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howlinglibraries's review
4.0
I love anthologies, but I’ve never read one anywhere near this size, so when I heard that TorDotCom was coming out with a collection of some of their best short stories for their tenth anniversary, I had to check it out. There are so many authors in this collection whose work I’d been dying to pick up, and short stories are such an efficient, wonderful way to get to know a few new authors.
The entire anthology is comprised of sci-fi and fantasy stories, with a touch of light horror here and there through a few of them. Each story is so distinctively different from one another, and there are so many gems. On top of the quality of the work included, there’s a ton of fantastic representation scattered throughout, with many stories featuring characters of color and queer relationships.
There are 40 stories in this collection, and while I usually do breakdowns with a tiny review for each story in a collection, we’d be here for days if I did that for this one. Instead, I’m going to list tiny reviews for the stories I gave 5 stars, and then tack on a basic star rating list for each story in the collection (just for those of who you are curious of what I thought of your favorites!).
1. Damage — David D. Levine
A story of intergalactic warfare, told through the perspective of a fighter spacecraft who’s in love with her pilot. I never thought I would empathize with a machine so much, but the narrative in this is beautiful.
2. About Fairies — Pat Murphy
Toy designers create little virtual fairy worlds, but what happens when one of the designers thinks she’s found real fairies? Weird, a little eerie, and overall carrying a surprising level of bleakness, something about this fascinated me endlessly.
3. The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere — John Chu
Ever since the water started randomly falling from nowhere on anyone who told a lie, it’s been really tough for one man to stay in the closet. I cannot describe how utterly precious this story was, despite the fact that it does involve a lot of painful (but challenged) homophobia from a member of the narrator’s family.
4. Brimstone and Marmalade — Aaron Corwin
Every little girl wants a pony, but ponies are a lot more expensive and harder to take care of than pet demons. This piece was hilarious. I literally laughed throughout every single interaction with the little demon pet, and by the end of it, I desperately wanted one of my very own.
5. Please Undo This Hurt — Seth Dickinson
A heartbreaking story about an EMT and her drinking pal, who has come to her to ask if she thinks there could ever be a way to be “unmade”. He doesn’t want to kill himself, he just wishes he’d never existed at all. Major content warnings for suicidal ideation on this one, but Seth writes like someone who genuinely gets depression, and the ending is positively stunning.
6. La beauté sans vertu — Genevieve Valentine
Valentine’s story takes place in a world where models are horribly disfigured for the sake of “beauty”, and the parallels run chillingly deep to how our own society treats young women. What I found most profound was the presence of a “feminist” protest group, who ultimately doesn’t care about any girl’s well-being nearly as much as they care about the length of her skirt.
7. A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers — Alyssa Wong
Two sisters can time travel, but the narrator never predicted her sister would destroy the world, and herself along with it, until it’s too late, and our narrator is forcing into an endless loop of desperately trying to change the inevitable. I don’t think I have enough time to possibly explain how much I adore Alyssa’s writing. Every story I have read by her has left me a crumpled, sobbing mess, and this was no exception, but I welcome the heartbreak every single time. Major content warnings for (challenged) transphobia in this one.
8. A Kiss With Teeth — Max Gladstone
Vlad is trying to fit in like a normal dad, but it’s so hard, especially when his son’s new teacher is tempting his inner beast so much. This whole idea of an ancient, powerful vampire trying to fit into normal suburban life with his vampire-hunting wife and his seemingly normal son had me sucked in from the start. I honestly loved the narrative voice so much, and would absolutely read a full novel about Vlad and his family.
9. The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections — Tina Connolly
A woman lives as the Traitor King’s taste tester, while her husband works as the head baker, creating pastries that forcibly conjure up memories for the person eating them. The entire idea of this plot was so incredibly fascinating, and I’ve never read anything quite like it.
10. Your Orisons May Be Recorded — Laurie Penny
What if angels answered phone calls in a… call center? Laurie Penny’s writing is weirdly hilarious, and this was so delightful and strange. It’s a little sad, too, as the angel reminisces over lost loves throughout the ages, but more than anything, I just loved her demon best friend’s weird antics and endless adoration of heavy metal music.
