When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo is a standalone sequel novella to The Empress of Salt and Fortune, which I read and reviewed earlier this year. It features the same cleric seeking stories, but everything else about the book is quite different.

The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover—a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty—and discover how truth can survive becoming history.

Nghi Vo returns to the empire of Ahn and The Singing Hills Cycle in this mesmerizing, lush standalone follow-up to The Empress of Salt and Fortune

The framing narrative in this novella ends up being unexpectedly tense. Chih and their escort run into some tigers (the shapeshifter kind) during a mountain crossing. To avoid being eaten, Chih tells them a story. But unlike Scheherazade trying to entertain her audience, Chih's tiger audience scoffs and interjects when they perceive the story to be told wrong and/or with too-human values. It made for a delicate interplay between framing and framed narratives, that kept me interested and turning pages.

The framed narrative is a love story about a scholar and a tiger and all sorts of misfortunes that befall them. The story itself would be interesting enough, but having it deconstructed from a tiger perspective while still being told was excellent. I really enjoyed how this poked holes in the biases of the human story tellers.

I highly recommend When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain to fans of fairytales and asian-inspired fantasy stories. I hope Vo continues writing about scholar Chih or other people in the same world, because I'm really enjoying the collecting of stories and learning about the magical (and non-magical) beings of this world.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: December 2020, Tor.com
Series: The Singing Hills Cycle book 2 of 2 so far (but they stand alone)
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Burning Roses by S.L. Huang

Burning Roses by S.L. Huang is a fantasy novella that was not at all what I was expecting it to be. I would normally blame this on my intentional forgetfulness of blurbs, but in this case, I think the blurb also buries the lede. I would describe this book as an amalgamation of Asian (Chinese) fantasy and European fairytales, with a heavier dose of the latter than I expected.

When Rosa (aka Red Riding Hood) and Hou Yi the Archer join forces to stop the deadly sunbirds from ravaging the countryside, their quest will take the two women, now blessed and burdened with the hindsight of middle age, into a reckoning of sacrifices made and mistakes mourned, of choices and family and the quest for immortality.

The story in Burning Roses follows our two protagonists, Rosa and Hou Yi, as they attempt to hunt down magical sunbirds and stop them from wreaking havoc across the country. A seemingly straightforward task, until Rosa starts questioning whether the sunbirds are sentient. As we learn throughout the story, Rosa has a dark past with talking animals

The extent to which the world was supposed to correspond to real countries was not entirely clear to me. My general impression was that most of the story was taking place in fantasy-China (or fantastical China, depending on how you want to interpret it), while Rosa has travelled all the way from fantasy-Spain to be there. Having Rosa be a traveller from foreign lands was an interesting and unexpected element. She provided a reference point for readers more familiar with European fantasy, which was the part I wasn't really expecting. In any case, the fantasy aspect of the novella was clearly the pertinent point, since the backstories of both characters have them being involved in several well-known fairytales.

I enjoyed this novella, even though it wasn't what I had expected — more fairytale than wuxia. I recommend Burning Roses to fans of fantasy stories with non-European settings, especially those that also enjoy a sprinkling of fairytales.

4 / 5 stars

First published: September 2020, Tor.com
Series: Don't think so
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

How To Fracture a Fairytale by Jane Yolen — DNF

How To Fracture a Fairytale by Jane Yolen is a collection of short stories from across the author's long career. I hadn't read anything of hers before I picked up this book, but I'd heard good things, so I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy reading this book. I got a bit over half way before I decided to give up. This was not an easy decision, but I seem to keep promising that I'll let myself DNF books and in the end I figured it was time that I just put the book down, even though it's a review copy. Since it's short stories, I will still include my individual story reviews below and a bit about why this book didn't work for me.

Fantasy legend Jane Yolen presents a wide-ranging offering of fractured fairy tales. Yolen fractures the classics to reveal their crystalline secrets, holding them to the light and presenting them entirely transformed; where a spinner of straw into gold becomes a money-changer and the big bad wolf retires to a nursing home. Rediscover the tales you once knew, rewritten and refined for the world we now live in―or a much better version of it.

