mostly harmless books

I’m sorry to start like this, but I’ve hated this cover since the first moment I saw it. The original is a digital painting and for a non-artist like me it’s amazing a man can paint something so realistic. Unfortunately, on the cover it just looks like a bad “let’s make a goth chick” photoshop, and the fact that it’s printed on silvery glossy paper makes it even worse.

But, seeing as the editors are Ellen Datlow (’nuff said) and Kelly Link (one of my favorite short story writers) [sorry, didn't know anything in particular about Gavin Grant] and the names inside include some very very interesting authors, plus I knew the translator… I went ahead and ordered it. And I haven’t regretted one moment.

This particular book is actually the first half of the Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 19th Edition, 2006, so it doesn’t include some of the things I was looking forward to, such as Charles de Lint’s essay. Alas, I hope the 2nd volume is out soon. On with the show… after an apology: poetry is not my thing (at all. really.) so I won’t mention the poems. I’ve only read one of them, anyway, and didn’t get it.

Delia Sherman - Walpurgis Afternoon. Unlikely as it may sound, it’s a story about gardening and witches. Lesbian witches even. Who can make a house appear out of nowhere. How can this combination work? Brilliantly. I examined the new neighbours alongside Evie and everything looked so natural… even the supernatural events. Maybe it’s because life in the suburbs is a bit of a fictional thing for me, since I’ve never really seen a suburb like in the movies - front lawn and garage and little white houses. We don’t really have suburbs; all the nice neighbourhoods have big walls dividing the gardens and no one gives pies to the newcomers.

Deborah Roggie - The Mushroom Duchess. So far it’s the most fairy-tale like. The Duchess would fit right in if she landed in the middle of Cinderella or Snow White. She just uses different means… But unlike the ladies of said fairy tale, her daughter in law manages to solve things on her own and get a very nice revengs.

Marly Youmans - An Incident at Agate Beach. I loved this story and I feel bad because, as usual, I don’t know how to express it eloquently. Once again, the odd events seem natural when seen through the eyes of a character. For some reason, it reminded me of a Zelazny story about the sea - The Horses of Lir, maybe? The people of the sea make an appearance, and it’s fascinating to guess about what the “rules” are and what they really want. At time innocences seems menacing, at others it’s just a sense of otherworldliness. And the end… I want to see it as a new beginning.

Reggie Oliver - Among the Tombs. I haven’t yet found a story in this volume that I didn’t like, but this is one of those that didn’t blow me away. One, the story-in-a-frame thing… didn’t work for me. Why not just tell the story straight? And the story itself was pretty predictable, although possesion (the demonic type) is an interesting subject.

Glen Hirshberg - American Morons. If the first stories were fantasy, this one’s horror. It reads like an episode of those detective documentaries on Discovery, tracing the steps of a murderer until the scene of the crime… And yet, nothing really happens. But the thought of what could have happened is chilling. It will probably convince anyone not to go to a foreign country without knowing what their 911 is.

Mark Samuels - Shallaballah. This is one of those stories you need to read again and again until you get it. And since I only read it once… I didn’t. It’s a shady uber-expensive plastic surgery “clinic” in which bad things happen, but what exactly the bad things are… haven’t figured it out yet. What makes me like this story is that, the moment I finished it, I wanted to start again. The clues are out there…

Bruce Sterling - The Denial. Like Pat Cadigan before him, Sterling’s name says “cyberpunk” to me, and that’s one of my least favorite types of spec fic. However (again) this doesn’t have one bit of technology or Japan or Yakuza. It’s got muslims and a flood and dead people who don’t understand they’re dead. Only you only get to see both sides of the story at the very end, when you go “whoa”. But life goes on as usual in a small village…

Barbara Roden - Northwest Passage. Horror story, pure and simple. The kind of story that made me happy I was reading it while at my boyfriend’s, since I wouldn’t want to be alone in the empty house afterwards. Sometimes not seeing the monster is worse than seeing it… Oh yes.

So far, so good. So brilliant, actually. One one story that didn’t impress me (much!). I’d say it was money well spent if I hadn’t gotten it as a prize. Thoughts on the other stories will follow - as soon as I read them, that is.

Finally, since I want more and more books as prizes, the linkage part.
www.nemira.ro is going to give me a book as part of the contest Scrie ca sa primesti… o carte. Even though they might actually be giving a book to my boyfriend, since they’ve been publishing a lot of hard SF lately, which I don’t like but he does.

[Part 2 here.]

You might also be interested in:

• Same cover, more stories
• The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy - part 2
• The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy