Where the Stars Rise is an anthology edited by Lucas K. Law and Derwin Mak that offers a captivating and diverse collection of speculative fiction stories from Asian authors and those of the Asian diaspora. This anthology shines as a brilliant exploration of the intersection between culture, identity, and the limitless possibilities of science fiction and fantasy, making it a must-read for fans of the genre who are seeking fresh perspectives and new voices.

The collection features an impressive roster of writers, including established names like Fonda Lee and E.C. Myers, as well as emerging talents such as Regina Kanyu Wang and Rati Mehrotra. Each story in Where the Stars Rise brings something unique to the table, whether it’s a futuristic vision of the world, a fantastical reimagining of folklore, or a deeply personal narrative exploring the complexities of identity and belonging. The anthology is united by its focus on Asian experiences and perspectives, but the range of genres, styles, and themes ensures that there is something here for every reader.

One of the strengths of this anthology is the way it seamlessly blends traditional cultural elements with the speculative. For example, in Joyce Chng’s “Meridian,” readers are transported to a world where ancient rituals and advanced technology coexist, exploring themes of loss and renewal. S.B. Divya’s “Looking Up” offers a thought-provoking look at the future of space exploration through the lens of family and cultural heritage. Fonda Lee’s “Old Souls” delves into the reincarnation cycle in a way that is both imaginative and poignant, weaving together the past and present in a powerful narrative.

The stories in Where the Stars Rise are not only imaginative but also deeply resonant, often reflecting on the complexities of cultural identity in a globalized world. Many of the stories grapple with questions of assimilation, cultural preservation, and the tension between tradition and modernity. These themes are explored in a variety of ways, from the subtle and introspective to the bold and speculative, providing a rich and multifaceted reading experience.

Karin Lowachee’s “A Star is Born” stands out as a story that blends space opera with the emotional depth of family dynamics, while Amanda Sun’s “The Bridge of Dangerous Longings” captures the essence of myth and legend with a modern twist. E.C. Myers’ “The Observer Effect” is a clever and engaging exploration of quantum physics and parallel worlds, highlighting the anthology’s commitment to both intellectual and emotional storytelling.

The introduction by Elsie Chapman sets the stage for the anthology, offering insights into the importance of diverse voices in speculative fiction and the power of storytelling to bridge cultural divides. The editors, Lucas K. Law and Derwin Mak, have curated a collection that not only entertains but also challenges readers to think deeply about the world around them and the worlds that could be.

Where the Stars Rise is more than just a collection of stories; it is a celebration of the rich and varied contributions that Asian voices bring to the speculative fiction genre. The anthology succeeds in both entertaining and provoking thought, making it a valuable addition to any reader’s bookshelf. Whether you are a long-time fan of science fiction and fantasy or new to the genre, Where the Stars Rise offers a diverse and compelling selection of stories that will leave a lasting impression. This anthology is a testament to the power of speculative fiction to explore complex themes, challenge perceptions, and showcase the vibrant creativity of underrepresented voices.

Some of the stories were better than others. The book was fine, but nothing amazing, which unfortunately won't be enough to sell, as anthologies are a hard sell as it is and mostly rely on handselling to be able to move off the shelves.

I absolutely love short fiction anthologies and have actually recommended this anthology to many of my friends. It's relatively easy to pick up novels or watch movies that are 'Asian-infused' but that might not do more than rehash the same stereotypes that we have about Asia, starting with mixing all of the cultures up into one and calling it Asian. Of course I loved some of the stories more than others, but for an anthology, it is definitely worth picking up.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I don't often read anthologies because in the past, I often ended up not liking them so much. But seeing what kind of stoires there were present in this antology I was really intruiged.

Most of the stories I truly enjoyed. Of course one more than the other but it was great to read so many different stories that had Asian Fantasy in it, something I've been wanting to read more of, as well as the fact that they were all really character driven, something I definitely like as well.

Every story had a new and great setting, different kind of characters and that something I normally do really enjoy about anthologies; there's so much diversity to be found, which was the case with this one as well.

Conclusion:

I'd definitely recommend giving this anthology a go if you want to get aquainted with new to you authors and when you want to read Asian inspired Fantasy stories that are quite character driven.

Probably not every story is going to be a hit, seeing there's all kinds of different writing to be found and it's something personal to every read, but it was overall a lot of fun to read!

