Short Stories: Mythic Journeys ed. by Paula Guran

      A sweeping variety of stories fill the pages of Mythic Journeys drawn from many different cultures and told in a wide range of styles.  There are Coyote tricksters, re-imaginings of African, Asian, Celtic, and Greek myth, and stories drawn from less established sources.  Many of the authors are widely published titans in the speculative fiction field, and though I didn’t resonate with every story, I did enjoy the anthology as a whole.
      “Chivalry” by Neil Gaiman is a fun story of a woman who discovers the Holy Grail at a thrift store.  A Galahad character comes to claim the cup, but the narrator likes it on her mantel and refuses to part with it.  At the end of the story, she finds a magic lamp in the thrift store . . .

      “White Lines on a Green Field” by Catherine M.  Valente is a Trickster story where Coyote appears as a football star and Homecoming king.  He embodies that star role and then some, getting pregnant with most of the girls, and taking a losing football team to the state championship, casting a collective enchantment over the entire high school.  Because it’s a trickster story, chaos reigns and once Coyote departs consequences come calling.  (For a deeper dive into coyote, read Tricksters).

      Brooke Bolander’s “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” is a delicious tale told from a winged harpy’s point of view.  I love that the narrator refuses to give into the objectification so common in hero stories and remains grounded in her power throughout the short tale.  She says: “This is my story, not his.  It belongs to me and is mine alone.”
​     Tanith Lee weaves a tale of Medusa told by a curious man who journeys to find her on an isolated island in “The Gorgon.”  The narrator is half in love with her but realizes only later:  “She despised me.  She despised all of us who live without her odds, who struggle with our small struggles, incomparable to hers.”

      “Merlin Dreams in the Mondream Wood” by Charles de Lint is the Merlin myth told as a tale of a childhood imaginary friend.  The enduring nature of love and friendship reside in the story’s quiet heart.  The tale moves back and forth in time, with the narrator in the present unable to fully remember her past until the story’s conclusion.

      “How to Survive an Epic Journey” by Tansy Rayner Roberts is a fabulous retelling of Atalanta, the Greek heroine who could outrun any man and joined the Argonauts.  Some favorite lines:

• “We all know men like Jason. He was tall and muscled and golden: it was easy to believe he was favored of the gods.”
• “We hoped to do great deeds, and be remembered as  . . . Heroes. Instead we ended up as supporting characters in Jason’s tragic romance with himself.”
• “I did not care a wet fart about the Golden Fleece.”
• “There was nothing humble about our Jason: he was all piss and arrogance. Every step he took was in the expectation of an embroidered carpet sliding beneath his foot.”
• “She was smart, Medea, but young, and she crumbled beneath the golden boy’s charm.”
• “Corinth . . . had need of a new king, as long as he did not mind setting Medea aside to marry a nubile young princess. Jason, you will be shocked to learn, did not mind that in the least.”

      Ken Liu’s “The Ten Suns” is a science fiction story told as a fable.  It’s also climate fiction, imagining a world burning up from too much sunlight.  “The world was never without light from one or more of the ten suns.  Lightless places, where the sun could not shine, existed only in caves deep under water, in snake nests hidden underground, in stone houses where murderers and witches were left to die in darkness.”

      Rachel Pollack’s “Immortal Snake,” is a layered tale reminiscent of the thousand and one tales of Scheherazade nested inside a story of the sacrificial sacred king, which is nested inside a story of empire-building. 
      The sacrificial king is given every indulgence:  “There were carpets woven from the wings of butterflies.  There were bottles of wine sprinkled with the tears of old women remembering the kiss of the first person who’d ever loved them.”   
​      The storyteller is also magical.  When he speaks: “his voice soft yet somehow touching every ear.  Like perfumed smoke.”

      “Give Her Honey when You Hear Her Scream” by Maria Dahvana Headley tells the story of the Minotaur in the labyrinth, sort of.  It’s also a tale of star-crossed lovers, of cuckolded lovers, of revenge, and of true love.  There’s a magician who pulls rabbits out of his wife’s mouth and a witch who is bereft when her man falls in love with another.  Things get interesting with the magician and the witch team up.

      I love Sonya Taaffe’s writing, though “A Wolf in Iceland is the Child of a Lie” was hard to follow.  I think it’s a tale of the wolf god Fenrir who is destined to bring about the end of the world. 
      Her language is poetic as always:  “I had to snap out the lights, draw the dormer curtains before he would unfasten his jeans, pull over his head the dark fisherman’s jersey that left his hair hackled up like winter, boyish against his bunched shoulders . . ."
" . . .in the tousling wind that shears clouds up against the mountains.”

      Elizabeth Hand’s “Calypso in Berlin” imagines the Greek goddess Calypso as a bohemian artist with a long history of male lovers who leave her.  In this story she weaves an enchantment that transforms her lover and her art.  It’s a haunting story of magic, love, and betrayal—and the lengths artists go for art.
      If you enjoy mythic fantasy (and science fiction), Mythic Journeys has much to satisfy.

For more reviews of great short story anthologies read:
Even Greater Mistakes, The Best of World SFF,  The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories,  Pump Six,  The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, and Best New Romantic Fantasy