On the surface, these should be the kind of stories that I enjoy. For example, I am a bit fan of Angela Slatter's short stories, and a lot of those could easily be described as "fractured fairytales" (or shattered and twisted horribly...). Most of the stories in this book didn't stand up to those at all. I found most of the stories I read to be shallow and fairly bland. Some of this could be due to not standing the test of time well, but I don't think that applies to all the stories.

From the stories I did read, the best were definitely the ones drawing on Yolen's Jewish background. My favourite was "Granny Rumple", which was told in the style of a family story passed down a few generations. It had depth and feeling and more interesting characterisation than a lot of the other stories. To be fair, it was also a more lengthy story, but "Slipping Sideways Through Eternity" was short, involved the holocaust, and was also better than most of the other stories. The story I found most amusing was "The Bridge's Complaint", which was told from the point of view of the bridge and was an interesting take. The story that jarred me the most was "One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King" which was long and just boring. I would guess that it was based on a Chinese story (and the author's afterword confirms this) but I don't see what this retelling added in terms of making an interesting story.

There were "about the story" bits at the end of the book, which I didn't read (except the one I just mentioned above, and that was only for this review) and poems which I couldn't be bothered trying, given my general exhaustion with this book. Honestly, I am going to be glad to stop seeing it in my currently reading section.

I obviously don't recommend this book. There are much better "fractured fairytales" in the world. I would recommend starting with Angela Slatter's, but she's hardly the only choice.

~

Snow in Summer — A short Snow White retelling with a more satisfying end for the stepmother.

The Bridge's Complaint — An amusing story about goats, a bridge and a troll, told from the perspective of the bridge. I rather enjoyed it.

The Moon Ribbon — A girl acquires an unpleasant step mother and step sisters (much like Cinderella) and a magic ribbon from her late mother. There is no ball but the abusive relations get what’s coming to them. A more interesting read for how far it deviates from the original.

Godmother Death — A story about Death and her godson. An enjoyable tale.

Happy Dens or A Day in the Wold Wolves' Home — A story containing three shorter stories. When Nurse Lamb goes to work at Happy Dens, where older wolves are looked after, she is at first afraid of being among all the wolves but then hears some famous fairytales from the wolves points of view and feels better about it all. It’s a story about spin — positive and negative — and how people tend to make themselves the heroes of the stories they tell. I couldn’t help but feel a bit uneasy about it. The stories told by the wolves were a bit too positive to be entirely believable (in the context of the story world)... or maybe it just hasn’t held up well in our current fake-news world.

Granny Rumple — I particularly liked this story. It’s told from Yolen’s own perspective and recounts a family story that has been passed down a few generations. The story itself is about a Jewish family, including a moneylender, living in a Ukrainian ghetto and some of their interactions with goyim. It is told as an alternate-perspective basis for the story of Rumpelstiltskin with bonus racism and a small pogrom thrown in. I feel like this story, trying to explore a similar theme of different perspectives to “Happy Dens”, does so in a much more compelling manner and I found it a much more engaging and confronting read.

One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King — Three brothers set out to save their dying mother by retrieving a magical ring from a dragon. It wasn’t a terrible story, but it was on the long side and, ultimately, kind of unremarkable.

Brother Hart — A sad story about a pair of siblings, one of whom turns into a deer each day. I couldn’t work out which side I should be on while reading and it didn’t end happily.

Sun/Flight — I suppose this was inspired by Icarus, possibly with something else thrown in that I didn’t recognise. It didn’t really work for me. Fine, but meh.

Slipping Sideways Through Eternity — I liked this story. It’s about a modern fifteen year old who is briefly transported to 1943 by Elijah, who I gather from the story is a mythical Jewish figure.

The Foxwife — About a man and his kitsune wife, whom he treats badly once he learns of her nature. It was OK. Didn’t feel that “fractured” though.

