"Jewel Box Stories" is so aptly named! All the 22 tales in this collection by E. Lily Yu are powerful gemstones and each one deserves complete attention for a day or two before selecting the next sparkling creation to examine.

The first, "The Pilgrim and The Angel" is one of my many favorites. Poignant and sad and bittersweet it tells the saga of a coffee shop caretaker who is visited by an angel who takes him on a journey to Miami (by way of Mecca) to rendezvous with the son he has not seen in THREE years. As a parent this one hit me in my heart.

There are stories featuring a sentient street lamp that falls in love with a human, wasps and bees fighting for survival and their legacy, an incorruptible Assyrian judge who is not as moral and righteous as he believes, power and wealth inequality. and a self-absorbed couple who has an over the top expensive wedding while the sea is rising nearby.

At this point, the reader may marvel at the author's imaginative scope, crafting original scenarios that engage instantly. Inspiration clearly comes from fairy tales and fables and folk- tales and religion, but Yu spins monsters and magic and hope and love and pain and sorrow with consummate skill. The story "Braid of Days and Wake of Nights" opens masterfully, "The seat beneath her was glossy plastic and not interested in prolonging their acquaintance." All the stories contain relevance and meaning applicable to our lives today, but none more than the final jewel, "Small Monsters" and its narrative of endurance and survival and resilience even in the face of betrayal and pain.

Everyone who appreciates and enjoys exceptional and uncommon stories should add this volume to their TBR stack. I highly urge you to place it at the top of the pile!!

An excellent collection of short stories. There's fantasy, fairy tales and different fantastic genre. They're thought provoking and reminded me of the morale fables of the past centuries even if they're quite cinic.
Well done, highly recommended
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

"The world is stranger than I thought. It always is."

E. Lily Yu's Jewel Box: Stories is a collection of strange stories, each odd in its own, unique way, ranging from sci-fi to fantasy to fairy tale (including a take on Hans Christian Andersen). The writing style changes to suit the story - so many old timey words are used in the fairy tale like escapades. Seneschal. Demesne. The settings span the globe (and beyond!).

The stories captured me, curious to see what would happen next. A sly character weaves through a few of the stories. Stories about something very specific with a bigger story being told / shown behind the scenes, without being overt. Subtle, fable-like.

Bees, magic carpets, scheming peddlers, over the top weddings, jealous AI, dragons, monsters and more. Much much more.

My thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the ARC. Jewel Box: Stories is now available.

Its such a pleasure for me to be able to read Jewel Box Stories, a collection of short stories, It was a pleasant surprised to find that various short stories in here, which 22 stories have its own unique element. I think the story that left big impression and hard to forget is The Lamp at the Turning.

I'm an absolute SUCKER for a horror short stories and fictions and I am so thankful to Kensington Books, E. Lily Yu, and Netgalley for granting me advanced access to this behemoth before it came out on October 24, 2023.

The pleasure for me in reading E. Lily Yu’s collection of short stories, Jewel Box, was sourced in two of the book’s elements: its what-if premises and its, well, jewel-like language, which glittered precise and edged as any gemstone in a Tiffany’s case. The plots and characters, meanwhile, were more hit and miss for me, which is why I’m not giving it a five. As is typical for collections, the individual stories varied in their impact, with my marginal notes ranging from “lovely” or “delightful” to “meh” (mostly due to predictability or being a bit too obvious/on the nose).” But even in those stories that did very little for me as stories, the language was always captivatingly startling, so I feel pretty confident in saying everyone should this collection for those delightful starting points and beautifully honed sentences. A few specifics on a few of my favorites:

“The Lamp at the Turning” This story, of a sentient streetlight who falls in love with “a young man in a red jacket … his fluttering damp hair and fluted ears and how he held himself with the careful gravity fo the young pretending to be old”, is one of those “lovely” ones I mentioned — brief and moving and poignant and with a killer close.

“The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”: In premise, tone, and language, this one reminded me of no one other than Italo Calvino, one of my favorite authors. Here’s the opening sentence: “For longer than anyone could remember, the village of Yiwei had won, in its orchards and under its eaves, clay-colored globs of paper that hissed and fizzed with wasps.” And here’s the story’s precipitating move a few paragraphs later: “In this way it was discovered that the wasp nests of Yiwei, dipped in hot water, unfurled into beautifully accurate maps of provinces near and far, inked in vegetable pigments and labeled in careful Mandarin that could be distinguished beneath a microscope.” I’m already all in on the story, and that’s before the nest folded into a paper boat, wasp wars of expansion, bee ambassadors, and an apian exploration of imperialism.