Anthologies are usually a hit and miss for me but when I heard about “Where the Stars Rise” I knew I needed to get my hands on it.
I was not disappointed.
Each of the stories managed to capture and keep my attention (the latter being pretty difficult for short stories!). With the stories all being based around Asia in some form, they all had their own quirks and interesting points while still flowing through with the general theme. From sci-fi to romance to tragedy to natural disasters, there is something for everyone to enjoy in this wonderful gem. The biggest theme that wrapped up this anthology for me is unity in diversity and learning to accept oneself.

A copy of the book was provided by the publisher in return for an honest review.

Where the Stars Rise was a solid collection of Asian speculative fiction that explored everything from the epic to the mundane. The anthology was fairly diverse in terms of cultures represented, so I felt like I got to see more of Asia than what is usually considered "Asian." Two of my favorite stories were by Fonda Lee and E.C. Myers. Lee's was was a riveting story about reincarnation and revenge, and Myers' had an interesting take on superheroes and Asian representation. I hope to see more anthologies like this that explores the myriad stories that Asian cultures can give birth to.

I adored every single story. I would love to get a hard copy of this but can't find it in UK just yet - fingers and everything crossed!

I believe this anthology of shorts is important. Not only is it a coming together of some authors that are extremely talented, but these stories hit a spot that is seriously lacking in the majority of books. The range of talent and skill in this anthology will take you on a ride from one end of the universe to the other. A fantastic compilation of talent and heart capturing stories.

A brilliant collection of stories that celebrate the past, present and future of Asia. This diverse set of writers showcases some amazing work!

This is an anthology of varied Asian fantasy and sci-fi stories. If you enjoy these two genres you should give this anthology try, there is something here for nearly everyone! This was a very enjoyable read.

Some are good, some are great and some I really could have gone without ever reading. But that's just how an anthology works. I've lately really become fond of anthologies. It is nice to just pick up a short story between projects. Especially with the weather taking a quick turn to the cold side, I've not been able to garden for as long as I would like in a day. I enjoy coming in for a hot cup of tea and a quick read.

Where the Stars Rise is a collection of fantasy and science fiction stories by Asian authors. It has been a vastly interesting collection. The eastern mythos provides an entirely different spin than I have been raised with and gives a nice edge when I get in a fantasy slump.

Some of the stories I would love to see get an entire novel based on these short prequels--such as The dataSultan of Streets and Stars by Jeremy Szal.

Some were just great stand alone stories that really make you think about life--like any good science fiction should--such as Weaving Silk by Amanda Sun and Vanilla Rice by Angela Yuriko Smith. I especially like the interlinked paradigms from A Star is Born by Miki Dare.

Some were just over my head because I don't have enough cultural heritage to understand the myths the authors are building around--such as Udatta Sloka by Deepak Bharathan.

Overall I give this short story collection 4 stars. The ones I truly enjoyed well overrated the ones that were beyond my understanding or just poorly written (which there were only two).

There are always going to be hits and misses in anthologies, but there were so many hits in this one book that I couldn't bring myself to mark it down at all. I'm so excited to see what these writers do in the future.

4.5/5 I liked this! It was really interesting and the different authors wrote really great stories! They wrote really amazing Asian inspired fantasy, and it is one of my favorite collection of short stories I've read! It really brought insight to a section of fantasy and just books in general since Asian inspired fiction to me in usually underrepresented! I could tell in these stories there was a general theme for quite a few of them: the sense that there is a separation of them from society. I think that my favorite story is "Back to Myan" by Regina Kanyu Wang which is about a girl who's ocean planet is destroyed and she is taken in by another society and is brought up as one of them. It was intense. I thought it was amazing, and as mentioned, is my favorite story in this one. I highly recommend checking this out!

One thing I have been seeking is more science fiction from Asian authors. I also adore short stories To find all of this in one collection was like hitting a gold mine. This collection contains well-written, interesting, and unique stories. It was a wonderful tome to add to my own collection.

This was really interesting and I'm glad that they have more books about Asian culture and myth. It was just a cool book.

I loved this anthology! I thought was just the amount of unique perspective that science fiction and fantasy anthologies need. Great fun and voices that are severally lacking in one of my favorite genres!