The Faery Flag — A young laird is led into faeryland by his dog, falls in love with a faery and... it doesn’t end badly. I guess that’s subversive but it’s not sufficiently emotive to be interesting either.

One Old Man, with Seals — The story of an old lady living alone in a lighthouse and coming across an old man surrounded by seals. I wonder whether this story packs a more significant punch of the reader is familiar with the source material? I am not and what seemed like the punchline wasn’t very punchy.

Sleeping Ugly — A children’s story but an amusing remix of Sleeping Beauty. The tone worked well for this one, I thought.

The Undine — A more depressing version of The Little Mermaid? I’m not really sure what we were meant to take from this very short story.

And that was all I read. I started the next story, but just gave up in psychological exhaustion. I list the rest of the stories below for some semblance of completion.

Great-Grandfather Dragon's Tale

Green Plague

The Unicorn and the Pool

The Golden Balls

Sister Death

Sule Skerry

Once a Good Man

Allerleirauh

The Gwynhfar

Cinder Elephant

Mama Gone

The Woman Who Loved a Bear

Wrestling with Angels

No star rating.

First published: November 2018, Tachyon Publications
Series: No
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

#ReadShortStories with slightly more variety (181 to 185)

This batch of stories is a bit less homogeneous with a poem from Uncanny that caught my eye and an unplanned re-read (my eyes just slipped and fell). Mostly I'm still making my way through How to Fracture a Fairytale by Jane Yolen.


The Foxwife by Jane Yolen — About a man and his kitsune wife, whom he treats badly once he learns of her nature. It was OK. Didn’t feel that “fractured” though. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

Smile by Beth Cato — A very short but satisfying poem about being told to smile. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/smile/

The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal — A reread for me, after I finished the (first) two novels set in the same world. Interesting to see how some details transferred perfectly into the prequel novels while some minor background details had to shift. I think I enjoyed this story more the second time around, probably because I’m now more invested in the characters and not coming into it cold. Source: https://www.tor.com/2013/09/11/the-lady-astronaut-of-mars/

The Faery Flag by Jane Yolen — A young laird is led into faeryland by his dog, falls in love with a faery and... it doesn’t end badly. I guess that’s subversive but it’s not sufficiently emotive to be interesting either. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

One Old Man, with Seals by Jane Yolen — The story of an old lady living alone in a lighthouse and coming across an old man surrounded by seals. I wonder whether this story packs a more significant punch of the reader is familiar with the source material? I am not and what seemed like the punchline wasn’t very punchy. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

#ReadShortStories which are still fairytale retellings (176 to 180)

For this batch of short stories I have continued to read How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen. My feelings about the stories in this collection but, well, I'll save that for the full review. In the meantime, some more story mini-reviews.


Granny Rumple by Jane Yolen — I particularly liked this story. It’s told from Yolen’s own perspective and recounts a family story that has been passed down a few generations. The story itself is about a Jewish family, including a moneylender, living in a Ukrainian ghetto and some of their interactions with goyim. It is told as an alternate-perspective basis for the story of Rumpelstiltskin with bonus racism and a small pogrom thrown in. I feel like this story, trying to explore a similar theme of different perspectives to “Happy Dens”, does so in a much more compelling manner and I found it a much more engaging and confronting read. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

One Ox, Two Ox, Three Ox, and the Dragon King by Jane Yolen — Three brothers set out to save their dying mother by retrieving a magical ring from a dragon. It wasn’t a terrible story, but it was on the long side and, ultimately, kind of unremarkable. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

Brother Hart by Jane Yolen — A sad story about a pair of siblings, one of whom turns into a deer each day. I couldn’t work out which side I should be on while reading and it didn’t end happily. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

Sun/Flight by Jane Yolen — I suppose this was inspired by Icarus, possibly with something else thrown in that I didn’t recognise. It didn’t really work for me. Fine, but meh. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

Slipping Sideways Through Eternity by Jane Yolen — I liked this story. It’s about a modern fifteen year old who is briefly transported to 1943 by Elijah, who I gather from the story is a mythical Jewish figure. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

#ReadShortStories which are fairytale retellings (171 to 175)

This batch of stories has seen the start of a new collection by a new-to-me author, Jane Yolen. The stories in How to Fracture a Fairy Tale have mostly been quite short and, as you can guess from the title, fairytale retellings. I've mostly found them enjoyable but not life-changing. That said, there are a lot more stories left to go, so maybe I'll change my mind as I read further.