11. The Cage — A. M. Dellamonica
When you’re determined not to fall in love with a woman or her werewolf baby, you probably shouldn’t play contractor, handywoman, or babysitter. The actual plot of this story didn’t catch me for a little bit, but once the werewolf baby came on the scene, I was done for. If you enjoy adorable infant characters, you’re in for a real treat with this one.
12. The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale — Leigh Bardugo
The forest has been eating girls, and Nadya is convinced that the monster responsible has snuck right into her very own home. If you’ve read the Grisha books, you’ll doubtlessly love this story, but even if you haven’t, it’s perfectly enjoyable on its own. It has such a fairytale quality to it, but it’s also so dark and sad. This was one of only three stories in this collection (the other 2 being John Chu’s and Alyssa Wong’s) that forced me to put the collection down and just process for a moment because they were that good.
1. Six Months, Three Days — Charlie Jane Anders ★★★★☆
2. Damage —David D. Levine ★★★★★
3. The Best We Can — Carrie Vaughn ★★★☆☆
4. The City Born Great — N. K. Jemisin ★★★★☆
5. A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel — Yoon Ha Lee ★★☆☆☆
6. Waiting on a Bright Moon — Jy Yang ★★★☆☆
7. Elephants and Corpses — Kameron Hurley ★★★★☆
8. About Fairies — Pat Murphy ★★★★★
9. The Hanging Game — Helen Marshall ★★★★☆
10. The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere — John Chu ★★★★★
11. A Cup of Salt Tears — Isabel Yap ★★★★☆
12. The Litany of Earth — Ruthanna Emrys [did not read due to spoilers for series]
13. Brimstone and Marmalade — Aaron Corwin ★★★★★
14. Reborn — Ken Liu ★★☆☆☆
15. Please Undo This Hurt — Seth Dickinson ★★★★★
16. The Language of Knives — Haralambi Markov ★★★★☆
17. The Shape of My Name — Nino Cipri ★★★★☆
18. Eros, Philia, Agape — Rachel Swirsky [DNF]
19. The Lady Astronaut of Mars — Mary Robinette Kowal ★★★★☆
20. Last Son of Tomorrow — Greg Van Eekhout ★★☆☆☆
21. Ponies — Kij Johnson ★☆☆☆☆
22. La beauté sans vertu — Genevieve Valentine ★★★★★
23. A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers — Alyssa Wong ★★★★★
24. A Kiss With Teeth — Max Gladstone ★★★★★
25. The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections — Tina Connolly ★★★★★
26. The End of the End of Everything — Dale Bailey ★★☆☆☆
27. Breaking Water — Indrapramit Das ★★★★☆
28. Your Orisons May Be Recorded — Laurie Penny ★★★★★
29. The Tallest Doll in New York City — Maria Dahvana Headley ★★☆☆☆
30. The Cage — A. M. Dellamonica ★★★★★
31. In the Sight of Akresa — Ray Wood ★★★☆☆
32. Terminal — Lavia Tidhar ★★★☆☆
33. The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale — Leigh Bardugo ★★★★★
34. Daughter of Necessity — Marie Brennan ★★★★☆
35. Among the Thorns — Veronica Schanoes ★★★★☆
36. These Deathless Bones — Cassandra Khaw ★★★★☆
37. Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch — Kelly Barnhill [DNF]
38. This World is Full of Monsters — Jeff Vandermeer ★★★☆☆
39. The Devil in America — Kai Ashante Wilson ★★★☆☆
40. A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon a Star — Kathleen Ann Goonan ★★☆☆☆
Thank you so much to TorDotCom for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!
You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!
The entire anthology is comprised of sci-fi and fantasy stories, with a touch of light horror here and there through a few of them. Each story is so distinctively different from one another, and there are so many gems. On top of the quality of the work included, there’s a ton of fantastic representation scattered throughout, with many stories featuring characters of color and queer relationships.