“Braid of Days and Wake of Nights” When Vivian, Julia’s best friend and love of her life is at death’s door from cancer, Julia seeks out the unicorn that may or may not reside in Central Park in hope of using its horn to cure her. One of my favorites of the collection, if a little over-long.

“The Eve of the Planet of Ys” Another favorite, a melding of Lu’s usual fabulistic voice and peak pulp sci fi/dying Earth atmosphere as “In its latter days, the two blessed suns of the planet of Ys grew twice as large and dully red [so] There was no true day or not on Ys, but a long thin dusk when both suns burned, followed by a dim and feverish evening when one or the other had set.”

“The No-One Girl and the Flower of the Farther Shore” and another favorite, perhaps my number one in the book, focusing on an orphan girl, an indifferent village, an amoral butcher boy, and a story that goes off in an unexpected and lovely direction

“The Cat’s Tale”: a deft melding of several familiar old tales that feels right at home amongst old folk/fairy stories thanks as much to the voice as its use of said stories.

I suspect that this is a story collection that will divide readers. It's titled Jewel Box, which is lovely and fitting, but I kept thinking as I worked my way through, sampling and savoring stories, of a box of chocolates. Of the 22 stories collected here, I had only previously read one (and it's one that I believe readers of SFF are most likely to be familiar with, having been a nominee or finalist for a whole passel of awards that year), The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees. Reactions to that story--because it contains metaphor but isn't just metaphor, because it has the feel of a fable or fairy tale but doesn't hew closely to the rules of either, because there's a *lot* going on in it (colonialism, human impacts on the environment, tyranny, doomed political movements that nonetheless leave reason to hope), because the seeds of the story came from actual entomological observations about anarchism in bees(!! how neat)--were all over the (ahem) map, ranging from awe to frustration. I'll go through the stories in Jewel Box and make a note or two about each, but of the collection as a whole, I'll say that if you found that story too obtuse or obscure in its aims, you might not love this book as much as I did. There is metaphor, allegory fairly abounds, and there are folk- and fairy tales that are not just saying one thing; there are openly political stories and bits of satire with sharp teeth, and the majority of it could probably be described as some degree of esoteric. The stories aren't pretentious, but they are most of them evocative and complex. The bunch taken as a whole feel more like a collection of fairy tales than anything else, but that isn't *quite* right... but I think it's true enough to say that the events in these stories, even when they do not occur within fairy tales themselves, still occur with an awareness of the forms and rules of fairy tales.

The Pilgrim and the Angel - the first two pieces in this collection struck me as appetizers; they whetted the appetite but didn't satisfy, and both this and the next story felt like *lovely* morsels of ideas but felt unfinished.
The Lamp at the Turning - a street lamp in love with a man; see above
The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees
The Lion God and the Two Gates - this is a twist on a "Judgment of Solomon"/wise judge type folktale
Music for the Underworld - Really, really neat Orpheus retelling.
Green Glass: A Love Story - Strange and unsettling (effectively so!), but heavy-handed. "Let them eat cake" but with lunar dust and ice cream. This was, for me, the weakest story in the bunch.
Ilse, Who Saw Clearly - I *loved* this one and remembered the details even after a month-long hiatus from reading. This is the most straightforwardly fairy tale-ish one of the bunch: story of a traveling peddler visiting a village whose wares are not exactly as advertised and the girl who sets out to find the peddler and finds herself in the process.
The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi - Near-future story of video games and Doers and Don'ts
The Wretched and the Beautiful - Chilling and excellent story of first contact
The Urashima Effect - Partners separated by space and relativistic effects who've made recordings to keep each other company in the deep dark. This one got me solidly in the feels.
Braid of Days and Wake of Nights - Wrecked. Loved this so much; gorgeous, powerful use of language and heartrending.
Local Stop on the Floating Train - Dark. Very good. Difficult to read, as intended.
The Witch of Orion Waste and the Boy Knight - fairy tale, of sorts. Excellent.
The Eve of the Planet Ys - Apocalyptic. I love this story.
Courtship Displays of the American Birder - Clean, crisp birder love story; big detour in tone! I liked it very much.
The No-One Girl and the Flower of the Farther Shore - This was a sneaky one. I very much enjoyed it but I could not confidently say what sort of a thing it is.
The Time Invariance of Snow - There was a lot in this collection that put me in mind of Cat Valente, but this one takes the cake on that front. Gender and self-worth and fairy tales and physics and sort-of theology... this definitely went over my head and I loved it.
Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire - The Emperor's New Clothes turned upside-down and toothy. Loved it and it made me laugh out loud.
The Cat's Tale - a take on the White Cat that I really liked
The Valley of Wounded Deer - Love this! Solid 4.5/5, easy
The View from the Top of the Stair - Beautiful and STRANGE and a little melancholy. Wonderfully evocative.
Small Monsters - A story of nature, red in tooth and claw, but also cycles of abuse and art criticism. Naturally.

