UPDATE! Jeaniene Frost: NIGHT PRINCE SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Jeaniene Frost's NIGHT PRINCE SERIES by adding a review of Into the Fire, the fourth (and FINAL) novel.

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review.

ANTHOLOGY: "What the #@&% Is That?"

Editors:  John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen 
Title:  What the #@&% Is That?: The Saga Anthology of the Monstrous and the Macabre
Plot Type:  Horror stories 
Publisher and Titles:  Saga Press (11/2016)

                        INTRODUCTION                          

     I'm not ashamed to admit that what drew me immediately to this book was its title—a line straight out of Evil Dead, the Musical that keeps bouncing around in my head even as I write this review. (Click HERE to listen to that show-stopping tune.) I have been trying to get the book from my public library system for months, but even though my library is part of a consortium of 43 library systems across 12 different counties with 12 million items, none of those libraries purchased the book until quite recently—and then, within the entire system, only four libraries purchased a print copy, and the consortium itself purchased just one electronic copy. I don't know why the libraries didn't purchase the anthology, but I suspect that the #@&%  title had something to do with it.

     The premise of this anthology is quite simple. In each and every story, a character exclaims, "What the #@&% is that?" In the stories, though, the authors use actual words in place of "#@&%," In each case, the answer is some type of monster—from hallucinatory black dogs to inanimate objects to a ghost or two. 

     There are more hits than misses in this anthology. I've marked my favorites with sparkling stars. And one last thing: Please don't skip over Douglas Cohen's entertaining introduction in which he takes us on his publishing journey from the first monstrous glimmer to the final product. 

PUBLISHER'S BLURB:

     Fear of the unknown—it is the essence of the best horror stories, the need to know what monstrous vision you're beholding and the underlying terror that you just might find out. Now, twenty authors have gathered to ask—and maybe answer—a question worthy of almost any horror tale: "What the #@&% is that?" Join these masters of suspense as they take you to where the shadows grow long, and that which lurks at the corner of your vision is all too real.

     Includes stories by Laird Barron, Amanda Downum, Scott Sigler, Simon R. Green, Desirina Boskovich, Isabel Yap, Maria Dahvana Headley, Christopher Golden, John Langan, D. Thomas Minton, Seanan McGuire, Grady Hendrix, Jonathan Maberry, Gemma Files, Nancy Holder, Adam-Troy Castro, Terence Taylor, Tim Pratt, An Owomoyela & Rachel Swirsky, and Alan Dean Foster.

                       THE STORIES                          

LAIRD BARRON

Title:  "Mobility"
Quotation—Just one small episode in Bryan's terrible, awful, no good, very bad day: "Bryan mouthed the word acupuncture in horror with his cheek pressed against the tablecloth. In an act of great willpower, he lifted his head and looked over his shoulder. What he saw did not prove comforting. 'Are those knitting needles?' "
Summary and Review: 
In this surrealistic, horrific tale, Bryan begins with a pleasant dinner with his long-time fiancee and winds up in a sticky situation in a run-down, isolated dump of a house. What happens in between is mostly awful and truly ambiguous—all at the same time. There's even a nod to the most shocking scene in Stephen King's Misery. This story is not one of my favorites. I have the feeling that Barron was going for some deep metaphorical statement, but I just didn't get it.

AMANDA DOWNUM
Title:  "Fossil Heart"
Quotation—Clue to the title: "'What's that word you told me about the stars? The light we see that doesn't exist anymore?' 'Fossil light?' "'Yes...that's you. You're not really here. And I'm afraid by the time i find you, you'll be gone.'"
Summary and Review: 
Nan Walker has the ability to go back in time and change the past. Fourteen years ago, her first girlfriend, Chelsea drowned when her parents' car slid into a flooded creek. Only Nan survived, and she has been crippled with grief ever since. So far, she has only been able to go back in time several hours, but she is determined to stretch her abilities so that she can go back and recreate the accident, giving up her own life to save Chelsea. But Nan doesn't take into account the feelings of her current partner, Evie, who—by the way—has been dreaming of hungry black, shadowy dog-beasts ever since she met Nan. Just to make things interesting, we get two "What the #@&% is that?" exclamations—one from Evie and one from a cabbie. Once I figured out what was going on, this turned out to a nicely constructed, if horrific, story of grief, nonacceptance, and the vicissitudes of life.

SCOTT SIGLER
Title:  "Those Gaddam Cookies"
Quotation—First Lines: "Nobody could bake like Bubbah. The scent filled Jamel's nose, his mouth, and his lungs. He didn't just smell it, he felt it, an instantly peaceful sensation that whirled in his brain and chest. Chocolate-chip macadamia cookies...his favorite."
Summary and Review: 
In this slender slice of a story, Jamel and Rhea are on their way to Bubbah's room on their spaceship to find out why he has missed his shift three days in a row and why he is is not answering their calls. As they approach the room, a delicious aroma permeates the air. But why is Bubbah baking instead of working? Why isn't he answering their calls? And what is it in Bubbah's room that causes Rhea to ask the #@&% question? This is a short but entertaining story that moves along quickly to its weird and violent conclusion.