There are 40 stories in this collection, and while I usually do breakdowns with a tiny review for each story in a collection, we’d be here for days if I did that for this one. Instead, I’m going to list tiny reviews for the stories I gave 5 stars, and then tack on a basic star rating list for each story in the collection (just for those of who you are curious of what I thought of your favorites!).
→ five star reads, in order of appearance:
1. Damage — David D. Levine
A story of intergalactic warfare, told through the perspective of a fighter spacecraft who’s in love with her pilot. I never thought I would empathize with a machine so much, but the narrative in this is beautiful.
2. About Fairies — Pat Murphy
Toy designers create little virtual fairy worlds, but what happens when one of the designers thinks she’s found real fairies? Weird, a little eerie, and overall carrying a surprising level of bleakness, something about this fascinated me endlessly.
3. The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere — John Chu
Ever since the water started randomly falling from nowhere on anyone who told a lie, it’s been really tough for one man to stay in the closet. I cannot describe how utterly precious this story was, despite the fact that it does involve a lot of painful (but challenged) homophobia from a member of the narrator’s family.
4. Brimstone and Marmalade — Aaron Corwin
Every little girl wants a pony, but ponies are a lot more expensive and harder to take care of than pet demons. This piece was hilarious. I literally laughed throughout every single interaction with the little demon pet, and by the end of it, I desperately wanted one of my very own.
5. Please Undo This Hurt — Seth Dickinson
A heartbreaking story about an EMT and her drinking pal, who has come to her to ask if she thinks there could ever be a way to be “unmade”. He doesn’t want to kill himself, he just wishes he’d never existed at all. Major content warnings for suicidal ideation on this one, but Seth writes like someone who genuinely gets depression, and the ending is positively stunning.
6. La beauté sans vertu — Genevieve Valentine
Valentine’s story takes place in a world where models are horribly disfigured for the sake of “beauty”, and the parallels run chillingly deep to how our own society treats young women. What I found most profound was the presence of a “feminist” protest group, who ultimately doesn’t care about any girl’s well-being nearly as much as they care about the length of her skirt.
7. A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers — Alyssa Wong
Two sisters can time travel, but the narrator never predicted her sister would destroy the world, and herself along with it, until it’s too late, and our narrator is forcing into an endless loop of desperately trying to change the inevitable. I don’t think I have enough time to possibly explain how much I adore Alyssa’s writing. Every story I have read by her has left me a crumpled, sobbing mess, and this was no exception, but I welcome the heartbreak every single time. Major content warnings for (challenged) transphobia in this one.
8. A Kiss With Teeth — Max Gladstone
Vlad is trying to fit in like a normal dad, but it’s so hard, especially when his son’s new teacher is tempting his inner beast so much. This whole idea of an ancient, powerful vampire trying to fit into normal suburban life with his vampire-hunting wife and his seemingly normal son had me sucked in from the start. I honestly loved the narrative voice so much, and would absolutely read a full novel about Vlad and his family.
9. The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections — Tina Connolly
A woman lives as the Traitor King’s taste tester, while her husband works as the head baker, creating pastries that forcibly conjure up memories for the person eating them. The entire idea of this plot was so incredibly fascinating, and I’ve never read anything quite like it.
10. Your Orisons May Be Recorded — Laurie Penny
What if angels answered phone calls in a… call center? Laurie Penny’s writing is weirdly hilarious, and this was so delightful and strange. It’s a little sad, too, as the angel reminisces over lost loves throughout the ages, but more than anything, I just loved her demon best friend’s weird antics and endless adoration of heavy metal music.
11. The Cage — A. M. Dellamonica
When you’re determined not to fall in love with a woman or her werewolf baby, you probably shouldn’t play contractor, handywoman, or babysitter. The actual plot of this story didn’t catch me for a little bit, but once the werewolf baby came on the scene, I was done for. If you enjoy adorable infant characters, you’re in for a real treat with this one.
