A great collection of diverse voices. There is a lot to love here.

This review originally appeared on http://fictionistmag.com/.

★★★★★

They bring you childhood stories gone wrong, magical creatures in heat, a building that’s alive and full of waiters, love, ducks, and a new take on a bloodsucking fiend.

Nineteen emerging fantasy voices brought together by Peter S. Beagle shine in this new anthology. That sounded like a PR tagline, but I swear, this anthology is great.

It's honestly a breath of fresh air. I'm anti-spoiler in these reviews, and since these stories are so short, it's hard to talk about them at all without giving anything away.

Suffice it to say that these stories range from entertaining to creepy to thought-provoking, and the writing is top notch. These little stories stick in your mind like popcorn sticks in your gums. You'll try to shake one story off before you read the next one, but by page two of the next story, you're hooked on that one too.

The best part about a good anthology is that there's no 'book two.' You don't have to wait a year to know what happens -- in fact, you'll only have to wait 20 pages or so to find out what happens in these stories. Reading so many stories at once also made me feel pretty accomplished, especially after reading so many full-length novels week after week.

If you need a palate cleanser, or if you're craving some unique fantasy stories, or if you need some shorter reads -- no matter the reason, definitely pick up The New Voices of Fantasy.

Five stars from me. Perfect, bite-sized pieces of beautifully-crafted fantasy morsels.

What a great way to find new authors. This book of short stories has a wide array of characters and various genres. With 19 writers, many of whom I'm not familiar you find great diversity of style and length. Enjoy, Enjoy, Enjoy
Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong
“Selkie Stories are for Losers” by Sofia Samatar
“Tornado’s Siren” by Brooke Bolander
“Left the Century to Sit Unmoved” by Sarah Pinsker
“A Kiss with Teeth” by Max Gladstone
“Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon
“The Cartographer Wasps and Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu
“The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate” by A. C. Wise
“The Tallest Doll in New York City” by Maria Dahvana Headley
“The Haunting of Apollo A7LB” by Hannu Rajaniemi
“Here Be Dragons” by Chris Tarry
“The One They Took Before” by Kelly Sandoval
“Tiger Baby” by JY Yang
“The Duck” by Ben Loory
“Wing” by Amal El-Mohtar
“The Philosophers” by Adam Ehrlich Sachs
“My Time Among the Bridge Blowers” by Eugene Fischer
“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado
“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn” by Usman T. Malik

This was a good collection of short stories and a great way of finding new authors. With any short story collections, there are going to be some that you enjoy more than others and this was the case with this collection. Having said that they were all good in their own way. If you are a big fantasy reader then this is worth reading.

Do you want to learn about the new kids on the block? This anthology gives a very good answer: it collects nineteen stories from the last five years. The editors provide great introductions to every story and gathered a great, balanced selection of stories.
I can fully recommend it to readers of fantasy literature who are curious about what topics, styles, and authors drive the publishing circus these days.

Not for me - the stories here seemed to be briefed to aim for 'dark & modern' rather than 'satisfyingly in the fantasy genre'. Perhaps a different title would have better described what the collection contains.

This is a well thought out collection of short stories from writers who are ‘reinventing fantasy right now.’ I have never read a collection of works like this before and I’m still not sure how best to review it without writing 19 separate reviews…

In the interest of brevity I’ll pick out some of the stories that really stuck with me.

I adored ‘Tornado’s Siren’ which is a short story about a girl whom a tornado falls in love with. Yes, you read that right. The tornado falls in love with her. This should be an utterly ridiculous concept but it was written so wonderfully well I wanted to weep at the end!

‘The Cartographer Wasps and Anarchist Bees’ is another story that completely captivated me. That title isn’t a metaphor. This is about wasps that make maps and bees that reject governance. A short story that, again, should not in any way work but it was phenomenally well written!

“The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado was possibly my favourite story. The voice in this story is just so gentle it lulls you away from reality. It’s not a pleasant story to read, however, and the jolt away from that lull is powerful.

There were a few stories that were less my speed, though none of them were ‘bad’ as such. I think this is probably actually a strong selling point since there is bound to be at least one story in here that suits everyone.

