Reduce! Reuse! Recycle, Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole, The Weight of Your Own Ashes, and The River Judge. Others were bland, underdeveloped, or shallow. Despite this, the shining stars definitely made this collection worth the read! 3.5 rounded up to 4

(Bonus points for the creepy/macabre inclusions! Those have always been my favorite since reading Bradbury’s short stories)

Thank you to Mariner Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley

This is a really great resource for librarians, like myself, looking to expand their collection with new and popular titles. I have found many things within these pages to add to my public libraries shelves.

Well, I read about 3/4 of the stories and frankly only found one that I really enjoyed: The Weight of your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George. I also thought Olivie Blake's The Audit was good. The others were either way too creepy, or depressing, or dull, or possibly possessing of a point that I couldn't even begin to fathom. Oddly enough, it was the very first story that gave me the latter reaction -- not what I would have picked for the first story in a collection (like the lead off batter, the first story is to get you excited about what you might find next! I like Okorafor's work a lot -- I've been reading her since 2011 -- but I guess I don't enjoy her taste in other writers. Your mileage may vary!

I've enjoyed this series for some time. It can be uneven at times. I've never read one series that completely solid but they always have some stand outs.
My favorite is definitely The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang. It's great example of fantasy in short form.
T, J. Klune's Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! absolutely pulled me in and I couldn't put it down. It's not exactly a new story but Klune put's his own spin and came out with something very remarkable.
The runner-up for me was Ushers by Joe Hill. This is fun and funny and great in the way only Joe Hill can do. I really liked this story but it's just that it's been done and somewhat derivative. I just can't say no to anything Joe Hill though.
This collection is definitely worth picking up for these three stories alone.
I will say that in closing that for the life of me I didn't get We Will Teach You How To Read I Will Teach You How To Read.

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley.

We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim: Aliens that live at a timescale much faster than humans attempt to teach humans how to read their language, which contains multiple threads that need to be comprehended at the same time. An interesting experiment with form, but I want more alien details.

Also, the Cat by Rachel Swirsky: Three elderly sisters die, one after another and discover they're still stuck together haunting their old house. Well drawn characterizations that elicit sympathy for three old women who mostly enjoy being unpleasant to each other. Then there's the cat, which brought a tear to my eye.

The Audit by Olivie Blake: Our narrator participates in a program that estimates how much money you'll earn in your life and gives it to you to do whatever you want with it, only you have to pay it back as an adult. The narrator gets $40 million and spirals.

Country Birds by Kiji Johnson: The protagonist develops a spot in her vision that looks like a bird. As her life goes on, she thinks of all the aches and pains of her aging body as birds. Lyrical, but slight.

Fuck Them Kids by Tatiana Obey: Jaz goes home for a holiday only to find out that one of her nieces has stowed away on her rocket ship, leaving Jaz no choice but to take her along for the race she's competing in. A fun romp, and I always enjoy good auntie representation.

The River Judge by S.L. Huang: Li Li lives and works at her family's inn at a bend in the river. When her father starts solving problems with murder, Li Li and her mother are left to clean up the bodies. This works, until it doesn't, leaving Li Li with more dangerous problems to solve. While fantasy, this story has some undeniable horror elements, which I really enjoyed.

The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George: Yonder is a Myriad, a member of an alien species that has multiple bodies that share a consciousness. When one of their bodies dies, Yonder and their human girlfriend have some stuff to figure out. Some great aliens in this one.

An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia: Tre is a talented rapper looking for his big break. Unfortunately he makes a deal with the devil to get it. Bloody and visceral, I'd consider this more of a horror story than fantasy, but that's more than fine.

The Forgetting Room by Kathryn H. Ross: A man and his wife buy a 'Forgetting Room,' to protect their child's innocence when he walks in on them having sex. Soon the wife is using it every day, tragedy ensues. Here's another one with a horror vibe.

Look at the Moon by Dominique Dickey: Yet more horror as a queer couple go to a stargazing party and stumble into a horrific cult ritual. The relationship between the couple is so sweet and well drawn that I totally forgive this for the unlikely coincidence that allows the story to happen.

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim: A brilliant, angry response to Le Guin's classic "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." If Omelas was a real place and not a thought experiment, how would you react to it?

The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak: I love witches and stories about witches, but this one, told through different kinds of texts like scholarly articles along with narrative segments felt just a little undercooked for me. There's a creepy story here in the details of shoes under floorboards acting as 'witch traps,' but it never really clicked for me.

Yarns by Susan Palwick: This is one of those dystopian worlds that feels unpleasantly close to now. Irene is a teacher and knitter hiding from a gang with surveillance everywhere. It's like witness protection, but the algorithm recognizes you even with new fingerprints. Anyway, Irene charms the assassin sent to kill her by teaching him about knitting and becomes a grandmother figure to him. Dark with a touch of hope, this is about the value of kindness and community even at the end of the world.

The Wonders of the World by 'Pemi Aguda: This is a strange story, not sure I'd classify it as fantasy like the anthology does. Abisola goes on a class field trip to see a place where two rivers of different temperatures converge but don't mix. She spends some time with a boy from her class who claims to be a prophet who can heal people. She wants him to heal her of spells she has where she has trouble breathing and feels like she's floating away.

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune: A sweet and heartbreaking story of Douglas the android and the week he has with his human friends. Several tears were brought to both my eyes.

A Stranger Knocks by Tananarive Due: A Black couple in the 1920s get hired to drive a movie producer around to theaters for him to show his films. But the producer's film has a strange effect on people, and soon the couple realize they've bitten off more than they can chew. Some very creepy details, but this felt too much like a piece of a longer story.

The Sort by Thomas Ha: A man and his son are traveling and stop in a small desert town. The man and his son hide the fact that they communicate telepathically, and encounter a few weird sights in the little town, and the worldbuilding is well done and subtle, but the story didn't really go anywhere for me.

What Happened to the Crooners by Russell Nichols: A Black singing group take a wrong turn in the Appalachians, visit a very creepy diner, and stumble into a local legend. This has a very Twilight Zone vibe, but the ending is footnote formatted for some reason, which robs the story of some momentum.

The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro: A story, told in almost one very long sentence, about how we created robots to be good slaves, and what one robot thinks as it's being left behind on a planet alone.

Ushers by Joe Hill: hey, I read this one already, (and WDWJKTKITOH) before this anthology. A policeman interviews a guy about a couple of accidents the guy was almost involved in. The guy eventually confesses to seeing beings that portend whatever tragedy is about to happen. Joe Hill is reliably great.

This year's anthology has an unusually high number of tales that I would call horror before anything else. That seems a little out of keeping with the theme of the anthology, but I'm guessing that Ms. Okorafor is a horror fan, which is great.