"The world is stranger than I thought. It always is."

JEWEL BOX by E. Lily Yu is a fantastic short story collection that has both the whimsical, age-old quality of the fabular and the trenchant perceptiveness of a book very much written for our times. In these twenty-two stories, Yu uses allegory and folk tale to reveal aspects of our own society that we’ve been habituated to accept, but which, when presented with Yu’s imagination, jolt us awake with new recognition and empathy.

Reminiscent of the wonderment that Ted Chiang creates in his stories, each of the narratives in JEWEL BOX unfolds an origami orb of a creative world that both delights and convicts its readers. There’s a profound morality to these tales, the kind that compels us to consider our responsibility towards our fellow humans. Yu’s prose is sparkling and nimble, as comfortable inhabiting Cairo, Nairobi, and NYC as it is exploring fairy-tale Germany, outer space, or the birding fields of Louisiana.

I thoroughly enjoyed all of the stories, but loved these with all my heart:

⋆ “The Lion God and the Two Gates,” in which a judge who prides himself on his supposed neutrality is confronted by a difficult choice in the afterlife

⋆ “Music for the Underworld,” a dystopian look into an authoritarian state, the prison-industrial complex, and artificial intelligence

⋆ “The Wretched and the Beautiful,” which imagines how the world would handle alien refugees from outer space

⋆ “The Time Invariance of Snow,” which plays with fairy tale tropes and physics to explore good and evil

⋆ “Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire,” a retelling of The Emperor’s New Clothes with a fantastic ending

⋆ “Small Monsters,” a moving tale of old wounds, friendship, and the creative impulse

JEWEL BOX speaks to both the head and the heart with the vividness that short stories need to make a lasting impact, and it’s in the running for my favorite collection of the year. This is also a plug for Yu’s ON FRAGILE WAVES, a top 10 read of 2022 for me. Thank you Erewhon Books for the gifted copy and to NetGalley for the e-book.

I recommend E. Lily Yu’s novel, On Fragile Waves, to everyone. Yu is such an exciting writer, and Jewel Box, her first short story collection, further displays just how versatile she is.

Here are my highlights:

The opening story, The Pilgrim and the Angel, is very sweet. A man is visited by an angel. The angel offers to take him to Mecca, but he would rather go to Florida to visit his son instead.

The Lamp at the Turning is the most devastating story I’ve ever read about a streetlight, who pays very close attention to those who pass by.

Green Glass: A Love Story features wedding planning in a dying world, in which our protagonist expels a ridiculous amount of money and effort for vanilla ice cream.

Ilse, Who Saw Clearly is a very special, magical story. When a man comes to a village selling his wares, the inhabitants are tricked by a rogue homophone, and pay a hefty price.

The Wretched and The Beautiful hits pretty hard. Aliens come to earth, but are quickly shunned, as refugees and asylum seekers often are. Similarly with Local Stop on the Floating Train, where a young woman experiences a racist attack that is all too familiar.

As an amateur ornithologist, I absolutely loved Courtship Displays of the American Birder, where a man feels intimidated by his crush’s life list.

The collection closes out with Little Monsters, which first appeared on Tor.com, and I loved revisiting this world. A monster gets eaten by those meant to protect him, because he's tasty. Luckily, he meets a friend who provides him armor.

Jewel Box is a wonderful mix of fables, sci-fi, horror, and love stories. I urge fans of Kelly Link to check out Yu’s work; she really is something special.

E. Lily Yu presents to us this jewel box: a close-to-perfect collection of twenty-two (such riches!) stories. Yu’s writing is magical, and the execution of all of these wildly varying ideas is perfect. From a flying prayer mat, to the musician who retrieves his beloved from a hellish place (but perhaps hell is everywhere), on the Apocalypse through the lives of the New York rich, a magician and maker of eyes, aliens (the refugee kind), unicorns, a space traveller, a knight and a witch, and so much more, the worlds Yu builds are enchanted and enchanting.