As I say I hadn’t read any collections like this before and it did send me into a bit of a reading slump just because the short story format doesn’t let me get my teeth into anything. Having said that, I think this is just me and someone else would probably get on much better with the format.

I honestly won’t be surprised if, in a few years, a number of my favourite books have been penned by these authors, I am excited to see where they go next.

My rating: 5/5 stars for the sheer variety!

By the way, I received a digital advanced review copy of this title from the publisher (Tachyon Publications) in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

On the sci-fi / fantasy spectrum, I've always leaned a bit more towards sci-fi, but was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the majority of stories in this collection! There is a lot of creativity on display, and I can see why so many of the authors have gone on to win numerous awards.

Calling it "new" voices is maybe a bit of a stretch, since some of these stories are as old as 2013, but they were all new to me and the fact that there were newer works to look up by the authors I particularly enjoyed is a bonus. As with all compilations, there were some pieces I enjoyed less than others ... but overall I felt the selection was very good! My favourite was "Left the Century to Sit Unmoved" - wonderful ambiance and creep and such tight storytelling for such a short piece.

Peter S. Beagle edits this collection of fantasy stories by newly emerging authors. As with any collection I liked some of the stories, I didn't like others. What interested me is how far line between SF and Fantasy has moving toward the Fantasy side, squeezing SF into a smaller and smaller box.

One of the stories here reminded me of "Or All the Seas with Oysters" by Avram Davidson which won the Hugo in 1958. Galaxy Science Fiction published in May 1958.

Now in those days the Fantasy label was more or less reserved for stories that included magic and it was called "Swords and Sorcery" (e.g. Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd or Michael Moorcock's Elric). SF was the non-magical other place. So "Or All the Seas with Oysters" was SF. Not so today. It seems that SF now needs space ships.

Gernsback and Campbell shift in their graves, having spun already dozens of times.

I received a review copy of "The New Voices of Fantasy" by Eugene Fisher, Brooke Bolander, Amal El-Mohtar, Maria Dahvana Headley, Max Gladstone, Ben Loory, Carmen Maria Machado, Usman T. Malik, Sarah Pinsker, Hannu Rajaniemi, Adam Ehrlich Sachs, Sofia Samatar, Kelly Sandoval, Chris Tarry, A. C. Wise, Alyssa Wong, JY Yang, E. Lily Yu, Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon) through NetGalley.com.

ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love supporting under-hyped books and authors, and these are nineteen up and coming fantasy authors that each contributed a short story for this anthology. I mean, how could I not request an ARC of this? I absolutely love the thought that went in to this, and I'm so very thankful that Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman curated this.

Yet, I do think that these curators are being very liberal with the word "new". Some of these short stories were released in 2014 and 2015. Some of these authors are very well known and published. I didn't let this impact my rating or reading experience, but I think it's important to note it is a very loose term here.

I also feel like this would be a perfect October/Fall read, because even though this is pitched as a fantasy collection, which it is, but I couldn't help but feel like it had much more of an eerie, almost horror, vibe. Most all of the stories are set in our world, in our time, so if you're looking for dragons, dwarfs, fae, and elves, you've come to the wrong anthology.

Yet, a few of these short stories completely captured my heart and very quickly made me a new fan of the authors. The Tallest Doll in New York City by Maria Dahvana Headley, Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon, and Wing by Amal El-Mohtar were some of my favorites and I gave each story a perfect five stars. These stories just felt a tier above most and were just so impactful and beautifully written. I am a sucker for lyrical prose, and all three of these authors completely delivered.

My personal favorite in the whole collection is, hands down, The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado. I am in awe of this story and its utter perfection. One of the best feminist works I've ever read in my life, and one of the most powerful pieces of art, too. If you can only read one short story of these nineteen, please pick this one. It's life changing and so very important.

I'm going to break down each short story with my thoughts, opinions, and individual star rating! Also, all but three of these short stories can be found and read online for free. I will include a link in the title of the story that will direct you to a source that will allow you to read it for free if you are interested.

➽ Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong - ★★★★
This first short story completely hooked me. A girl uses Tinder to find dates who are petty criminals and feeds off their impure thoughts. Yet, she gets more than she bargained for when she becomes addicted to feasting off an actual killer. Now her hunger knows no bounds, and to protect the girl she secretly likes she has to find another way to sate her hunger.