SIMON R. GREEN
Title:  "The Sound of Her Laughter"
Quotation—First Lines: "Two things for you to remember: First, that even the closest of married couples still keep secrets from each other. And second, that we all have pasts we don't talk about."
Summary and Review: 
Hail to Green, the story-telling master. Here, he introduces Alan and Cora, who have been married for almost a year and are still crazy in love with one another. When Cora inexplicably hears the name of Alan's ex-girlfriend announced over the loudspeaker at the train station (although no one else hears it), he is forced to reveal details of his past love life, which leads the curious Cora to the Internet to check up on the woman and then to a journey—all of which lead, inevitably, to disaster. Green's disasters are always fantastical, inventive, and unpredictable, and that's the case here. It's a great story with a punch of an ending. Click HERE and HERE to read my reviews of two of Green's urban fantasy series: SECRET HISTORIES (aka EDDIE DROOD SERIES) and the ISHMAEL JONES MYSTERIES.

DESIRINA BOSKOVICH
Title:  "Down in the Deep and the Dark"
Quotation—Oops!: "...no one mentions the unavoidable conclusion that our cherubic six-year-old was outside slaughtering tiny animals in the hour before dawn."
Summary and Review: 
This is a spooky-old-haunted-hotel story with a twist. Our narrator's brother is getting married in said hotel, and she is the maid of honor. Her family isn't thrilled about the marriage for a number of reasons, one of which is that the bride is a single mother of a little boy. (Yes!...that little boy!) As the weekend progresses and the wedding begins, things fall apart literally and figuratively. This one is terrific in the suspenseful build-up, but it ends in a rather weak, fire-lit whisper. The story does, however, win the prize for the most colorful word substitution for #@&% in its obligatory exclamation (voiced by the narrator's eight-seven-year-old Gran).

ISABEL YAP
Title:  "Only Unclench Your Hand"
Quotation—First Line: "They're killing chickens again in the backyard."
Summary and Review: 
Our narrator is the daughter of a wealthy Manila family, and this is her coming of age story. She is spending the summer in the Philippine countryside with her uncle, a landowner—also wealthy (at least in comparison to the other people in the village). Life is relatively normal (except for the bloody chicken killing) until a local healer uses his magic to cure her chronic headaches. Then other magical events begin to occur, but these involve dark magic...violent, scary magic. Yap provides compelling suspense, quirky characters, and a somewhat ambiguous, but nevertheless satisfying, ending. (Yap's website proclaims that she likes ambiguous endings, so I should have taken that as a warning.) The weakest part was the line that contained the "What the #@&%" exclamation, which didn't flow naturally from its speaker. 

MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY
Title:  "Little Widow"
Quotation—Heaven's Avengers: "We were hippies only in theory. In reality, we were working on an armed takeover of heaven. The Preacher thought if we meditated white knives into our minds, we'd hit heaven as a unified army, slashing. We wanted heaven for ourselves."
Summary and Review: 
The story begins with three sister wives who survive a suicide cult unlike any cult you've ever read about. As the teenagers calmly adjust to their new, "normal" lives, you wonder how this is going to become a horror story. And then...they visit the traveling carnival and things get dark and dirty, fast and furious, violent and vengeful. This one was just O.K. for me. I loved the three sisters, but the ending was kind of loopy.

CHRISTOPHEN GOLDEN
Title:  "The Bad Hour"
Quotation—An unwelcoming town: "Half a dozen massive concrete blocks had been laid across the road and onto the soft shoulder. The blocks on the left and right had steel hooks set into the concrete, and heavy chains looped from the hooks to enormous pine trees on either side of the road. A dirty signpost reading STOP HERE FOR DELIVERIES had been plinked with bullets...There was no other hint that Chesbro lay ahead—only the certainty that whatever might be down that road, outsiders weren't welcome."
Summary and Review: 
A masterful writer presents a terrific story with a "Twilight Zone" vibe and a heartbreaking twist at the end. A battle-tested Iraq war veteran takes a long bus ride to see her former lover, a fellow soldier, in his tiny Vermont hometown. What happens next is an inventive and horrifying answer to the "What the #@&%" question. Sometimes the PTSD a soldier brings back from war manifests in a truly terrifying manner that is beyond the imagination of anyone but a horror writer as talented as Golden.

JOHN LANGAN
Title:  "What Is Lost, What Is Given Away"
Quotation—Final Line: "...I heard another sound, high-pitched, impossibly distant: Joel Martin, screaming—still screaming—for all he had lost, all he had given away."
Summary and Review: 
The basic ingredients: a high school reunion, a student/teacher romance that ended very badly, and magical math that disrupts time and space. This one starts out in a straightforward manner with a man attending his ten-year reunion and running into the teacher, who has had some hard times since his il-fated romantic interlude. Gradually, the story morphs into a spooky scientific theory based one of Jorge Luis Borges' stories, "The Aleph." Langan re-imagines the trope of the teacher-pupil affair and its unintended result (a child) in a truly original manner. The narrator has just the right voice—tentative, uneasy, disheartened—to tell this tragic tale.

D. THOMAS MINTON
Title:  "Now and Forever"
Quotation—The problem: "Then the sightings started. A pale creature lurking the corridors of the engineering module. Scrapings on hatches. Clicking sounds from air ducts. How it got aboard, we didn't know. You'd think something like the Fiend couldn't hide on a ship so small, but it was like a splinter of nightmare driven into the flesh of our reality."
Summary and Review: 
This is the story of a family marooned on a space ship far out in space. A couple and their son and daughter are the last survivors of a much larger group, the others having been killed—eaten by a murderous monster that somehow got on board. The author relentlessly builds the suspense as the father (our narrator) has to enter a dangerous part of the ship to retrieve medicine that could save his daughter's life. Will the fiend get him? Will it get his son? Will his daughter live? Can we trust that the narrator is telling us the whole truth and nothing but the truth? This is a well-told story that is filled with nail-biting moments that sent chills down my spine.

