 | There are many delights in The Starlit Wood, an anthology of “new” fairy tales, meaning stories with a fresh twist based on traditional tales. Each story is followed by a note from the author explaining their rationale and personal connection to the fairy tale they chose. I love when anthologies include this as it makes the stories more meaningful. There are eighteen stories total, and I thoroughly enjoyed all but one (which was too “experimental” and disjointed for me to follow). I’ve highlighted the stories that stood out for their exquisite writing, delightfully unique storylines, and resonate emotions. |
 | “In The Desert Like a Bone” by Seanan McGuire pairs Little Red Riding Hood with the Coyote Trickster in a desolate Western setting. It’s an atmospheric tale with an empowering view of the protagonist, a young girl apprenticed to Coyote. The dialogue when she faces her nemesis was a delight: The knob turns. The door opens. “You are an arrogant child,” he says, and his breath is whiskey and winter. “The better to defy you, sir,” she says, and her words are summer in the desert, hot and cruel and unforgiving. |
The author said of this tale: “her story is inherently one of betrayal by someone who was trusted, however unwisely, and of attaining adulthood through a single trip through the woods.”
 | Karen Tidback reworks a disturbingly sexist tale (“Prince Hatt Underground”) into a story of self-confidence in, “Underground.” Similar to the original fairy tale, a girl (Hedvig) is married to a prince but never allowed to see his face (like the myth of Psyche and Cupid). In this instance, jazz records are the “dowry” paid for Hedvig’s imprisonment underground with her new husband, Lord Ruben, who visits her only in total darkness. Afraid she's married a monster, Hedvig uses a lighter to view him and he’s stolen away by a scheming countess. Plucky Hedvig sets out to rescue him and in the process comes into her own. |
Ruben remains a feckless whiner: “What am I supposed to do?" Ruben asked plaintively.
Hedvig’s reply: “Do better.”
Hedvig’s reply: “Do better.”
 | Another great tale is “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar, the author of The River Has Roots. This story combines the fates of a woman who wears iron shoes in the hopes of saving her abusive husband (from the “Black Bull of Norway”) with a princess who is imprisoned atop a glass mountain as a prize for whomever can climb and reach her (“The Glass Mountain”). Their two narratives converge when the iron-shod woman climbs the glass mountain and befriends the imprisoned princess. Ultimately, the two women rescue each other. The author said of her story: “I treasure the ways in which friendship can undermine the poisonously seductive narratives we sometimes trap ourselves in.” |
 | Garth Nix sets “The Little Matchgirl” in the Old West in his story, “Penny for a Match, Mister.” In this tale, a portal opens and an ethereal being crosses the Line when a man is killed under the full moon. The dead man’s orphaned sister, who sells matches to earn her living, becomes the instrument of his vengeance. Then a warden-marshal specializing in supernatural crimes arrives and things get very interesting from there. I loved the author’s characterization of the original oppressive fairy tale in his author note: “It’s Okay to Be Poor and Freeze to Death, at Least You’ll go to Heaven with Granny.” |
Kat Howard’s “Reflected” sets “The Snow Queen” in a quantum physics lab. The experiments use a hexagon of mirrors to transport one of the team members, Zack, into another dimension, but the mirrors shatter and they can’t get him back. Then it starts to snow where the mirrors had been and the lab gets colder and colder. The team gets Zack back, but he’s flat and “heartless.” It’s up to the narrator to piece him—and his heart—back together.
 | “Pearl” by Aliette de Boudard tells the story of a low-level tech, Da Trang, and an automated, self-repairing “remora” who helps him study for his exams to join the upper ranks. The remora, Pearl, becomes a more-than-friend to him and helps him succeed beyond his wildest dreams. But Pearl becomes disillusioned by Da Trang’s new situation and escapes into the Sun. Everyone assumes she’s been destroyed, but Da Trang can’t let her go. He fashions remora after remora, sending them into the sun to find his beloved Pearl. It’s a bittersweet tale based on a Vietnamese legend with a surprising—and hopeful—ending. |
The problem of “Sleeping Beauty,” says author Marjorie Liu, “is that ultimately, it’s a story about a woman who is far more attractive “dead” than alive, a woman who has little agency, who is forced into an unnatural sleep, raped while she is unconscious, and then, when she finally wakes, must go and marry the man who took advantage of her. "
 | Liu's retelling of this tale, “The Briar and the Rose,” is an evocative and compelling story, and my favorite of the book. Briar is a dark-skinned foreigner and trained duelist who works for an unnaturally beautiful courtesan: “The duelist could have drawn her sword and removed his head before he even finished [speaking], but she was beyond the age where she needed to prove a point by killing. That had been the way of her youth, but no longer.” Briar is the only one the courtesan trusts to be with her when she must retire to the tower once a week to sleep. While she sleeps, Rose, whose body the courtesan inhabits, awakens. Briar has fallen in love with Rose and the two women treasure these brief moments together. |
Rose hates how the courtesan uses her body to seduce wealthy men and longs to break free.
 | Briar knows by Rose’s weakening state that the courtesan will soon discard her body for another, younger woman, and Rose will die. The tale becomes a race against time to unravel the mystery of Rose’s imprisonment and find a way to save her before the courtesan kills her and moves on. Rose secretly combs the courtesan’s memories and dreams to find the essential clue they need to unravel her evil magic. The epilogue delivers a wonderful rumor of two foreign women living on the steppe. One eyewitness claimed: “They held hands even when they rode.” |
“Spinning Silver” by Naomi Novik, the last story in the book, turns the “Rumpelstiltskin” tale on its head.
 | The narrator’s father is a kind-hearted moneylender who never collects what’s owed him. When her mother falls ill, the narrator takes it upon herself to collect from the townsfolk. She’s highly successful, but one day she brags about spinning silver into gold and is overheard by a fairy. The fairy gives her a bag of silver, demanding she turn it into gold. “For fail me, and to ice you shall go,” the fairy says. In the city, she works with a jeweler to turn the fairy silver into a bracelet and sell it to the duke for a bag of gold. But then the fairy gives her a larger bag and makes the same demand. These are turned into silver rings. With the third bag of silver, the fairy tells her when she turns it into gold he will take her into his wintry fairyland and marry her. |
In the end, the resourceful moneylender makes a deal with the fairy worth more to them both than marriage. A truly satisfying ending to the story and to the anthology as a whole.
Reviews of other worthy short story anthologies:
The Best of World SF, The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, Best New Romantic Fantasy
The Best of World SF, The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women, Best New Romantic Fantasy