Snow in Summer by Jane Yolen — A short Snow White retelling with a more satisfying end for the stepmother. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

The Bridge's Complaint by Jane Yolen — An amusing story about goats, a bridge and a troll, told from the perspective of the bridge. I rather enjoyed it. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

The Moon Ribbon by Jane Yolen — A girl acquires an unpleasant step mother and step sisters (much like Cinderella) and a magic ribbon from her late mother. There is no ball but the abusive relations get what’s coming to them. A more interesting read for how far it deviates from the original. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

Godmother Death by Jane Yolen — A story about Death and her godson. An enjoyable tale. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

Happy Dens or A Day in the Wold Wolves' Home by Jane Yolen — A story containing three shorter stories. When Nurse Lamb goes to work at Happy Dens, where older wolves are looked after, she is at first afraid of being among all the wolves but then hears some famous fairytales from the wolves points of view and feels better about it all. It’s a story about spin — positive and negative — and how people tend to make themselves the heroes of the stories they tell. I couldn’t help but feel a bit uneasy about it. The stories told by the wolves were a bit too positive to be entirely believable (in the context of the story world)... or maybe it just hasn’t held up well in our current fake-news world. Source: How To Fracture A Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen

#ReadShortStories (71 to 75)

This batch is characterised by a bit of random reading and a hankering for some flash after reading some longer things. I am continuing to read my review copy of The Underwater Ballroom Society, so I expect those longer stories (it's a novella anthology) will continue to inspire me to read shorter stories in between.

Notable in this batch, "A Series of Steaks" has become one of my favourite stories that I've read this year (it was published last year though) and I particularly enjoyed "Astrofuturist 419" as well.


A Series Of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad  — An excellent story about 3D printing forgeries of beef. It was a delightful read that made me giggle and also marvel at the level of details included. If the author wasn’t already on my list of short story writers I like, this story would have put her there. Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/prasad_01_17/

Twelve Sisters by Y S Lee — I like subverted fairytales and sequels to fairytales, as this one is. After the events in The Twelve Dancing Princesses (which I haven’t read and that made no difference to my enjoyment of this story), the youngest princess endeavours to save her oldest sister from an abusive relationship and also, as their father lies on his deathbed, to save the country from a malicious king. A great read. Source: The Underwater Ballroom Society edited by Stephanie Burgis and Tiffany Trent

Murdering Miss Deboo by Sean Williams — An story featuring the d-mat (replicator/teleport) technology that has featured in some of Williams’ other stories and novels. An interesting premise for a very short story, but I felt like it could have been a slightly smoother read. I’ve enjoyed some of his other stories more. Source: https://cosmosmagazine.com/the-future/murdering-miss-deboo

Shovelware  by Bogi Takács — Flash. Lucid dreaming games as a quick way of generating art assets is a cool idea. The depressing Hungarian art aspect could have done with a slightly meatier exploration. Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/531268a

Astrofuturist 419 by Nnedi Okorafor  — A “Nigerian scam” that wasn’t a scam: a Nigerian astronaut really was left stranded in space for 14 years and now his family is trying to get him home. Flash. I liked it a lot. Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/okorafor_11_16/

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman is an unusual novel. Most of the story feels like it's YA or for younger readers, but the adult (point of view) framing of the story belies that. I would hazard that it's best suited to adults and perhaps older teens.

It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond this world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it.