SEANAN McGUIRE
Title:  "#connollyhouse #weshouldntbehere"
Quotation—Clues in the time stamps: "Something weird with time stamps. Can't focus on it much. Walls here DEFINITELY warm to touch. #connollyhouse" 
Summary and Review: 
I was certain that McGuire would give us a great story. This one is a terrific haunted house tale told solely through tweets and retweets as four ghost hunters enter the Connolly House on Long Island, a decrepit mansion in which seventeen people—mostly children—were murdered more than a century ago. The tweeter is Boo Peep, and she is accompanied by her friends, Dead Hot and a pair of siblings: Scream King and Scream Queen. Their adventure begins when they enter the house and discover that it is icy cold inside, even though this is July. Boo Peep is tweeting the entire adventure out to her followers. Then, mysterious hashtags begin to appear out of nowhere to append themselves to Boo Peep's tweets: #somethingiswrong, #weshouldntbehere, #getoutwhileyoucan. Needless to say, the hashtags have it right, and the situation rapidly disintegrates into scenes of abject terror. What a great story! So inventive of McGuire to bring the twitter world into the horror genre. Note: Be absolutely sure to watch the progression of the time stamps on the tweets or you won't get the full goose-bump experience. Click HERE and HERE to my reviews of Mcguire's OCTOBER DAYE SERIES and INCRYPTID SERIES.

GRADY HENDRIX
Title:  "The House That Love Built"
Quotation—Dead or alive?: "...when I pull up to my house, it's past three in the morning. I call it Schrödinger's House because when I'm present, my wife seems to exist in two states simultaneously: as Karen and as Angela." 

(A diversionary activity: Click HERE for a video presenting a scientific explanation of the reference to Schrödinger. Click HERE to enjoy Sheldon explaining it to Penny in the final moments of this Big Bang Theory video. Or, if you already know all about Schrödinger's cat, click HERE for a slightly disturbing, but satisfying, video in which the cat gets its revenge on Schrödinger.)

Summary and Review: 
The male narrator, a long-haul truck driver, tells the story in his first-person voice. He finds peace only when he's on the road because when he is at home, his two wives make his life very complicated. That's as much as I can tell you without spoilers, but, trust me, this guy, who (except for the two wives) seems rather normal at the beginning of the story, is way more unhinged than you can imagine. The horror in this story is hinted at rather than being spelled out in (metaphorical) bloody letters.

JONATHAN MABERRY
Title:  "We All Make Sacrifices: A Sam Hunter Adventure"
Quotation—Meet Sam Hunter: "My office smells like Lysol and Jack Daniel's. The two smells are related thematically in ways that define me, sad to say. The Lysol for cleaning up some of the messes I've had to make. The Jack Daniel's for helping me try to forget."
Summary and Review: 
I have reviewed a number of Maberry's stories in various anthologies and have enjoyed them all. (You can type his name into the "Search" box in the upper left-hand corner of my Home Page to read my reviews of the stories in those anthologies.) Although hard-boiled PI Sam Hunter looks like "Joe Normal," he is not normal—and definitely not human. When a rich mob lawyer comes to his office begging for help in avenging his daughter's gristly murder, Sam finds himself in the middle of an unlikely and unexpected pack experience that promises to have a violent outcome. This story is an urban fantasy/noir detective mash-up rather than being pure horror, and in this case, that's a good thing—a great thing, in fact. Maberry, unlike one or two of the other authors in this anthology, provides a complete story package: a fully drawn protagonist and a compelling story line that plays out in a steady progression of emotion and horror, leading to the violent climax and epilogue that complete the resolution. This is my favorite story in the book. In fact, I enjoyed this story so much that I plan to read Maberry's story collection entitled Beneath the Skin: The Sam Hunter Case Files (published 12/2016). Click HERE to go to its Amazon.com page where you can read an excerpt by clicking on the cover art. Sam and his family are also featured in Maberry's DEEP PINE TRILOGY. Click HERE to go to that Amazon page.

GEMMA FILES
Title:  "Ghost Pressure"
Quotation—The Lithuanian nightmare: "...she's this thing, called a Slogutė or a Nakinėja...This creature that, like comes through the keyhole and oppresses people while they're sleeping."
Summary and Review: 
Gavia Pratt specializes in helping people die. Currently, she is in Toronto, vetting and coaching caretakers who assist mostly elderly people through the last days of their terminal illnesses. When one of her caretakers comes to her with a strange and unbelievable tale of a nightmare that is haunting her patient, Gavia has no idea that that nightmare will soon be hers to deal with. This story begins in a relatively straightforward manner, but once the nightmare story line is introduced, things get woo-woo rather quickly. For me, the final scene didn't quite gel, but maybe I just missed the point.