12. The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale — Leigh Bardugo
The forest has been eating girls, and Nadya is convinced that the monster responsible has snuck right into her very own home. If you’ve read the Grisha books, you’ll doubtlessly love this story, but even if you haven’t, it’s perfectly enjoyable on its own. It has such a fairytale quality to it, but it’s also so dark and sad. This was one of only three stories in this collection (the other 2 being John Chu’s and Alyssa Wong’s) that forced me to put the collection down and just process for a moment because they were that good.
1. Six Months, Three Days — Charlie Jane Anders ★★★★☆
2. Damage —David D. Levine ★★★★★
3. The Best We Can — Carrie Vaughn ★★★☆☆
4. The City Born Great — N. K. Jemisin ★★★★☆
5. A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel — Yoon Ha Lee ★★☆☆☆
6. Waiting on a Bright Moon — Jy Yang ★★★☆☆
7. Elephants and Corpses — Kameron Hurley ★★★★☆
8. About Fairies — Pat Murphy ★★★★★
9. The Hanging Game — Helen Marshall ★★★★☆
10. The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere — John Chu ★★★★★
11. A Cup of Salt Tears — Isabel Yap ★★★★☆
12. The Litany of Earth — Ruthanna Emrys [did not read due to spoilers for series]
13. Brimstone and Marmalade — Aaron Corwin ★★★★★
14. Reborn — Ken Liu ★★☆☆☆
15. Please Undo This Hurt — Seth Dickinson ★★★★★
16. The Language of Knives — Haralambi Markov ★★★★☆
17. The Shape of My Name — Nino Cipri ★★★★☆
18. Eros, Philia, Agape — Rachel Swirsky [DNF]
19. The Lady Astronaut of Mars — Mary Robinette Kowal ★★★★☆
20. Last Son of Tomorrow — Greg Van Eekhout ★★☆☆☆
21. Ponies — Kij Johnson ★☆☆☆☆
22. La beauté sans vertu — Genevieve Valentine ★★★★★
23. A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers — Alyssa Wong ★★★★★
24. A Kiss With Teeth — Max Gladstone ★★★★★
25. The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections — Tina Connolly ★★★★★
26. The End of the End of Everything — Dale Bailey ★★☆☆☆
27. Breaking Water — Indrapramit Das ★★★★☆
28. Your Orisons May Be Recorded — Laurie Penny ★★★★★
29. The Tallest Doll in New York City — Maria Dahvana Headley ★★☆☆☆
30. The Cage — A. M. Dellamonica ★★★★★
31. In the Sight of Akresa — Ray Wood ★★★☆☆
32. Terminal — Lavia Tidhar ★★★☆☆
33. The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale — Leigh Bardugo ★★★★★
34. Daughter of Necessity — Marie Brennan ★★★★☆
35. Among the Thorns — Veronica Schanoes ★★★★☆
36. These Deathless Bones — Cassandra Khaw ★★★★☆
37. Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch — Kelly Barnhill [DNF]
38. This World is Full of Monsters — Jeff Vandermeer ★★★☆☆
39. The Devil in America — Kai Ashante Wilson ★★★☆☆
40. A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon a Star — Kathleen Ann Goonan ★★☆☆☆
AVERAGE RATING: 3.7/5 STARS
Thank you so much to TorDotCom for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!
You can find this review and more on my blog, or you can follow me on twitter, bookstagram, or facebook!
indalauryn's review
4.0
I mostly picked and chose the stories I wanted to read since I saw a few I already like plus some I already know. This is a good sampling of Tor stories and a change of pace since I'm mostly familiar with their novellas. It's also a good evolution of sff since "the incident" 10 years ago that I feel prompted many publications to expand their outlook on the writers and stories represented as well as sparked new publications like Tor. Yes, worth picking up for those like me who love anthology collections.
mattsitstill's review
3.0
Some of the stories are genre-busting, groundbreaking, and aspirational. Others are a slog or ineffectual. Most fall somewhere in between. Such a swath of fiction, though.
But the book design is horrible. The print is tiny, the pages cheap, and the binding creams and cracks. Nice to have 40 different stories, wish the overall presentation of them had been more friendly.
