Short Stories: Best New Romantic Fantasy ed. by Paula Guran

     Most tales in Best New Romantic Fantasy are NOT typical Hallmark happily-ever-afters, but delightfully unconventional takes on “romance.”
     One standout is “The Desires of Houses” by Haddayr Copley-Woods, featuring a house’s infatuation with its female occupant.  An excerpt: 
     "The floor is sulking.  She almost always wears shoes in the basement, and the cement lies all day in agony listening to the first floor’s boards sighing loudly in ecstasy at the touch of her bare heels."
     The woman, oblivious to the house’s adoration, lies in bed after her shower feeling “flabby, flat-chested, gray, and wrinkled.” 
​     Above her,  the ceiling fan thinks, "If she was mine, oh how I would waltz with her.  Around and around and around."

     Sarah Monette’s offering, “A Light in Troy” is a tender story of a Trojan woman living as a slave, the elderly and blind librarian she serves, and a wild boy living among dogs.  The narrative explores surviving colonialism and the price everyone pays in war and its aftermath.

     Another compelling read was “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge” by Richard Parks.  It’s beautifully layered with equal parts lyrical beauty, cryptic poetry, and political intrigue.  
     Much of the narrative involves a disgraced courtier called back to the imperial city to help solve a mystery. He fears his strong feelings for the princess who enlists his aid to help protect her reputation and that of her son, the heir designate. 
     The closing sentence completely changes all that came before, making it a masterful example of a plot twist.  This is a story worth rereading.

     “Jane. A Story of Manners, Magic, and Romance” by Sarah Prineas is a fun tale about an aristocratic woman uninterested in the young warlocks pursuing her and a young academic sent to solve the riddle of the magical storms plaguing her uncle’s estate. It manages to be true to its setting in the 1800s, reveal a realistic romance, and provide a fresh take on women’s roles.

     Another story that captured my imagination was “The Depth Oracle” by Sonia Taaffe.  The author's prose weaves a mesmerizing spell and the tale deftly jumps forward and back in time between a narrator visiting a sea witch and the witch consulting a drowned man (the depth oracle of the title).
     We also learn how the drowned man became the oracle in a truly chilling scene equal parts horrifying and tragic.
     The narrative is a complex and multilayered exploration of the nature of love and ambition.  

     M. Rickert spins a compelling yarn in “Journey into the Kingdom.”  A man reads an artist’s statement about her paintings and becomes obsessed with ghosts.
     We don’t know until the very end if he’s crazy or inspired.

“The Wizard of Eternal Watch” by Eugie Foster had a great opening hook: 
     "Within the castle at the end of the world, the wards and enchantments stirred, rousing themselves like heavy beasts emerging from a long winter’s sleep.  They stretched and glanced about, triggered to alertness by the necessity of waking the next Wizard of Eternal Watch."
     The story is about a wizard and her fellow keeper who harness the power of gods and demons by imprisoning them inside elaborate layered illusions. The nature of illusion itself comes into questions.

     The other stories rounding out the anthology are all solid fantasy tales: the heart of a lonely woman consumed by work is rescued by an out-of-season butterfly; a witch gets an invitation from a charismatic magician to rejoin the circus and hunt demons; a young man falls in love with a forest fairy; an American runs afoul of ancient Japanese tradition and marries a ghost; a young wife is seduced by a handsome stranger who might be imaginary; a dutiful daughter marries to escape her abusive father and finds unexpected love; and a prostitute pursues love in war-torn Paris.
    Thank you to my local library for carrying Best New Romantic Fantasy.

Reviews of other speculative fiction anthologies: Even Greater Mistakes,  The Best of World SF,  short stories by Ken Liu,  Pump Six,  Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, and Mythic Journeys

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