NANCY HOLDER
Title:  "The Daughter Out of Darkness"
Quotation—First lines of Dr. Seward's diary entry: "Some hold that there is more darkness in women. that they are the daughters of Eve; they are weak and easily seduced by the tantalizing power of evil. Some say that is why Dracula was able to scale the walls of my asylum and make Mina Harker his own."
Summary and Review: 
Holder's story comes in the form of a lengthy diary transcription authored by Dr. John Seward, who was one of Mina's suitors in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Seward runs a lunatic asylum in England, and he is a dedicated scientist. He loves technology and could be considered a 19th century tech geek. In his diary, Seward uses flashbacks and present-time sequences to tell the story of his failed first marriage to Eliza and his current marriage to Mary Holder (who provides a closing addendum to Seward's transcription). In essence, what we have here is Part II of Stoker's vampire story with a new blood-sucking villain and a feminist angle. I've never been an admirer of fanfiction, particularly when it's based on the classics, so this story didn't work for me. But if you are a devotee of Dracula or 19th century vamps in general, you might enjoy this fantastical story.

ADAM-TROY CASTRO
Title:  "Framing Mortensen"
Quotation—First sentence, which sets up the conflict: "Once I had become wealthy enough to buy miracles, I used one to obtain the living head and shoulders of my longtime enemy, Philip Mortensen."
Summary and Review: 
Our narrator is out for revenge of the most painful and degrading kind. After magically getting custody of his enemy's head and torso, he places it inside a painting (more magic) within his very private study and tortures Mortensen in unspeakable ways. Usually, a story based solely on revenge doesn't end well for the vengeance seeker, so there is a certain amount of suspense as we hold our breath waiting to see what will happen next—to Mortensen and to his abuser. Not one of my favorites, but still, a well-told tale.

TERENCE TAYLOR
Title:  "The Catch"
Quotation—Neal finally gets his answer to a lifelong question: "I know I'm a monster but still don't understand why."
Summary and Review: 
The protagonist, Neal McConnell is a mild-mannered research assistant at a university library, and in his spare time, he is a psychopathic serial killer with fastidious, meticulous "carving" techniques that reminded me of Dexter Morgan. Neal specializes in kidnapping college jocks and their girlfriends and then butchering them in his well-equipped secret "surgery." The first part of the story plays out as standard horror until Neal realizes that something about the female half of his current pair of victims is very, very strange. At that point, the tale takes a turn into the Twilight Zone. Although parts of the story are gory and, therefore, hard to read, I did enjoy the inventive double twist at the end.

TIM PRATT
Title:  "Hunters in the Woods"
Quotation—The bitter truth: "...the real reason the people in charge make games of life and death is...because they can and because it amuses them."
Summary and Review: 
In a nod to recent YA series in which dystopian societies pit young people against each other in mortal combat (e.g., Hunger Games, Maze Runner, Divergent), two young men are dropped into an isolated northern forest with instructions that each man must kill at least one human or be killed themselves. Since they have pledged not to kill one another, their only hope is to find at least two people in this vast wilderness and then to have enough courage to murder them. This is another story that made me think of Twilight Zone. It's a creative take on dystopian fiction, with two sympathetic protagonists and a wild, if ambiguous, ending.

AN OWOMOYELA & RACHEL SWIRSKY

Title:  "Whose Drowned Face Sleeps"
Quotation—So, what kind of a story is this?: "This is a murder story. It's the story of how I killed myself." ... "This is a ghost story. Did I say that? No. It's a love story. But all love stories become ghost stories if you watch them long enough."
Summary and Review: 
The narrator (who calls herself R.) tells the story through alternating scenes of past and present events and stream-of-consciousness interior monologues. R. is not so much unreliable as she is unidentifiable. She takes us through her sad story of a failed love affair and repeatedly describes a death scene that varies in time and place, but always includes water. This one was a bit too woo-woo for me, but if you like getting lost in fantastical interior monologues, you'll probably enjoy the story. I did enjoy the authors' eloquent use of language. Here's my favorite: "...a voice as sweet and malicious as a drugged daiquiri." That brief simile tells you everything you need to know about the speaker, doesn't it?

ALAN DEAN FOSTER

Title:  "Castleweep"
Quotation—First Line: "The walls weep, but only on nights when the moon is full."
Summary and Review: 
William Edward Cort, a wealthy, arrogant young American and Shelley, his latest girlfriend, are on vacation in West Central Africa when their guide, Yacouba, tells them of a centuries-old ruin with walls that weep. When Cort insists on traveling through the jungle to see the ruin, Yacouba—obviously frightened and sorry to have ever mentioned the ruin—begs him not to go. But you know the drill. The rich guy goes wherever he pleases because he's always in control of the situation. Except that his control doesn't extend to deserted, spooky ruins on a full-moon-lit night in the depths of the African jungle. Even though I knew from the beginning that Cort's trip would end badly, Foster does a great job of stretching out the suspense until Cort and the reader learn at the same time why everyone stays far away from this place.

UPDATE! Christine Warren: GARGOYLES SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Christine Warren's GARGOYLES SERIES by adding a review of Hard to Handle, the fifth novel.

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review.

UPDATE! Stephen Blackmoore: ERIC CARTER SERIES

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Stephen Blackmoore's ERIC CARTER SERIES (aka CITY OF LOST SOULS SERIES) by adding a review of Hungry Ghosts, the fourth novel. 

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review.

UPDATE: Hester Young: CHARLIE CATES TRILOGY

UPDATE!

I have just updated an ongoing post for Hester Young's CHARLIE CATES TRILOGY by adding a review of The Shimmering Road, the second novel in the series.

Click on the pink-link series title above to go directly to the new review.