➽ Selkie Stories are for Losers by Sofia Samatar - ★★
This one for sure feels like it could dip into the horror category, too, but it never really got scary. It is sort of story of stories and the whole theme revolves around the mythical folklore creatures, selkies. Selkies are seals who are able to shed their skin and turn human to dwell on land among us. Sadly, this just didn't work for me, and the buildup left a lot to be desired.

➽ Tornado’s Siren by Brooke Bolander - ★★★
This is a very unique short about a girl that has caught the attention of a tornado one stormy evening. She is only nine at the time, but it follows her periodically through her growing up to become an adult. After years of attempted normalcy, our main character realizes that she doesn't want to be normal after all. I enjoyed this, and I loved the open ending, but it wasn't my favorite in the collection.

➽ Left the Century to Sit Unmoved by Sarah Pinsker - ★★★
This is a very, very short little story about a local pond where only the bravest of townsfolk jump off a waterfall into it. There are rules to jumping in this pond, and this pond is said to just take people. They can dredge it up, but no bodies are every found, only the swimsuits that float to the surface. Our main character is obsessed with jumping in it, ever since her brother went missing after his jump. This story is beautifully written, and the message very strong, especially with the length of this one.

➽ A Kiss with Teeth by Max Gladstone - ★
This story was so difficult for me to read. I didn't connect with the writing style whatsoever, and it felt ungodly longer than the rest of the stories in this collection. This story focuses on a modern day version of Vlad the Impaler, where he is trying to live a normal life, and raise a normal son, while also trying to control his urge to function as a vampire. He becomes obsessed with his son's teacher, and begins to literally stalk her. To drink from? To kill? To fuck? Who knows, but it is supposed to be a "you can work out your problems if you love each other enough, while still being able to be who you are" story, but it didn't work in the slightest for me. Also, I'm just personally so sick of Vlad the Impaler retellings.

➽ Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon - ★★★★★
Good Lord, this story was so close to perfect! I absolutely loved and adored it. Twist and turns throughout, with a perfect ending, all wrapped up in such a short tale. This story is about jackalope rabbits, which can turn into very beautiful women, who love to dance the night away. Many men desire to make them their wives, and by stealing the rabbit coats they shed while dancing, but by doing so you will also be trapping them into not being able to shift back into their rabbit forms. Some very cruel men burn their skins, while forcing them to be humans forever.

➽ The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees by E. Lily Yu - ★★★★
This was the first story in the collection that every aspect felt like fantasy. We are thrown into this amazingly beautiful, but ruthless, community of bees and wasps and a couple other insects. We get to see the hierarchy within the wasps, and the demands they make of the bees. We get to see, as the title suggests, their uses of maps and how they take note of the events happening in their world. I really enjoyed this, and the writing was superb.

➽ The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate by A. C. Wise - ★
This is exactly what the title implies, a section by section guide on how to buy a residence if you are a witch. Now, I'm sure this will be super cute, charming, and funny to many readers out there, but it totally fell flat for me. It just felt very forced, while trying to be funny, but it just came across as cringey. Plus, (not that I am the expert on witches buying or creating homes) it felt very basic with its "witch knowledge". I feel really bad saying this, but I didn't enjoy this at all.

➽ The Tallest Doll in New York City by Maria Dahvana Headley - ★★★★★
Be still, my heart! This was so amazingly unique! I loved it! This story is set in New York, where the tall buildings and structures move on their own. This tale is told on Valentine's Day, and the storyteller is a waiter in a club that works high up inside one of these moving buildings. I loved seeing all these iconic structures choose one another and pair up for Valentine's Day. And the story is told so beautifully, whimsically, and romantically, that you can't help but fall in love with it.

➽ The Haunting of Apollo A7LB by Hannu Rajaniemi - ★★★
A woman is dealing with the death of her lover from her past, when she gets a knock on her door from that person's moon suit, that she helped sew, which is a little scary because that person has died. At first sight, she believes it to be his ghost, but soon realizes that there is someone else inside of it. The suit is compelling him to do things that he normally would never do, and now it has showed up on her doorstep. This short story definitely talks about differences in races and classes and how far we still need to go, but also about love and how far we are willing to go for the ones we love.

