Stories Review Catch Up 3

Still more story reviews from my backlog.

1. Adella And The Concrete Garden by Jessica Lynne Furtado

Adella is in her garden, which is concrete and has many ornamental grasses. She had the pool drained, because she doesn’t like water and she asked the pool guy to dinner but they didn’t get on so she cut a small hole in his trouser pocket from which he will lose small but important things.

Adella lurks on the margins of being a mythical figure, but she’d also grounded in reality.

Read This: For a moment in the concrete garden where Adella slips between regular life and a fabulist world
Don’t Read This: If you want to know more about the garden or Adella or anything.

2. The Twelve Step Guide To Getting Married Without A Partner by Karen Gozalez-Videla

“Ensure you live at least 1,000 miles away from that aunt who calls you every other hour to ask if you’ve finally found a man who glues you to his body at night like a glob of lotion.”

The guide, of course, only works if your family believe you will be seeking to get married.

“Set Tuesday aside to browse through wedding invitation templates on Minted.com. Find one that doesn’t require an image of you and Thomas holding hands by a dock as seagulls harmonize above the water.”

The guide, being very specific, will help you avoid the most difficult pitfalls.

“Slip into the A-line cut dress with laces and padding and sunflowers and vines your aunt mailed as a gift for finding the man who will efface your last name with the effortlessness of a Staedtler Mars Plastic eraser on a Walmart-pencil mark.”

In the end, the guide can only tell you what you already know.

Read This: For a look into the process and beliefs of getting married from inside out, as it revolves around the missing piece
Don’t Read This: If you intend getting married with a partner

3. No One Holds A Grudge Like A Crow by Marisa Crane

The narrator fostered a cattle dog for a month, and it barked at the crows every time it went outside. The crows didn’t like it. The crows don’t forget.

The narrator mailed their lover away three years ago. It took them a week. They put the return address on their chest, but they haven’t come back and the mailman got a new job so he didn’t have to disappoint them.

Read This: For a glimpse into the world that has stopped
Don’t Read This: if you want a story that actually starts, stops or tells you what’s going on

4. The Ransom Of Miss Coraline Connelly by Alix E Harrow

This epistolary story consists of letters from Queen Jaraf the third, Empress of the Dark Realms to the parent of Miss Coraline Connelly. Queen Jaraf has a plan, but when it makes contact with the real world it will turn upside down and inside out.

Read This: For a cheering and heartwarming story about [checks notes] evil witches kidnapping children
Don’t Read This: If the mere unexpected and novel merging of two somewhat clichéd stories into a modern conclusion is not enough for you

5. Prized Possessions by Ellen Huang

Aiden’s mother throws away his toys, because they are girls’ toys. She destroys his picture of a fairy because she thinks it makes him effeminate. Then everyone thinks he’s singing, but he thinks it’s the bird, as he can’t see it.

He, or the bird, are singing truths about their family that are hidden. 

Read This: For a story about transformation and magic and gender
Don’t Read This: If you want to know exactly what Aiden is transforming into and why

6. Your Version Of Beauty Does Not Define Me by Iona Winter

The narrator has never liked the classic standards of beauty, preferring beauty that come from within. Specifically, menstruation as a symbol of it.

Read This: For a brief, cutting look at being a woman and things that are often left unsaid
Don’t Read This: If the blood puts you off

7. The Hydraulic Emperor by Arkaday Martine

The Hydraulic Emperor is an immersive film that is nine minutes and twenty seven seconds long, almost all of which is missing. The creator, also missing, incorporated a small amount in a later work.

The Qath are aliens who offer puzzle boxes for sacrifices in cruel auctions. This is probably some kind of experiment on humans.

Averill is the former lover of the narrator and they are both at the auction. To win the box they will have to give up something they value. The Qath read minds and cannot be cheated. 

Read This: For a free-wheeling rollercoaster of ideas nailed down by obsession and cruelty
Don’t Read This: If you want actual, real answers about any of the issues raised, other than those of the central characters motivations

8. Black Bird’s Song by Tameha Sengupta

At the age of ten a chadar comes and wraps Nihsi. It tells her what she can and cannot do as a woman. One thing she has to do is walk to the lake to bring back water to the village. The water only goes where the black bird sings and it does not sing in the village.

One day Nihsi does some things her chadar doesn’t want her to do, and then she sings the black bird’s song.

Read This: For some sparkling descriptions of village life
Don’t Read This: If you want your metaphors to be subtle at all

9. Jackalope Wives by Ursula Vernon

A modern fairytale, or perhaps a fantasy story deeply infused by fairytales, and then transported into the deserts of the American West and then made over with local legends. Both native and white folk traditions, and, perhaps, having something to say about the admixture.

It’s also hauntingly beautiful, sharp and has something to say about pain and choices and costs and also how children can make the same mistakes, but worse.

Read This: For a new/old masterful telling of a story
Don’t Read This: If weird transformations and coercion are not for you

10. Away With The Wolves by Sarah Gailey

Suss is a werewolf, and every now and then spends time away. When she comes back she has to pay for any damage, and that’s going to take a lot of work. As it turns out damage includes to her knees and joints.

But the last time she went away Nan Grissom’s billy goat was killed. So she might be losing control. And what can she do then?

Read This: For a classic were-wolf tale but from a sympathetic angle; not tragedy but something to be dealt with
Don’t Read This: If you want some full wolf action