ANTHOLOGY: "The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales"

Title:  The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales
Editors: Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe
Plot Type:  Fairy tales with a twist
Publisher:  Saga Press (10/2016) 

                    INTRODUCTION                    

     Does a fairy tale require a literal forest? Could the stories of Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel still resonate in a wood-less setting? After all, the editors point out, some cultures don't have forests but they still have fairy tales. So what makes a story a fairy tale? Here's the editors' opinion on that subject:

     "We know to expect certain themes and subjects, or at least variations on them—terrible parents, wandering children, fantastical animals, enchanted items, moral components, trials and tribulations—to a point where even if we don't necessarily recognize the source material, a story can still feel like a fairy tale."

In addition to the elements listed in the previous quotation, fairy tales also

> Include fantasy, supernatural, or make-believe aspects.

> Use some form or variation of "Once upon a time"—an unspecified "long ago."

> Include fantasy, supernatural, or make-believe aspects.

> Take place in an enchanted setting, like forests, castles, water or kingdoms.

> Feature groups of three (objects, people, or events). Seven is also a magical number.

> Have clearly defined good and evil characters.

> Present a clearly defined problem, climax, and resolution.

> Frequently—but not always—have happy endings.

     For this anthology of 18 stories, the editors decided to "run fairy tales through a prism, to challenge our authors to look at stories from an unusual angle, to bring them back into different genres and traditions, to—if you will—return them to their cross-genre roots. We wanted our authors to move beyond the woods."

At the end of each fairy tale, the author discusses his or her process in approaching the re-imagining of the characters, setting, and plot. Those brief essays (each about a page in length) are fascinating to read and added a great deal to my enjoyment of the anthology. Click HERE to go to a page on the Barnes & Nobls web site featuring an interesting discussion of the stories by the authors and editors: "Mind Meld: Exploring Fairy Tales with The Starlit Wood Storytellers."

     The book's cover (by Benjamin Carré) provides clues to the editors' plans. The cover is shown (at left) without frame or words. Note the inner flames and shadowy human figures; the strange, arthropodic scaffolding; and the caterpillar-esque metal hoses. What's going on here? Step into The Starlit Wood and find out. (I have awarded sparkly stars to my favorites.)

                    THE STORIES                    

SEANAN MCGUIRE: 

Title: "In the Desert Like a Bone"

Fairy Tale: "Little Red Riding Hood"
Fairy Tale Elements: wandering child, terrible parent, barren setting to be conquered by the heroine, fantastical animals, clearly defined evil character, plot focuses on a problem that needs to be solved
Quotation—Final Sentence: "His hat is black as shadows, and hers is red as blood, and none saw where they came from, and none will see where they go."
Summary and Review: It's always good to begin with the best. McGuire moves Little Red to the American Southwest in the 19th century and provides her with a supernatural escort through the desert heat. She also changes up the good and the bad guys and gives Red some special survival skills. This is a moody tale with a quick and dirty ending that solves Red's problems once and for all. Click HERE to read my reviews of the novels in McGuire's OCTOBER DAYE series, and click HERE for my reviews of her INCRYPTID Series.

KARIN TIDBECK: 
Title:  "Underground"
Fairy Tale: "East of the Sun, West of the Moon"
Fairy Tale Elements: abandoned child, uncaring parents, magical elements, an enchanted mansion, clearly defined evil characters
Quotation—Hedvig's conflict begins: "[Her father] came home with a package under his arm, and Hedvig outraced the dog to greet him, and she didn't understand why he burst into tears."
Summary and Review: Both the original fairy tale and Tidbeck's story follow a young woman's trials and tribulations as she is sold off to a mysterious man who is under a curse. But modern Hedvig's situation soon becomes more abusive than that of the fairy-tale heroine, so she makes certain that she is the only one who gets an HEA. Tidbeck tells a grim, joyless story that left me wondering why in the world Hedvig saved the man who enslaved her. 

DARYL GREGORY: 
Title:  "Even the Crumbs Were Delicious"
Fairy Tale: "Hansel and Gretel"
Fairy Tale Elements: wandering children, terrible parents, enchanted items, a witch and a giant
Quotation—First Line: "Maybe, just maybe, it had been a mistake to paper the walls with edible drugs."
Summary and Review: 
Gregory sets his story in the drug-addled world of his novel, Afterparty—a world in which druggies feed chemical packs and formulas into their chemjet printers and "mix, heat, chill, distill, and recombine molecules into whatever smart drug you wanted." Because this is a Hansel and Gretel tale, we have a brother, a sister, bad parents, and a witch (along with a few extra characters), but the good, the bad, and the ugly don't necessarily match up with the traditional fairy tale. This is a world where drugs replace candy and technology replaces that fragile breadcrumb trail through the woods. Gregory always creates inventive worlds and quirky characters. Click HERE to read my review of Gregory's crazy, creepy novel, Harrison Squared.