➽ Here Be Dragons by Chris Tarry - ★
This is easily my least favorite in the whole collection. Trigger warnings for child abuse, even though it's written about in a disgustingly light way. This story is about two men who are pretty much medieval con-artists, who "slay dragons" for wealth and fame. Well, now they have come home to actually be fathers to their children, while their wives work, but they can't deal with that apparently, because, you know, sexism, and then they both have separate epiphanies that they aren't cut out for this father thing, when they could have fame, glory, and prostitutes. I understand not every story has to have likable main characters, but I literally hated both of these men from start to finish.

➽ The One They Took Before by Kelly Sandoval - ★★★★
This story was just the perfect about of ominous and eerie. It all starts with a rift in the universe and an ad on Craigslist in Seattle. Our main character is constantly battling her inner feelings whether or not she wants to return to her abductors that are not from our world. It was such a good balance of realistic and whimsical, and my only real complaint is that I wish there was more that I could read.

➽ Tiger Baby by JY Yang - ★★
I feel somewhat torn about rating this story. This short is about a girl who is being constantly haunted by her dreams of being a tiger, which she also believes is her "true form" and aspires to become it. She doesn't have the best life and constantly feels so much different than her peers. All of this, and the many metaphors, could have packed a big punch, but instead it fell short because our main protagonist isn't a teenager feeling like an outcast that can't connect with anyone, instead she is over thirty years old and refuses to seek out help.

➽ The Duck by Ben Loory - ★★★★
This was short and cute and extremely unexpectedly powerful. On paper, this is a story about a duck that fell in love with a rock, but it's truly a story about helping people you love and understanding and accepting them for who they are. With true friends, we can accomplish so much and we can help heal others and make so many people happy. This was really good, and I highly recommend.

➽ Wing by Amal El-Mohtar - ★★★★★
This might be the most beautiful story in the whole collection. This short story is so romantic and so expertly written. My interruption is that soul mates are rare, but always worth the wait, and sharing yourself body and soul with someone else is something indescribable. We will have many loves in our lives, but when you find that person who you can share all your secrets with you will realize why it never worked out with anyone else. I loved this so very much, and I loved the imagery in this, and I loved picturing a girl with a book of secrets around her neck. Seriously, this was perfection.

➽ The Philosophers by Adam Ehrlich Sachs - ★★
This is three mini stories; all surrounding a discussion about boys and their fathers. It's about becoming what they expect you to be, becoming what you have no powering to not become, and how one day the boy will become the father. If I'm being honest, this wasn't bad, but it just tried too damn hard to sound prolific. And it wasn't that I couldn't relate, but I just didn't care to read three stories of different father and son relationships.

➽ My Time Among the Bridge Blowers by Eugene Fischer - ★★
This was just ungodly boring. It's about a man, traveling with another man, to a village tribe that's unlike anything he's ever known, and then closes very mysteriously and very open-ended. Maybe there is some very introspective meaning here that just went over my head, but I just didn't enjoy this.


➽ The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado - ★★★★★
Oh my God. This was the best short story I have ever read in my entire life. I'm writing this review in tears, because it was so immensely powerful. My hands are shaking, because this story is so real and so relevant. My stomach is in knots, because I'm not sure any combination of words I will create will do this story justice. This story is very feminist and very sexually explicit, but so damn important. It's about the life of a woman, who gives everything to men and never is allowed to keep anything for herself. It's about life's expectations on women, and how society shapes the choices we do and do not have. It's about how, no matter what, giving everything will never be good enough as a woman. It's about enjoying and exploring your sexuality, yet trying to cope with the shame. It's about never fully being able to become the person you are, but becoming the person your husband and/or family require you to be. It's about having children, who will just repeat the same vicious and unfair cycle. I wish I could put this story in everyone's hands.

➽ The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T. Malik - ★★★★
This story was so very long, but was rather enjoyable. It's about a boy, who has been obsessed with a story his grandfather has told him since he was young, about a princess, her two sisters, and a jinn that protected them all. This family lives in the states now, but the story is from Pakistan. After a few turn of events, the boy, now a man, picks up his life and goes to Pakistan to see if his grandfather's story was just a story. Also, this story has such a beautiful ending.