His only defence is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

Before I read this book, I had seen a lot of people say a lot of things about it, mostly on Twitter (and Tumblr) and in contexts where I only got a snippet of their impression. I don't think I read any reviews before I read it. But while I had some vague idea of what other people thought, I didn't really know what to expect going in. Most of the people whose impressions I read were not people I know (retweets by the author and the like) and, I suspect, weren't people who usually read fantasy books. I was expecting a different kind of different book. What I got, however, was a solid modern fairytale.

The framing for the book is the adult main character returning to a place where some childhood memories were made and, well, remembering them. Most of the story is about a volatile period in his seven-year-old life, filled with magic and monsters and something like a terrifying adventure.

I suspect part of the appeal of The Ocean at the End of the Lane to mainstream readers (as in, don't usually read spec fic) is the ease with which the magical elements can be taken to be metaphors and coping mechanisms. But where's the fun in that? Why not let it be about the magic that only children can see and that adults are blind to? One of my favourite aspects of this novel was the interactions between the main character and his parents. It's not possible to tell the whole truth, or he's not believe when he does. I found it portrayed the way in which children live in their own separate but complete world very accurately. They may not properly understand some adult matters, but that doesn't mean they can't understand anything.

Ocean at the End of the Lane was a good read that I would recommend to pretty much everyone. I'm not a huge Neil Gaiman fan (I mean, I've liked his other books well enough, but not enough to go out of my way to read all of them) but I'd class this as one of his better books. From what I've read, I think I prefer him writing about children (if not for children so much in this case) more than his writing for adults. Also, I don't see a reason why precocious children shouldn't read this book, but I'm not sure an average seven year old would necessarily get as much out of it as an older reader. (I say this with zero baseline seven-year-olds in my life, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.)

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: 2013, Headline
Series: No
Format read: Hardcover *gasp*
Source: Purchased from real life book shop

Phantazein edited by Tehani Wessely

Phantazein is a fantasy anthology edited by Tehani Wessely. It's heavily fairytale/fable/mythology themed and contains stories by a range of female authors. This is the second all-female anthology Tehani has put together (the first was One Small Step), which is interesting, especially as Phantazein was unplanned.

You think you know all the fables that have ever been told. You think you can no longer be surprised by stories. Think again.

With origins in myth, fairytales, folklore and pure imagination, the stories and poems in these pages draw on history that never was and worlds that will never be to create their own unique tales and traditions…

The next generation of storytellers is here.

All the stories in this anthology have very strong fairytale-like themes (a point I unfortunately reiterated a few times when commenting on individual stories). I have to admit this isn't my favourite style of fantasy, but nonetheless there were some stories that really stood out to me.

My favourite stories, in the order they appear, were: "Kneaded" by SG Larner, which really grabbed me when I got up to it; "Scales of Time" by Foz Meadows and Moni, an illustrated poem, which was predictably sad but gorgeous; and "Love Letters of Swans" by Tansy Rayner Roberts, about Helen and Paris and Helen's slave girl, was probably my favourite story of the lot. I suspect leaning heavily towards the mythological rather than fairytalesque added to that, but however you want to classify it, it was an excellent story. Other stories I liked, again in the order they appear, were "Twelfth" by Faith Mudge, "Bahamut" by Thoraiya Dyer, and "A Cold Day" by Nicole Murphy.

As I said, the stories are mostly fairytalesque, but towards the end of the anthology there's an interesting shift away from what I usually think of fairytales towards other time periods. There's a steampunky story (still with magic) and then the Ancient Greek story of Tansy's I mentioned above. I should also note that when I say "fairytale" I don't just mean the European forest kind of tale, there is a pretty good amount of cultural diversity, including eastern and tribal stories. It's quite a mixed bag and all of them are a new take or twist on old ideas. None of them are straight retellings of anything that's ever been made into a Disney movie.

If you enjoy fairytales or fantasy more generally, this is definitely the anthology for you. I've made comments on individual stories below, and I think it's fair to say there's something here for all kinds of fairytalesque fantasy fans. I have used the word "fairytale" too much in this review. Sorry. If you don't think I should be apologising, go buy this anthology.