Some among my favourite stories: The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees, about conceited, coloniser, and yes, cartographer wasps, vs humble bees. (Did you know that bees dance directions?) The Lion God and the Two Gates, about a judge who maybe isn’t is fair as he likes to think, and the perfect justice he meets. The Wretched and the Beautiful, about those refugee/aliens. The Witch of Orion Waste and the Boy Knight, an on-the-nose and feminist fable. The Courtship Displays of the American Birder, which I found delightful as a budding birder myself. The Time Invariance of Snow, for its structure and truth. The Cat’s Tale, because it’s also a feminist fable. The View From the Top of the Stair, which is so melancholy and moving and quirky and sad, and because I know humans who collect things, and this made me think about why. And Small Monsters, a complete triumph, the perfect, perfect story, and the perfect way to end the book.

I cannot recommend this collection enough. E. Lily Yu’s stories are the kind you want to cite and to re-read over and over again. They recapture the magic of fairytales for humans who have theoretically outgrown them. Like the best fables, they capture and teach eternal truths in simple, accessible, and memorable ways. But most of all, these stories are huge fun, and I loved them! I suspect you might, too.

Thank you very much to Erewhon and to NetGalley for access.

i really loved the simplicity and magical realism of these stories. they really touched me, and were easy to follow and get through

An aptly named collection, reading Yu’s stories feels like discovering a rare gem. These magical tales remind me most of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales– bizarre, beautiful, and heartbreaking. Only Yu’s clear and piercing prose could use four perfect pages to turn a lamppost into a character I’ll never forget. I included this title in my fall reading guide.

Some stories are really, really good, such as "The Lamp at the Turning", "Green Glass: A Love Story" (which has all the elements to be turned into a novel, TBH), and "Ilse, Who Saw Clearly", to name a few, but the rest are just meh and didn't capture my attention at all.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the eARC.

This was an imaginative and creative collection of short stories but I found most of the stories to be too short to develop any connection with and they ended too abruptly. I look forward to reading more from this author in future, though, as I enjoyed the writing style.

Absolutely enchanting writing style and a book that will be treasured by more than one generation to come. This is the sort of collection of short stories that can be a really well placed staple to everyone's library and it will be added to mine as soon as I get a chance to snag a copy for myself. I'm gonna be honest I've only read the first 3 stories but its a 5 star prediction and it is top tier and gives shadow of the wind vibes, for me.

Whimsical and intriguing, the premise for many of theses short stories really drew me in. In the same way, I really like the playful and evocative nature of the writing by the author. In many ways I was reminded of Helen Oyeymi's work. However, on the whole, I felt something was missing from the stories - maybe they were too short to convey a sense of meaning or purpose. I will be interested in checking out more works from this author in the future.

Interesting stories. An overall fascinating read, but didn't quite hit the mark for me. I still enjoyed it though.

Like all short story collections, there were some I loved, some I liked, and some that were just okay. But to be honest, there wasn't a single story I disliked here. I've never read this author before but I'm so glad I got a chance to. There was a great mix of sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and fable type stories. What I really liked and don't see much is that these stories were ACTUALLY short. My favourites were hard to pick but I'll have to go with Music For The Underworld, The Wretched and The Beautiful, and Small Monsters.

This was definitely the most consistently great collection of stories I've read. I'd highly recommend it.

A strange and wonderful collection of tales. Some dystopian and some very unsettling. I dipped in and out of this book when time allowed, inbetween full novels. It made a nice change.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley and Erewhon publishing for my free and unbiased review. My thanks to them for the opportunity.

What a delightful, beautiful collection of short fiction! Yu’s writing evokes that of ancient fairy tales, each narrative drawing the reader in as though one is listening by the fireside. From a heartbreaking love story between a street lamp and a young man that takes a posthumanist twist, to a story about overlord hornets and revolutionary bees, Yu surprises, critiques, and satirizes at each turn. This collection is one of the best short story collections I have had the pleasure to read in recent years.

“The Doing and the Undoing of Jacob Mwangi” recalled Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron,” while “Green Glass: A Love Story” wraps commentary on climate change and late stage capitalism in a cloak of white wealthy privilege at a wedding where ice cream is the goal. Following these, Yu imagines an alien encounter in which humans and their governments are no more welcoming and empathetic to visitors from another world than they currently are to refugees and immigrants. Really, from story to story, Yu’s work is a stunning, refreshing treat, Jewel Box, indeed.