CHARLIE JANE ANDERS: 
Title:  "The Super Ultra Duchess of Fedora Forest"
Fairy Tale: "The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage" 
Fairy Tale Elements: fantastical animals (and meat), group of three central characters who must solve a problem, trials and tribulations in a dark wood

Quotation—The Perfect Partnership: "Every day the bird would fly into the forest and collect wood. The mouse would carry in water from the well, make a fire, and set the table. And then the sausage would cook their dinner, slithering around in the fry pan to coat it with grease for their vegetables or grains."
Summary and Review: 
Ah, but the best laid plans of mice and birds (and sausages) go astray when a meddlesome stranger puts jealous thoughts into one partner's ear, thus upsetting their perfect symmetry. Meanwhile, in the background a political upheaval ripples through the land and causes the sausage to panic because he's on the run from the Land of Breakfast Meats. The original fairy tale is one of the Grimms' grimmest tales, but Anders has reset the story in an absurdly dystopian realm slowly being overrun "by talking animals and self-aware pieces of food." As the sausage faces certain death in the unfamiliar, scary forest, her friends work together on a bizarre rescue effort. It's a story that relies on farcicality to pass along its moral. All in all, it's very lightweight, but enjoyable, nevertheless. Click HERE to read my review of Anders's entertaining novel, All the Birds in the Sky.

GENEVIEVE VALENTINE: 
Title:  "Familiaris"
Fairy Tale: "The Wolves" (from The Turnip Princess, by Franz Xaver von Schönwerth)(Click HERE for a review of that book written by Valentine.)
Fairy Tale Elements: "once upon a time," three narrators, trials and tribulations, terrible husbands, supernatural elements
Quotation—Thematic summary: "The point is, men will conspire to win. The point is, women are sacrifices."
Summary and Review: 

This story features three female narrators: a "once upon a time" princess, a "long time ago" peasant woman, and a modern woman. All three are wives and mothers. The narration jumps from one woman to another back and forth in time and place, but, as the author states, the theme for each is the same: "fear of judgment, fear of childbirth and maternity, fear of being beholden." This is another dark tale in which women are at the mercy of the men in their lives. By this point in the book, I was wishing for a happy ending for a female character. That doesn't happen in this tale. 

AMAL EL-MOHTAR: 
Title:  "Seasons of Glass and Iron"
Fairy Tale: "The Glass Mountain"/"The Black Bull of Norroway"
Fairy Tale Elements: terrible parents, enchanted setting, magical objects, clearly defined problem, trials and tribulations, shines a spotlight on important cultural values, a happy ending
Quotation—A crucial lesson learned by one of the heroines: "Promises are important to bears."
Summary and Review: 
El-Mohtar combines two fairy tales that feature heroines (Tabitha and Amira) who find themselves in dire circumstances at the hands of the men in their lives. Rather than making them the passive princesses found in many traditional fairy tales, the author adds a touch of female power to the plot. I enjoyed this one tremendously because within the restrictions of the briefness of this tale, the author has given both young women distinctly different personalities as well as making them smart enough to come up with a shared solution to solve their male-imposed problems. 

CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE: 
Title:  "Badgirl, The Deadman, and The Wheel of Fortune"

Fairy Tale: "The Girl with No Hands"
Fairy Tale Elements: features three characters, one of which has three possible reasons for his nickname (Mudpuddle), terrible parent, clearly defined villain and heroine, trials and tribulations, moral components. 
Quotation—A tree house that's not in a tree: "My tree house wasn't a tree house, though....I heard the Deadman call it something French-sounding but he said it like a pirate kiss Arrrr. Mwah."
Summary and Review: 
Badgirl (aka Loula, aka little black cat) lives with her deadbeat, druggie dad, Mudpuddle, in the depths of urban poverty. For supper, Badgirl sometimes "eats powdered mashed potatoes without unpowdering them." When Dad accidentally makes a terrible promise to Deadman (obviously the villain), life goes downhill for Badgirl. This is a heartbreaking, horrible tale that left me feeling sick at heart. Notice that "happy ending" is not listed as one of this story's fairy tale elements.

GARTH NIX: 
Title:  "Penny for a Match, Mister?"
Fairy Tale: "The Little Match Girl" 
Fairy Tale Elements: wandering child, enchanted matches, moral components, supernatural component, clearly defined villains, happy ending (for the good characters, but not the bad ones)
Quotation—the supernatural catalyst: "A road of moonsilver was a means for persons and creatures barely imaginable to cross the Line, to come into the human world and there cause mischief, mayhem, misery or mystery as was their wont."
Summary and Review: 
Nix turns the "Match Girl" tale inside out and upside down, moving it from cold and foggy London to the dry and dusty American West. In the traditional story, the matches provide pleasant hallucinations of happy times for the little girl, but in this telling, the child (Lili) is unaware of what the matches do—even though she burns them, one by one. This is a tale of vengeance with a supernatural boost. I would love to read a series based on Lili's rescuer, the very capable and sardonic Rose Jackson, a marshal-warden who packs magical weapons and knows how to use them. With its western outlaw plot, singular characters, and fiery climax, this is the best story in the anthology.

STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES: 
Title:  "Some Wait"
Fairy Tale: "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" (Click HERE for links to other versions of this story.)
Fairy Tale Elements: enchanted item (computer game), wandering (actually, missing) children, trials and tribulations for the parents, moral components
Quotation—The original tale gets a technology update: "Hundreds of years ago, it had been a rat catcher who lured the children from their homes. Now, for our children, it was a mouse."
Summary and Review: 
This one flashed me back to Rod Serling's screenplay, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," a textbook case of mob psychology and the paranoia of regular people. In this story, set in a small town, children begin to disappear, one by one. The only clue is a video game that includes a "Black Flame Lantern," which features the quotation, "It is one hundred years since our children left." As parents search for a scapegoat, suspicion builds, society breaks down, and people die. Has the Pied Piper returned to punish them, and if so, what have they done to deserve this horrible fate?