~
Twelfth by Faith Mudge — A fairytale about twelve brothers, complete with darkness and hope. Well maybe not a fairytale per se because the cautionary part is less the point of the story and anyway doesn’t caution the usual suspects. Mudge weaves a beautiful tale with a pleasing ending.

Bahamut by Thoraiya Dyer — A story about the sacrifices one must make to protect those one loves. Which is more important, saving a kingdom or being loved?

The Nameless Seamstress by Gitte Christensen — a tale of magic clothes, the imperial court and the near-mythological Weaver and Seamstress.

How the Jungle got its Spirit Guardian by Vida Cruz — A surprisingly epic tale for all that it retains the vibe of the earlier stories. And much more about people than the title suggests. Also gender roles

The Seventh Relic by Cat Sparks — An odd, slightly surreal story. Not quite my thing, I have to admit.

Rag and Bone Heart by Suzanne J Willis — A nice and sort of horrible (in happenings) story about a girl in a magic kingdom, a king and a helpful old witch. I liked it.

Kneaded by S.G. Larner — I found this story absolutely delightful. A brilliant take on the idea of people made not of flesh. (With, I think, a twisted allusion to Hansel and Gretel thrown in briefly). Definitely one of my favourite stories in this collection.

The Village of No Women by Rabia Gale — Into the village of no women comes a clever scholar to make the men wives from animals. A satisfying tale.

The Lady of Wild Things by Jenny Blackford — Evil fairy-type beings. Not a bad story, but it didn't leave a very strong impression on me.

The Ghost of Hephaestus by Charlotte Nash — Steampunky while still having a fairytale feel to it (but perhaps less so than a story involving forests). The style wasn’t really to my taste and I personally didn’t connect with this story.

A Cold Day by Nicole Murphy — A potter who makes magic pots to protect newborn children and the demands placed on her by the royal family. I liked this story, although I found the end a little abrupt.

Scales of Time by Foz Meadows & Moni — A sad/lovely poem of a girl and her dragon, written by Foz and illustrated by Moni. Sad thumbs up.

Love Letters of Swans by Tansy Rayner Roberts — A new take on the story of Helen (of Troy, sort of) and Paris. Engaging, awesome, an excellent note to end the anthology on. One of my favourites in this anthology.

4 / 5 stars

First published: October 2014, FableCroft 
Series: No.
Format read: ePub
Source: Review copy courtesy of publisher (but you can buy it here)
Challenges: Australian Women Writers Challenge

Ash by Malinda Lo

Ash by Malinda Lo is a retelling of the Cinderella story. It's not a straight retelling of the fairytale (pun rather intended) with some variations on the theme, but I think it will appeal most to people who enjoy fairytale fantasy.

Ash opens with the titular character's mother's death and the story takes us through her father's remarriage, death and Ash's subsequent indentured servitude to her stepmother. (Gosh, it's nice to be able to just lay out the plot like that because everyone knows it — very liberating!) As well as the Cinderella framework, Ash brings a fairly traditional view of fairies to the table — by traditional, I don't mean "the same as in the Disney version of Cinderella" at all — and a dose of female empowerment in the form of the office of the King's Huntress.

In fact, the Huntress was my favourite secondary character. For reasons we're not told because they don't matter to Ash (but I hope we find out in the sequel), the person in charge of the Royal Hunt, who also acts as a sort of mediator between what's best for the forest and the meat the king requires, is the Huntress. Her job is to lead the hunt in the Woods and she has a team of mostly male hunters that follow her. I am quite intrigued to learn more about her and the office and this will be my main motivation for reading the prequel, I think.

At first I found Ash a little slow and was disappointed at how closely it stuck to the framework of Cinderella. However, I liked Ash as a character and at no point did I want to stop reading about her. Once the Huntress became more of a prominent character — and the hunt and fairyland important plot elements — I was sold.

The story is quite self-contained with the requisite fairytale happy ending (happier than I expected, but not quite a traditional sort of ending either) and I didn't feel a plot-related burning desire to read the prequel (which I initially thought would be a sequel).

