A marvelously varied and heart-tugging collection of tales.
A volume of short stories focuses on SF and fantasy.
In these 16 tales, Allen takes readers across a wide spectrum of speculative content, from distant planets and alien cultures to the strange byways of ordinary life on Earth. The stories can offer elaborate allegories, as in the title tale, which presents the human heart as a towering keep whose floors are arranged by ascending emotional states, from “Despair” to “Ecstasy.” A lonely Master inhabits that keep, attended by servants who worship him but worry when he descends to the lower depths. In the brief “About the Story” afterword that attends every tale, the author reveals: “I have a very minor heart condition. Confirming its nature required a day wearing a heart monitor, which naturally had me thinking about the heart and its chambers.” This kind of clarification, a dramatic misstep, dogs every story; after “Blush,” for instance, readers are told: “I’ve never been a fan of cosmetics. Most of them have historically been tested on animals, and most people I know look better as their natural self.” The evocative “Some Sun and Delilah” is followed by a note mentioning that it was partially inspired by a trip Allen took to the Seychelles (“Sadly, the vegetarian food wasn’t as good as in the story. And I don’t recall the coco de mer having any effect. But the snorkeling was beautiful”).
Throughout this collection, Allen adroitly employs a combination of whimsy and wide-ranging imagination, filling his tales with both bite and heart. The rhetorical register he uses fits these stories squarely into the literary lineage of James Tiptree and Algis Budrys, the territory where mythmaking and SF intersect. The SF worldbuilding in “Building on Sand,” for instance, is well conceived but wisely kept entirely subordinate to the more resonant emotional drama playing out in the tale’s foreground, the touching story of a man named Penho. For years, Penho served in the Sand Guards while dreaming of returning home to his beloved Anoush and living a joyful life: “They would expand the gardens, and he would clear out that area behind the workshop and make it into a lawn where he and his workers would play with his dogs in the mist of Anoush’s new-built fountain.” In sure, deceptively economical steps, Allen portrays a man who decides to abandon his dreams in favor of a new family he never expected to have. The author uses the same technique in the excellent tale “Minstrel Boy Howling at the Moon,” in which a young Oklahoma man named Rafe seems able to summon Native American magic with his harmonica, which makes him dream of great musical success: “His mind was full of cities and billboards and marquees, of crowds and swank hotel rooms and high floors where you could see humanity spread out below you like a map of the future.” Often these narrative strengths combine in remarkably effective stories, including the volume’s most touching entry, “Fetch,” about a doomed cosmonaut hurtling toward the solar system’s far reaches. He draws comfort from his computer simulation of Laika, the dog launched into the cosmos by the Soviet space program in 1957. “The cruelty of Laika’s death has haunted me since I was a child,” Allen predictably chimes in.
A marvelously varied and heart-tugging collection of tales.Pub Date: April 16, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-64076-520-7
Page Count: 254
Publisher: Plant Based Press
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.
In 16th-century Madrid, a crypto-Jew with a talent for casting spells tries to steer clear of the Inquisition.
Luzia Cotado, a scullion and an orphan, has secrets to keep: “It was a game she and her mother had played, saying one thing and thinking another, the bits and pieces of Hebrew handed down like chipped plates.” Also handed down are “refranes”—proverbs—in “not quite Spanish, just as Luzia was not quite Spanish.” When Luzia sings the refranes, they take on power. “Aboltar cazal, aboltar mazal” (“A change of scene, a change of fortune”) can mend a torn gown or turn burnt bread into a perfect loaf; “Quien no risica, no rosica” (“Whoever doesn’t laugh, doesn’t bloom”) can summon a riot of foliage in the depths of winter. The Inquisition hangs over the story like Chekhov’s famous gun on the wall. When Luzia’s employer catches her using magic, the ambitions of both mistress and servant catapult her into fame and danger. A new, even more ambitious patron instructs his supernatural servant, Guillén Santángel, to train Luzia for a magical contest. Santángel, not Luzia, is the familiar of the title; he has been tricked into trading his freedom and luck to his master’s family in exchange for something he no longer craves but can’t give up. The novel comes up against an issue common in fantasy fiction: Why don’t the characters just use their magic to solve all their problems? Bardugo has clearly given it some thought, but her solutions aren’t quite convincing, especially toward the end of the book. These small faults would be harder to forgive if she weren’t such a beautiful writer. Part fairy tale, part political thriller, part romance, the novel unfolds like a winter tree bursting into unnatural bloom in response to one of Luzia’s refranes, as she and Santángel learn about power, trust, betrayal, and love.
Lush, gorgeous, precise language and propulsive plotting sweep readers into a story as intelligent as it is atmospheric.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781250884251
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.
On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.
Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.
Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.Pub Date: May 2, 2023
ISBN: 9781649374042
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Red Tower
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024
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