I gave The New Voices of Fantasy 3 stars overall, because out of a possible 95 stars (5 stars possible for each of the 19 stories) this collection accumulated 60 stars (63%).

Great selection of stories and authors. Don't be surprised if you grab a copy and find yourself
trying to find more work from these authors.
Not a bad apple in the bunch. And being a big fan of this type of collection believe me that is special.

"The New Voices of Fantasy" is an eclectic mixture of diverse fantasy authors, featuring a multitude of subgenres in stories set around the globe. Although the short story format means that the worlds and cultures the authors have created appear only in snippet form, which is not normally my favorite way to experience fantasy, this collection is filled with beautifully written stories, and was a good way to sample the styles of authors I either had been considering reading but had not gotten around to, or had never encountered before at all.

Like all anthologies of this type, some stories will be more to a given reader's taste than others, but all of them of them are well-crafted. The authors all have impressive credentials, including multiple awards and training at various MFA programs or at places like Clarion West and Iowa. Unsurprisingly, the stories do tend to have that "MFA feel" to them, full of symbolism and finely honed language, which is a specific writing style that either you like or you don't. So while fantasy, this collection is definitely highbrow fantasy, and it's up to you whether that's your thing or not. However, given that this is a collection of short stories, the commitment to each individual story is not great, so this is a good opportunity to browse and try something different.

And there are certainly some excellent pieces of fantasy fiction here, spanning everything from folk tales to dark fantasy/horror to sci fi with a fantasy edge. Some particularly standout stories for me were Ursula Vernon's "Jackalope Wives," a distinctly American take on the story of the skinchanging wife, E. Lily Yu's "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees," a Chinese-infused fable/allegory about insect communities, and Usman T. Malik's "The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn," about a first-generation American son of Pakistani immigrants who discovers mystical secrets about his past. But every single one of the stories included in this collection was highly worth reading, and I would recommend this anthology to anyone interested in trying out some "literary" and multicultural fantasy by up-and-coming authors.

My thanks to NetGalley for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

This was an excellent anthology of new authors who are the rising stars of the genre. Many are already winning impressive awards for their work. In many cases, the stories reprinted in this volume are the very ones for which they won those awards. Because of this, if you pay much attention to short fiction in fantasy and sci-fi, you may have read many of the stories collected in this book before. Several of them were familiar to me. I didn't think that was a downside to this volume, though. If you've been wanting to read these authors' work but feel daunted at the prospect of tracking down individual stories spread out across a wide variety of publications, this is the book for you.

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to become familiar with new, up-and-coming fantasy authors in a convenient, low-risk way. You may not like all of them, but they're all highly skilled authors playing around with interesting concepts and themes and this is a good representation of where I think the genre seems to be heading.

My personal favorites were "A Kiss With Teeth" by Max Gladstone, "The Cartographer Wasps and Anarchist Bees" by E. Lily Yu, "The Tallest Doll in New York City" by Maria Dahvana Headley, and "The Philosophers" by Adam Ehrlich Sachs. "Tornado’s Siren" by Brooke Bolander and "The Practical Witch’s Guide to Acquiring Real Estate" by A. C. Wise made me laugh.

This is a collection of fantasy short stories written by up-and-coming authors. It's a little bit of an eclectic collection; there's stories that represent many different cultures, beliefs, and subgenres of fantasy. The collection does a great job at representation, both in the authors that were selected as well as the stories that were shared.

While it's a decent collection, I found that the stories were either really, really good and engrossing or just fell flat. There seemed to be no real in-between for me. In fact, a few of the short stories really stretched the definition of "fantasy genre" for me. While I would like to say that the future of my beloved genre looks bright, I'd be lying. However, should some of the authors in this collection write a novel or two, it'd be something I'd be willing to check out from the library at some point in time.

I can't wait to read more from these authors. This is an excellent collection of emerging voices that each bring something new and fresh to fantasy.

This is a collection of stories by authors who have recently hit the upper levels of speculative fiction writing - publication in the top venues, award nominations, and so forth.