I enjoyed Ash overall and I recommend it to fans of fairytales and the sort of fantasy heavy in fairies and enchanted forests. It is technically a YA book, but I see no reason for adult readers not to enjoy it. I will be picking up the prequel when I get a chance (sadly, probably not very soon).

4 / 5 stars

First published: 2009, Little Brown & Company (US) but the 2010, Hodder Children's Book (UK) edition is reviewed and pictured (with actual British spelling most of the time ZOMG)
Series: Yes. I don't think there's a series name but the prequel is Huntress.
Format read: Real life paper book *gasp!*
Source: Christmas present

Moscow But Dreaming by Ekaterina Sedia

Moscow But Dreaming is a collection of Ekaterina Sedia's short stories. Most of the stories were previously published in various magazines and anthologies and two, marked with an asterisk in the list at the end, are original to the collection. I hadn't read any of the stories before, though I have read Sedia's novel The Secret History of Moscow, which I quite liked. Several of the stories in the collection are in a similar vein.

Moscow But Dreaming contains twenty-one short stories, with an average length of about thirteen pages — on the shorter side, with nothing approaching novella length. I made some comments after finishing each story which originally posted in the progress report thing on goodreads to help me keep track and that I've reproduced below. (Don't expect anything overly deep from a half-sentence about each book, though.)

I would class the stories included in Moscow But Dreaming into three rough categories: stories set in Russia or the Soviet Union, non-Western fairy tales, and stories with more present-day Western settings. Of course there is some overlap, particularly if you feel foreignly about Russian fairy tales (which I don't). In general, my favourite were the Russian-flavoured stories; they resonated most with me and, as someone who grew up as much with Russian folklore as with Disneyfied Grimm and Andersen, felt both familiar and rare. Many of Sedia's stories are about mundane tragedies, everyday difficulties of lives that have rarely been easy. The result is generally sad tales of lives made better or worse by small magic. Or big magic, out of the main character's control, as a means of escape.

Some stories that stood out were "Citizen Komarova Finds Love", which started off unsurprisingly, but then took a surprisingly gruesome turn and, like many of Sedia's stories, ended sadly, as it also began. "You Dream" is written in a more unusual style — second person — and is a story where now, long after reading it, the Muscovite setting stands out most strongly. "The Bank of Burkina Faso" was one of my favourite stories and one of the few to have a happy ending (not that most of it wasn't sad). It didn't take me where I expected to go and it even featured the Moscow subway dogs (wiki, although google for more exciting news story renditions). I liked the idea in "By the Litre", of being able to imbibe souls and not have it be something terrible and evil. The main characters aren't monsters, they just stumbled upon a way to remember other people's memories and what's wrong with that, if the alternative is nothing?

"Chapev and the Coconut Girl" was about an AI scientist from Lithuania working at MIT. I enjoyed the description of her being other (foreign) and lacking a shared cultural history with those around her. I think this was one of the longer stories, so there was plenty of space for the character to develop. The way she romanticises both Chapaev — a hero of the Red Army — and a folk tale from her mother's travels to Bali was fascinating. Both figures were well outside her time and experience and yet she made up elaborate back stories (or front stories in the case of Chapaev who she fantasised didn't die as presumed) while refusing to get to know many of the people around her. She was one of my favourite characters to appear in this collection.

"There is a Monster Under Helen's Bed" and "A Play for a Boy and Sock Puppets" are both set in the US and feature troubled children. Helen's story, told in part from her adoptive mother's point of view, was tragic in a no-win way and the ending wasn't what I was expecting. The play, although not strictly a play per se, was told from the sock puppet's point of view and was very touching.

Of the non-Western fairytale type stories, my favourites were "Munashe and the Spirits", an African morality tale with overt magic but beginning and ending in the contemporary real world. And, although it had a moral, I hasten to add that it wasn't preachy. And "The Taste of Wheat" in which the fantastical element was a bit uncomfortable — rats turning into babies — but the narcoleptic main character seeing Buddha in her dreams appealed to me.

