Short Story Catch Up 1

It's December and I have a backlog of stories (and poems) I've read and wanted to review. So here's ten to get us started:

1. Conspiracy Of The Hair-Shaped Cardamom Bun by P S Anali in Tasavvur

The Emperor has five advisors, one for each sense. Bunty is the child of the Master Of Taste. The Master Of Taste tries every meal before the Emperor. The Master Of Taste got their position by creating a sugar-palm treacle.

Bunty has a craving for the hair-shaped cardamom buns, fried sweet buns with a top knot. But the buns also disgust him. And he does not know why. He goes to Mistress Ayt, the Mistress of Hearing, who keeps secrets, to try and find out.

She unlocks his memories and there is a darkness at the heart of Empire and his family.

Read This: For dark secrets and sweet, sweet food
Don’t Read This: For all the exotic and sensual imagery there’s a banal evil at work

2. The True Name Of The Sharp-Toothed God by K T Bryski in Cossmass

Milo is a crewman on a ship sailing north. On board is an archivist, Lucius. He has a job to do. Somewhere out there someone knows the true name of the sharp-toothed god. And if you speak the name the sharp-toothed god might come.

That knowledge must be destroyed. No matter the cost.

The cost might be too high, and what then is worship of the sharp-toothed god worth?

Read This: To learn the true meaning of the Sharp-Toothed God
Don’t Read This: Too cold, too grim, too dark

3. Shipshewena by D S Levy in Reed

Joanie and Hank go to the Shipshewena flea market. They’re hoping for a bargain to sell on at a profit. They find a chair, apparently made of cat hair, with a red glove sewn into the backrest. The woman selling it says it curses anyone who sits in it.

The price is right and the story is good so they buy it. The chair smells so they put it in the spare bedroom to air off.

Then one day Hank sits in it.

Read This: For a brief, weird look into a couple and their mercenary attitude to antiques
Don’t Read This: Ambiguous curses, legends and lies are not for you

4. Barefoot Ella by Amy Marques in Corvid Queen

Ella is a motherless girl who learns plantlore from the gardener and animallore from the horse master. And her father teaches her that learning is better than knowing.

When her father remarries her step-mother changes all the servants. And when her father dies she finds herself serving her step-mother and step-sisters. One day they hear of a stranger from another country, a famous bard who has come, perhaps, to look for a bride.

Ella’s slippers don’t fit, and she prefers the country. So perhaps she won’t go to the ball.

Read This: For a very different version of a familiar story
Don’t Read This: You prefer it when things end happily ever after

5. Twenty Amazing Facts About Sharks by Alex Miller in The Lit Nerds

Dad is taking Cole and Miranda on holiday to Florida. Dad is his usual self, in the fast lane, 5 mph under the speed limit. Seeing everything with enthusiasm. Cole has lots of facts about sharks. Miranda is a teenager and unimpressed by anything.

In Waffle House somehow they are not cool enough for it. Despite Waffle House being the only place that Dad is not intimidated by. But then Miranda tells Cody that he can drink as much as he wants. Waffle House has free refills.

There’s no Mum and Miranda didn’t want to come, her Dad’s embarrassing and her brother’s annoying but maybe the trip won’t be a waste.

Read This: For a closely observed look at a family whose revelation stays just this side of over-dramatic sentimentality
Don’t Read This: It’s just a trip down to Florida

6. The Recipe by Bethany Paul in Tough

Hank is a detective. He’s called to a scene where there’s been a murder. The body is standing in ballet shoes, a white leotard and a pink tutu, in fourth position*. The body is covered in some kind of resin, that you can see through, but is strong enough to hold it up.

Hank is a good detective. He knows the tape around the crime scene goes where it’s convenient, where there are posts and walls and trees, not where the crime occurred. And when more bodies are found he finds the link.

Read This: For a dark story of revenge, detection and poetic justice
Don’t Read This: If the idea of a posed body, or what someone might have done to deserve it, is too much

* I had to look this up. Hank doesn’t; his daughter did ballet for 3 years before giving it up.

7. Doewife by Elou Carroll in Corvid Queen

Roe has an arrow in her chest. It goes right through her heart. Her husband tells her not to remove it.

He found her in the forest and the live there now. Her husband is the huntsman, though Roe does not like the feel of meat. And one day Roe meets a stag, haloed in gold, holly berries around his antlers. The king of the woods, she knows. Somehow.

Read This: A haunting visit into the heart of a bloody fairytale
Don’t Read This: An arrow through the heart is never a good thing

 8. Necromancer In Anthropocene by Terry Trowbridge in Roi Fainéant

The necromancer on the mountain is tired of environmental damage. The necromancer finds bones on the mountain. The necromancer finds discarded parts of cars and railroads and building equipment.

People see the necromancer but they cannot see what they will do.

Read This: A poem about magic and hidden consequences
Don’t Read This: Bones and metal don’t mix

9. The God Of Minor Troubles by Megan Chee in Strange Horizons

On the first dawn the Immortal Emperor hands out the mandates of duty to his children. Dǔníng, the Forty-Fourth Son of Heaven, is late. He’s given the role of God Of Minor Troubles.

This goes as might be expected until one day a martial artist complains she cannot sleep. A minor trouble. But she needs her sleep because she goes to fight bandits who have seized a village. Perhaps she needs divine intervention. But what she gets is the god of minor troubles.

Read This: For how solving minor troubles – or inflicting them – can be what’s needed
Don’t Read This: An arch, mannered, silly cosmic order

10. The Ocean Remembers The Wave by L Chan in Strange Horizons

Huizhong is travelling through space, looking for the bones left behind by his beloved. They left them behind as they travelled, filled with the nanomachinery of the Emperor’s Chosen, and people implanted them as augments. Huizhong challenges them, with sword or song, to take them back.

He seeks lost fleets and his lost beloved. The journey will take him through the history of the empire, and rebellion and secrets that are less secret as not spoken of.

Read This: For some Imperial Chinese space fantasy of romance, poetry and swordplay
Don’t Read This: You’d rather learn about actual history than this myth/sci-fi mash-up