JEFFREY FORD: 
Title:  "The Thousand Eyes"
Fairy Tale: "The Voice of Death"
Fairy Tale Elements: enchanted item (the Voice); fantasy elements
Quotation—The power of Death's Voice: "The drive to follow the voice was monumental, like two metal fingers were hooked in each of his nostrils and attached by a chain to the Queen Mary, which was pulling out of port."
Summary and Review: 
To put yourself in the appropriate mood as you read, click HERE and listen to Bobby Vee croon the 1962 ballad that gives the bar—the setting for the magical action—its name. Although both the traditional and the re-imagined fairy tales feature a man who defies death's irresistible call, this story takes place in the present-day American South, where the main character is a down-on-his-luck artist whose goal in life is to complete a series of paintings of local bars. Read the story to see what happens when he gets to the last bar—the one called "Thousand Eyes." Ford's "Author's Note" is the most interesting and entertaining of any in the book. Click HERE to read my review of Ford's story collection, A Natural History of Hell. Click HERE to read or listen to "Creation," an on-line story by Ford on the Fantasy Magazine web site.

MAX GLADSTONE: 
Title:  "The Giant in the Sky"
Fairy Tale: "Jack and the Beanstalk" (Click HERE for links to other versions of this story.)
Fairy Tale Elements: moral components; trials and tribulations; fantastical creature (a giant, of sorts); an enchanted setting (the beanstalk)
Quotation—It's all about the Beanstalk: "The Beanstalk...was capital H-A-R-D to build, and look, even though we got freaky godpowers so long as we stay virtual, construction work's still construction. You have to hoist frustrating huge chunks of matter around. We're still shy of singularity-powered monomolecular nanofactories; we can't just rajaniemi ourselves a new megastructure out of nothing."
Summary and Review: 
For me, this one is hard to follow. Gladstone constructs it as a series of communications among superhumans (and possibly some kind of extraterrestrial giant). This is a post-apocalyptic tale that describes what has happened to the unlucky survivors who are still stuck on Earth and to the privileged survivors who escaped up the Beanstalk. This is not one of my favorites.

MARJORIE LIU: 
Title: "The Briar and the Rose"
Fairy Tale: "Sleeping Beauty" (Click HERE for links to other versions of this story.)
Fairy Tale Elements: enchantment, trials and tribulations, a witch, a princess, clearly defined good and evil characters, a castle, clearly defined conflict and resolution
Quotation—Love is all around: "Love is powerful...Love is divine. That is the answer to every tale we tell. What sleeps can always be awakened with love." (But it frequently takes a very long time.)
Summary and Review: 
In the traditional "Sleeping Beauty" story, the witch-cursed princess pricks her finger and falls into a century of sleep in a castle protected by a mass of thorns and briars. But in this tale, instead of going into a coma, Princess Rose's body is possessed by the witch, and the briar/protector is not a thicket of shrubbery, but a formidable female warrior (named, of course, Briar). Instead of a saved-by-the-prince ending, Liu gives us two determined women who overcome insurmountable odds through love and determination. Liu's approach adds complexity and depth to the original, one-dimensional fairy tale. Click HERE to read my reviews of the novels in Liu's terrific HUNTER KISS urban fantasy series.

THEODORA GOSS: 
Title:  "The Other Thea"
Fairy Tale: "The Shadow" (Click HERE to read Ursula Le Guin's essay, "The Child and the Shadow," from her book entitled The Language of the Night, which influenced Goss in the writing of her own tale.)
Fairy Tale Elements: an enchanted castle in another realm, fantastical people, witches, trials and tribulations, clearly defined problem and resolution
Quotation—Thea's problem: "Find your shadow....Without it, you're fading."
Summary and Review: 
Thea is a recent graduate of Miss Lavender's School of Witchcraft. She was supposed to have started her studies at Harvard by now, but lately she has been depressed and listless and unable to focus on her future. Seeking advice, she returns to Miss Lavender, only to be told that she must retrieve her missing shadow, which is residing in Mother Night's Castle in the Other Country. Thea is at a loss as to what to do next until Miss Lavender's familiar, a cat named Cordelia, advises her to "think like a witch." Thea is an intelligent young woman who—after a tentative start—figures out just what to do to save herself from fading away. I guess that you could call this a "coming of witch" story. 

MARGO LANAGAN: 
Title:  "When I Lay Frozen"
Fairy Tale: "Thumbelina"
Fairy Tale Elements: talking animals, a wandering child, trials and tribulations, moral components, clearly defined problem and resolution
Quotation—Tommelise runs away in fright when she see this (to her) incomprehensible scene in her parents' bedroom: "The vast, peeled bodies [surge] out of the bedclothes. Their faces open and roam over each other like cattle desperately browsing. The Father, in agony, grows his extra stunted leg, and the Mother takes fright and crushes it under her bottom in a frenzy...."
Summary and Review: 
In Lanagan's "Author's Note," she calls Hans Christian Andersen's "Thumbelina" a "tooth-dissolvingly sweet tale that speaks volumes about the gender divide of its time." She decries the fact that Tommelise is a "weeping, shivering moppet, always at the mercy of the giant creatures around her," while Tom Thumb is a "rambunctious adventurer." In other words, why can't a tiny girl be just as courageous and curious as a tiny boy? Lanagan's Tommelise, having fled from her parents' home for an embarrassingly delicate reason, now lives deep underground with a mousewife who is getting ready to marry her off to her neighbor, a randy old mole. Meanwhile, Tommelise has rescued and befriended a half-frozen swallow who recognizes the little girl for what she is and promises to fly her away if she truly wants to find happiness. Does Lanagan's Tommelise have the courage to leave her dank, dark tunnel for the risky outside world? 