I also really enjoyed the last story, "A Handsome Fellow". Although I read it most recently and hence it's difficult to gauge how memorable it will be, I have a feeling the final scene will stay with me. A teenage or young adult girl working to keep her mother and young brothers alive during the Siege of Leningrad (WWII).

My least favourite part of the collection was the introduction by Jeffrey Ford. I didn't read it in full when I started the collection because I got bored and wanted to get to the stories (happens with most introductions for me). Reading it afterwards, it rather annoyed me. I suggest skipping it altogether. But then, I don't entirely get introductions to collections. I'd much rather read about what the author thinks of the stories or how it came into being (blame Asimov for that).

In my recent review of Cracklescape, I compared Margo Lanagan to Sedia. It's only fair that I now point out that if you're a fan of Lanagan, giving Sedia a go would be a good move. I strongly recommend this collection to people looking for fantasy stories that are a bit off the beaten path. I've no doubt that the fairy tales will seem exotic to many readers. Anyone with a passing interest in Russia or the Soviet Union will probably find something to like in Moscow But Dreaming. Fans of sad stories (of which I sometimes think there aren't enough in the fantasy genre) will enjoy this collection. If you enjoyed the setting and vibe of The Secret History of Moscow, I strongly recommend this collection.

5 / 5 stars

A side note: it was hard to choose a rating for this; I didn't love every but I loved enough of them to rate it up (and I wanted to put it on my favourite books side panel, which is what 5 star ratings are all about).

~

My notes on each story as I read it in italic, extra comments while writing this review added in plain text. Stories original to the collection are marked with *

1. A Short Encyclopedia of Lunar Seas 
• Loved it. Lyrical, whimsical and involving the moon.
2. Citizen Komarova Finds Love
• Haunting
3. Tin Cans
•  Creepy, tragic and a bit unpleasant to think too much about
4. One, Two, Three
• An odd story, I can't decide if it's more or less sad than those that went before it.
5. You Dream
• A strange story about misremembered sadness. Also in second person.
6. Zombie Lenin
• Another odd story. Dreamlike and sort of about mental illness. Also, the title is pretty great.
7. Ebb and Flow
• Reads like a re-imagined Japanese fairy tale. One of the most overtly fantasy-ish stories so far.
8. There is a Monster Under Helen’s Bed
• Heartbreaking. Rather ambiguous ending.
9. Yakov and the Crows
• Another sad, odd story. Bird element brought Secret History of Moscow to mind.
10. Hector Meets the King
•  Short and a bit confusing. Not one of my favourites. Greek mythology-flavoured.
11. * Chapaev and the Coconut Girl
• One of the (slightly) longer stories. I liked it.
12. * The Bank of Burkina Faso
• A hopeful story and a cute explanation for emails similar to Nigerian scams.
13. Kikimora
• A Russian fairytale to escape the aftermath of perestroika. Which is also a nice lesbian love story.
14. Munashe and the Spirits
• An African fairy tale of the moral-having type
15. By the Liter
• Souls drawn into beer after death. Cute. Short and sweet. I can't think of any other soul-consuming main characters that aren't evil monsters.
16. A Play for a Boy and Sock Puppets
• A tale of a sentient and sad sock puppet. Also an autistic child. I wanted to hug the sock puppet by the end.
17. The Taste of Wheat
• Another fairy tale type of story, this time Buddhist. And with narcolepsy.
18. Cherrystone and Shards of Ice
• A sort of steampunky fantasy with zombies and magic. One of the longer stories. The most ordinary fantasy story (in the sense of not being a fairy tale nor magical realism). I liked it.
19. Seas of the World
• Another story about people turning into animals and vice versa. Although it occurs to me that statement is less meaningful when I haven't pointed out each instance of transmogrification.
20. End of White
• The white army had retreated to a village on the edge of their land; the Crimean peninsula. But of course, it isn't an ordinary village.
21. A Handsome Fellow 
• The siege of Leningrad and a vampire-like creature living among the starving. Heartbreaking.

A review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher via NetGalley.