I'd read several of these before, mostly in the The Long List Anthology Volume 2: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List; some of them were good enough that I read them again. I skipped Alyssa Wong's "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" (which was more horror-like than I prefer), Carmen Maria Machado's "The Husband Stitch", a magic-realist story that didn't have a strong enough payoff for me to want to read it again, and Usman T. Malik's "The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn," which was good but, let's say, took a lot of words for the amount of story in it.

I did re-read Maria Dahvana Headley's "The Tallest Doll in New York City," a lovely Runyonesque that I'd previously read in the Tor.com anthology, and Max Gladstone's "A Kiss with Teeth", which I'd read twice before in other anthologies. It's that good. His novels are, for me, a frustrating blend of brilliant and flawed, but this story is excellent. Even though a lot of its excellence is in the masterfully maintained tension, and even though I (obviously) already knew the ending, it rewarded rereading.

The other story I re-read was Sofia Samatar's "Selkie Stories Are for Losers", which, the first time I read it, didn't do much for me. I appreciated it more on a re-read; like most of these stories, what it's about is human relationships, and it takes an allusive and indirect approach that, for me, needed a second read to get.

As I write this review, I'm partway through reading Event Horizon 2017, a collection of stories by authors eligible for the Campbell Award - that is, people who've recently made their first professional sale. I'm trying to figure out what the difference is between those stories and the ones in this volume; haven't quite put my finger on it yet, but it's something to do with having a second level to the story, and and extra degree of skill in weaving it together. While I didn't necessarily like every story in this volume, I appreciated the authors' ability.

Given how much I got from rereading the ones I'd read before, I feel it would be worthwhile to reread those I haven't.

I really enjoyed this collection. It had a nice balance of stories – most of them not too long - showing a good array of work from upcoming authors and somehow maintained a consistent tone despite the variety of authors and tales.

I was familiar with many of these stories from previous anthologies and publications. At first I was disappointed by that, until I thought about the target audience for this book and realised that not only was that perfectly fine - it was what I’d want to be seeing.

This book is aimed at readers who aren’t up to their eyeballs reading the latest issues of SFWA-recognised magazines, who aren’t voting in or following the big awards, and who may not typically follow SFF short fiction at all. It’s aimed at people who want to read a good collection of the key pieces from upcoming authors to watch out for in the future.

In that regard this collection delivers really well.

For an anthology like this you’d hope the stories and authors that would be included would be the big ones you’d think of straight off the bat like Alyssa Wong and Brooke Bolander, right? You’d hope that they’d have some of your favourite short stories from the last few years like Carmen Maria Machado’s “The Husband Stitch”, Ursula Vernon’s “Jackolope Wives” and Max Gladstone’s “A Kiss With Teeth”. You’d hope there were a few outsider surprises, too, like “The Duck” or “Here Be Dragons”. The editorial team has done a great job and I found their selections are well-balanced.

If I had a friend who asked me for an introduction to what’s good in current fantasy short fiction, this would be up there in my recommendations. It’s a good overview, introduces a lot of the key names to keep an eye on, and gives the reader a place to start and work out from.

In short, this collection does everything it says it will on the tin and it does it very well.

The New Voices of Fantasy by Peter S. Beagle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC!

I really liked, sometimes loved the stories in this volume. A lot of them are reprints, if not all, and I remember a number of them quite fondly from previous reads, such as, and especially, Alyssa Wong and Brooke Bolander.

However, there were a number of newcomers (the definition is flexible) that I really enjoyed or I've already had the pleasure of reading some of their actual novels, such as stories from Hannu Rajaniemi, Sofia Samatar, and Max Gladstone. Hannu is a personal favorite author of mine, and Max is rapidly getting there, too, for me.

Let me tell you... I really loved the one from Max. Dracula in the modern city. It was far from being overdone, rather, it was absolutely delightful. :)

Ben Loory's short of "The Duck" was an awesome surprise, and I'm really beginning to look forward to every Ursula Vernon story I'm running across, too.

All in all, though, I am very impressed and pleased by this collection and if its primary intention is to say, "Hey, look at these authors and revel in their glory!", then I think it did a wonderful job. Most of them have quite a few awards under their wings, too.

I totally recommend this for all modern fantasy lovers. (And btw, there's a TON of great OLD fantasy retellings, usually quite unique and unusual tales in their own right. If you love hard to find legends retold for modern sensibilities wrapped and layered in fantastic characters, this is ALSO your book.)