For me, the best speculative fiction seamlessly weaves together novel ideas and perspectives while keeping me enthralled in a good story. Where the Stars Rise promises just that, providing a wealth of viewpoints that are woefully underrepresented in much of mainstream speculative fiction. The stories range from Melissa Yuan-Innes' "Crash," a futuristic story of a sixteen-year-old's experience on a moon colony, to Ruhan Zhao's "My Left Hand," a short tale of high energy physics, time travel, and fortune tellers, to Gabriela Lee's "DNR", a story of personal tragedy and memory set in a world shattered by climate change and terrible earthquakes.

In this myriad of interesting stories, I think the one I found most memorable was Amanda Sun's gorgeously lyrical "Weaving Silk." In this short vignette, the main character and her sister are scraping together ingredients to make and sell onigiri. As they travel through a Japan wounded by both volcanic eruption and tsunami, she muses on the country's struggles to regain contact with a world that, before Japan was isolated by natural disaster, was itself enmeshed in incipient global warfare. The writing is packed with metaphor, haunting, and utterly gorgeous. A few of my favourite quotes:
"We are her [my mother's] bones, though. We are the tiny eggs left from the gleaming mouth, from the beat of her wings and the curl of her tired legs. We've awoken ravenous among the dark foliage, with only two thoughts in our heads--eat, survive. Eat. Survive. Silkworms, both of us, spinning our cocoons to blind ourselves."
"We are all little cocoons, I think, as I look at the people in the train. We spin threads around ourselves, shutting others out as if we were the only ones struggling to survive. Hungry to survive, destined to die. And yet together, unravelled, our stories form yards and yards of beautiful silken thread."

Each story was unique, but a few common themes wove them together. Perhaps the most common was a sense of difference and separation from the rest of society. For example, Ayla of S.B. Divya's "Looking Up" is hired for a journey to Mars as "one of our most diverse candidates" (sigh) but her cultural heritage combined with her physical disabilities and family history leaves her feeling isolated and adrift. The story is about forgiveness and finding a future while coming to terms with the past. In Diana Xin's "A Visitation for the Spirit Festival", Mrs. Liu finds herself revisiting her past when she travels to see her daughter who had quit her job in Silicon Valley to find her Chinese roots. A literal ghost becomes a metaphor for Mrs. Liu's complex relationship with her memories. "A Star is Born" by Miki Dare is told in a fascinating style, with alternating diary entries of an old woman with Alzheimer's who believes she can time travel to see alternate routes of her past interspersed with "timeline captures" of a Japanese girl dealing with tremendous prejudice in Canada during WWII. Like "Visitation", it deals with themes of tragedy, memory, and acceptance.

Multiple stories centered around people with a foot in two cultures who feel that they belonged to neither. The most memorable for me was "Back to Myan" by Regina Kanyu Wang, where the protagonist is literally a fish out of water. When Kaya's oceanus planet is destroyed, the Union rescues her and brings her up as one of them, to the point of surgically modifying her fins into feet. Brought up to blend in, she goes on a mission to rediscover her roots and finds far darker secrets than she could ever expect. The theme of dual cultures is played straight in Vanilla Rice" by Angela Yuriko Smith, where the child of an internet bride grows up in a world that equates whiteness with worth and chooses to genetically modify her child to appear Caucasian. The child seeks to find a way "to belong in my world, not someone else's." Karin Lowachee's "Meridian" is a scifi take on adoption across cultures, where the protagonist is "saved" and, after a few rounds of foster ships, is eventually "adopted" into a pirate crew.

Some of the stories deal with even more direct prejudice. In Jeremy Szal's "The DataSultan of Streets and Stars" the protagonist and his brother are forced to flee after their father was killed in an anti-Muslim pogrom. Years later, the protagonist is forced into stealing a djinn-bot (universal assistant) he had created in his previous career as a programmer and "dataSultan." "Rose's Arm" by Calvin D. Jim deals with cultural and socioeconomic barriers. In this futuristic world where "the poor pay with their bodies" is anything but metaphorical, Rose Ishikawa struggles seeks to help her ailing father and considers selling her eyes to get a mechanical arm. In Priya Sridhar's "Memoriam", Anish's droid father lands right in the middle of uncanny valley and unsettles religious neighbors.