ALIETTE DE BODARD: 
Title:  "Pearl"
Fairy Tale: "Dã Tràng and the Pearl" 
Fairy Tale Elements: moral components, trials and tribulations, mostly science fiction elements rather than fairy tale elements
Quotation—Who or what is Pearl?: "Pearl was...not perfect, but what you would get if you saved the best of everything you found drifting in space and put it together, not out of necessity, not out of a desire for immediate survival or return to full functionality—but with a carefully thought-out plan, a desire for...stability?"
Summary and Review: 
In reading this story, you need to know that in this science fiction world, remoras are small vessels that are "patched up—leftovers from bots and ships that had gone all but feral, low-level intelligences used for menial tasks." In this space-opera metamorphosis tale, Dã Tràng starts out as a subpar student who aspires to be a scholar. When two of his remoras present him with a newly created remora (which he names Pearl), he soon learns that this particular remora has powers far beyond those of any other remora every built. When Pearl nestles on his shoulder and slices its needles into his neck, Dã Tràng sees the secrets of the universe and soon makes his way up the career ladder to become a Councillor to the Empress. The author constructs the story as a series of flashbacks that skip back and forth among various past and present times, portraying Dã Tràng's life before, during, and after Pearl, with particular emphasis on Pearl's exit and on Dã Tràng's unsuccessful efforts to find his lost remora. According to the "Author's Note," "This story serves as a reminder to those who attempt to go beyond the limits of their human abilities and pursue an impossible task which reaps no rewards." Although this is a well-told and emotional story, it doesn't really pass the "fairy tale test."

SOFIA SAMATAR: 
Title:  "The Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub and the White-Footed Gazelle"
Fairy Tale: "The Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub and The White-Footed Gazelle" (appearing in translation from the Arabic in Tales of the Marvelous and New of the Strange, by Malcolm C. Lyons) (Click HERE for a discussion of that book.) 
Fairy Tale Elements: "Once upon a time," fantastical animals, trials and tribulations, enchanted item (a magical mirror), moral component
Quotation—Thematic summary: "A love story. An animal story. All these animals in love."
Summary and Review: 
This is a tale within a tale within a tale—all told by a charming, but completely unreliable, narrator. "The White-Footed Gazelle" fairy tale melds seamlessly with the "Mahliya and Mauhub" story as characters shift back and forth between human and animal shapes and poor Mauhub can never be sure if he is seeing his beloved Mahliya or a stranger. Samatar moves from ancient past to urban present as the narrator tells the stories, one by one. This is part of an Eastern medieval text that was first released in English in 2015. Samatar believes that "the world has been primed to receive it by more than three centuries of love for A Thousand and One Nights" (aka Arabian Nights). It's such a good story that I'm planning to take a look at the full translation (which is "pink-linked" in the introductory information above).

KAT HOWARD
Fairy Tale: "The Snow Queen"
Fairy Tale Elements: trials and tribulations, enchanted mirrors, moral component, supernatural element (an mystical, icy realm), three people, happy ending
Quotation—Magical mirrors: "I was convinced that if I was fast enough, stealthy enough, something enough, I could make it so the reflection was different from the reality on my side of the mirror. That I could trick the mirror into showing something that wasn't truth."
Summary and Review: 
Like the previous story, this one deals with magical mirrors. This time, though, the author decided, "Hey, let's try 'The Snow Queen' with science in it." Three graduate students try to do an Alice-through-the-looking-glass experiment, with one of them entering a mirror and then reporting back on when he finds. But something goes wrong (as you knew it would), and his two friends have to figure out how to rescue him. This is one of the best stories in the book. 

NAOMI NOVIK: 
Title: "Spinning Silver"
Fairy Tale: "Rumpelstiltskin"
Fairy Tale Elements: "once upon a time"; trials and tribulations; fantastical creatures; enchanted fairy silver; moral components; an enchanted, starlit wood; group of three (three tasks Miryem must perform)
Quotation—What the story's really about: "Getting out of paying your debts."
Summary and Review: 
Although you may think you know what really happened in the "Rumpelstiltskin" story, this narrator claims that "the real story isn't half as pretty as the one you've heard and then proceeds to summarize a completely different tale. Novik perceives a touch of anti-Semitism in the old tale: "The sinister caricature of the hunched long-nosed man whose hands run with gold and who wants to steal golden-haired babies." Taking the bare bones of the traditional story, she makes the heroine—Miryem—the daughter of a Jewish moneylender who takes over the family business when Dad can't bring himself to collect payments from the villagers who owe him money. She achieves huge success and makes her family wealthy. But then, she makes a fateful boast while riding through the wintry wood—a boast that is overheard by a powerful Staryk (a fairy?) who gives her two really bad choices. If she makes good on her boast, she will become his bride, but if she fails, he will change her body into ice. Talk about being on the horns of a dilemma! The story has romance, suspense, danger, and noir humor. The best part is the ending, when Miryem out thinks the Staryk and gets her HEA (one of the few happy endings in this anthology). This is another one of the top stories in the book. Click HERE to read my review of Novik's wonderful medieval fantasy, Uprooted.