A few days ago I as kindly given a review copy of a forthcoming soon anthology, The New Voices of Fantasy, edited by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman. I was completely shocked by how much I liked the beautiful lead story, "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong. Last month I first read the surrealistic short fiction of Leonora Carrington. If April 2017 was for me the month I "discovered" Leonora Carrington, then quite possibly May will be observed as the month I first read Alyssa Wong. I know this sounds hyperbolic but I can for sure visualize Leonora being stunned by "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers, i certainly was. I was on first reading mesmerized by the sheer elegance of Wong's prose combined with the very ugly and evil story she tells.

Told in the first person by a young woman out on a first date with a man she met online, a Harvard alumni he claims, the setting is Manhattan. She is from Taipei.They are on their way to dinner. We soon learn the woman can read thoughts. The man is trying to impress her by telling her of his penthouse complete with a Jacuzzi. Most women would be frightened to learn their date was a serial killer was eagerly looking forward to splitting her body open. I want to share enough of Wong's style to give my readers a fair sample of her style, which I just love:



"As we cruise uptown toward his fancy-ass penthouse, I ask him to pull over near the Queensboro Bridge for a second. Annoyance flashes across his face, but he parks the Tesla in a side street. I lurch into an alley, tottering over empty cans and discarded cigarettes in my four-inch heels, and puke a trail of champagne and kale over to the dumpster shoved up against the apartment building. “Are you all right?” Harvey calls. “I’m fine,” I slur. Not a single curious window opens overhead. His steps echo down the alley. He’s gotten out of the car, and he’s walking toward me like I’m an animal that he needs to approach carefully. Maybe I should do it now. Yes! Now, now, while the bitch is occupied. But what about the method? I won’t get to see her insides all pretty everywhere—I launch myself at him, fingers digging sharp into his body, and bite down hard on his mouth. He tries to shout, but I swallow the sound and shove my tongue inside. There, just behind his teeth, is what I’m looking for: ugly thoughts, viscous as boiled tendon. I suck them howling and fighting into my throat as Harvey’s body shudders, little mewling noises escaping from his nose. I feel decadent and filthy, swollen with the cruelest dreams I’ve ever tasted. I can barely feel Harvey’s feeble struggles; in this state, with the darkest parts of himself drained from his mouth into mine, he’s no match for me. They’re never as strong as they think they are. By the time he finally goes limp, the last of the thoughts disappearing down my throat, my body’s already changing. My limbs elongate, growing thicker, and my dress feels too tight as my ribs expand." She changes briefly into his appearance, before she leaves his body near a dumpster, not knowing or caring if he is still alive.

This is not the first man whose life she has ended. "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" shows us the sexual love of our narrator, her roommate and a high fashion woman she meets for each other. We also meet the narrator's mother, a hoarder whose house is shoulder high packed with junk, including jars containing the essences of men she has killed, including our narrator's father. Her mother advised her it is best just to go for common criminals as no one will make a big effort to figure out why they disappeared. There is a deep feeling of evil in the story, hidden by the beautiful prose and the elegance of the women.

Wong says she wants to write stories in which the chief characters are Asian American lesbians. There is much in the story I have not touched upon, I want first time readers to not have too much advanced knowledge.

Bio Data from the collection

Alyssa Wong’s considerable reputation rests on only the handful of stories. Still in her mid-twenties, she is the youngest author to appear in this collection. Her work has appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, Black Static, Tor.com, and Lightspeed: Queers Destroy Science Fiction. Her first published story, “The Fisher Queen,” earned immediate acclaim and was nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson awards. Wong’s fourth story, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers,” was published the following year to even stronger acclaim, winning the Nebula and World Fantasy awards, and was nominated for the Shirley Jackson and the Bram Stoker awards, and was a finalist for the Locus Award. She was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2016. She lives in Raleigh.

She is the first author of Filipino ancestry to win a Nebula Award.

I will be reading and posting on seven more of her stories.

If just a few of the stories in The New Voices of Fantasy are close to this good, it is well worth acquiring.

Leonora Carrington, best known broadly for her paintings had a very long, seventy years or so, creative career. I wish the same for Alyssa Wong.

Mel u
The Reading Life