On of my favourite stories, E.C. Myers' "The Observer Effect", took the idea of being invisible out of the metaphoric sphere. It's a fun jaunt into an Incredibles-like world where the protagonist is positive that one of her coworkers is a retired superhero. It deals with expectations, casual prejudice, and the cultural invisibility of minorities and those with disabilities, all in an entertaining and amusing superhero costume. "The Orphans of Nilaveli" by Naru Dames Sundar also involves literal invisibility. The story takes place in a near-future Sri Lanka where everyone has implants that make the things they don't want to see invisible. Two adopted Tamil children grow up in a world that makes their people literally invisible and find themselves revolting against that blindness.

Another common theme was leveraging cultural traditions, history, and folklore. The most memorable for me was "Decision" by Joyce Chng. Creepy and wild, it weaves together themes of gender fluidity with folklore of a young spider-jinn leaving the nest. "Moon Halves" by Anne Carly Abad is an interesting reimagining of Filipino folklore, where humans participate in a hunting rite that involves hunting and killing an immature Taung Asu (tree spirit.) "Spirit of Wine" by Tony Pi is short, entertaining yarn involving a prefectural exam and a wine spirit. "Minsoo Kang's "Wintry Hearts of Those Who Rise" reads like an early folktale with protagonists who outsmart the rich and greedy, but the story has a mildly disturbing bite at the end. Deepack Bharathan's "Udatta Sloka" is a reimagined origin story of a god that deals with change, death, and the destruction of the Indus Valley Civilization. "Joseon Fringe" by Pamela Q. Fernandes is an alternate history of Sejong the Great that also provides fascinating commentary on the divided Koreas. "The Bridge of Dangerous Longings" by Rati Mehrotra is less directly inspired by folklore. A fantastical tale in a futuristic island cut off from the rest of the world by a bridge that no one has come back from, it deals with themes of violence and rape. I think it might have packed more of a punch had it not answered its own mysteries.

Last but not least, I found myself enjoying Fonda Lee's "Old Souls" as an echo of her wonderful Jade City. The protagonist can see the patterns of everyone's previous lives and wants to escape her own fate. The story is about choice, the need to forget and be able to start over, and patterns, personality, and what makes us innately ourselves. As one character says:
"Our lives are shaped by circumstance; we have patterns, but we do change."


Overall, it's a very interesting collection well worth reading if you're interested in scifi and fantasy a little off the beaten path.

anthologies, especially by multiple authors, are notoriously hit and miss; however i am pleased to announce that this one was mostly hits. the stories were very unique and varied, which meant i didn't get bored reading any of them. my favourites were old souls by fonda lee (which was absolutely bloody brilliant and one of the best short stories i've ever read; it's worth getting this anthology just for this one to be honest) and the datasultan of streets and stars by jeremy szal.

This anthology has truly achieved diversity in more than one way. It contains stories that take place in all kinds of places, not limited to earth, under all kinds of circumstances and time frames. Even if they are all sci-fi and fantasy stories, they are incredibly different from each other in subject, style and mood. Some are light while others will leave you filled with emotions. The characters can be human or not, alive or death, from little kids to elderly, with superpowers, enhancements or handicapped. All these wonderful stories are presented with very unique and intriguing plots developed over Asian backgrounds (Chinese, Turkish, Indian, Japanese, Philippine, Korean, Indonesian, etc.)

Most of the stories carry deep teachings, sometimes boldly presented as the main theme while other times it can be subtly left there for the reader to analyze. Loss, struggle, hope and the continuous search for ourselves and a place to belong to, were themes I felt constantly reappearing in these lovely stories. This book took me longer than usual to finish, partly because a couple of stories were most definitely not of my liking. I found them confusing and had to slow down to keep a good level of comprehension. That can ruin the mood for the next story, so I took more breaks than usual while reading this anthology.

When I finished reading I realized I loved some stories, others remained in a gray area and couple of them I disliked. Yet, I could sympathize with all of them, which was great, because that's what happens when you are presented with diversity, with options that are truly different from each other. Quite probably you wont love them all, but you can get a real taste of diverse short stories that you will enjoy if you like science fiction and fantasy. My top 3 favorite stories were: Memoriam by Priya Sridhar, Old Souls by Fonda Lee and Rose's Arm by Calvin D.Jim
I got my eArc from Laksa Media Groups

This is a fantastic short story collection that has a great variety of stories. As with all short story collections there were stories I enjoyed more than others, but overall I really enjoyed reading this collection. I have definitely found some new authors that I want to check out. If you enjoy fantasy and science fiction then I would highly recommend checking this collection out.