But the book design is horrible. The print is tiny, the pages cheap, and the binding creams and cracks. Nice to have 40 different stories, wish the overall presentation of them had been more friendly.
coolcurrybooks's review
4.0
I’ve been generally impressed with Tor.com’s fiction, but I’m always running behind on their short stories. When I saw this “Best of” anthology up on Netgalley, I thought it was the perfect chance to catch up. And so far, Worlds Seen in Passing is my favorite short fiction anthology of 2018.
I was already familiar with some of the stories in the collection, either from anthologies collecting “best of the year” stories or from reading them on Tor.com’s site. For the most part, I didn’t reread them in Worlds Seen in Passing, but I did like most of the stories I already knew!
One such story was “The City Born Great” by N.K. Jemisin, where the spirit of New York City is about to be born. A homeless young gay man is selected as the midwife, and it’s his job to defend the city from predators. I don’t love the story as much as some of Jemisin’s novel-length works (how can you beat The Fifth Season?), but it’s still a solid tale.
In another, “Waiting on a Bright Moon” by JY Yang, a futuristic society depends on separating queer women and having them create a connection across planets through song. It’s as wonderfully written as you would expect from any story by JY Yang.
I originally read “The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys as an extra at the end of her book Winter Tide. The story takes place before the novel, and it introduces Aphra, a daughter of Innsmouth who lost almost her entire family when the government placed them in an internment camp far from the ocean. When an FBI agent comes asking for her help with an investigation, Aphra is naturally reluctant.
“The Shape of My Name” by Nino Cipri remains one of my all-time favorite time travel stories, and back when I was doing short story lists for Queership, I featured it there. I don’t want to say too much about the story… but it’s about the protagonist discovering himself and his troubled relationship with his mother, who refuses to accept her son’s gender.
“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu is another story I’d featured on Queership. When you tell a lie, water starts falling on you. If it’s a minor bending of the truth, maybe you just get a little mist. If it’s a flat-out whopper, you get completely soaked. This makes life awkward for Matt, who’s not out to his traditional Chinese parents but is having dinner with them and his boyfriend.
“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong is as lovely and powerful as any story she’s written (if you haven’t read Alyssa Wong, you need to change that NOW). The story centers on two sisters who can jump from reality to reality, but no matter how many times Hannah tries, she can’t save her sister.
On the whole, I like Max Gladstone’s novels more than his short stories, but “A Kiss with Teeth” remains the exception. It’s a vampire story about marriage and fatherhood, and I like it enough that I’ve read it at least twice before.
I read “The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale” by Leigh Bardugo as part of her collection The Language of Thorns, where it was my favorite story of the collection. Nadya and her brother live with their father, a carpenter, in a small village in the woods. Then their mother dies, local girls begin to go missing Nadya’s brother leaves, and her father remarries. It’s a super dark story, and I loved the creeping sense of unease that permeated it.
There was really only two stories I’d already read that I wasn’t wild about. No matter how much I read by Kai Ashante Wilson, I’ve never really loved any of his stories, and that includes “The Devil in America,” the story of a family with supernatural powers that lost the knowledge of how to use those when they were enslaved and shipped to America. I’m in a similar boat with Maria Dahvana Headley’s work, and I think it’s just a case of authorial style not matching up with the reader. In any case, I wasn’t a fan of “The Tallest Doll in New York City” the first time I read it, so I felt no qualms about skipping it here.
While I’d already read the stories I mentioned about, the majority of the collection was new to me. That includes stories by authors I’m familiar with but just hadn’t gotten around to yet. For instance, I’m a huge fan of Yoon Ha Lee, but I’d never before read “A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel,” which describes several alien species and their forms of space travel. I’ve seen stories of a similar style, and I think they may make up their own subgenre? For instance, it reminds me a lot of “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu or “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang. This type of story is more focused on ideas and descriptive language than the plot structure of a traditional Western short story.
I’m also a huge Kameron Hurley fan, but I can never keep up with all her short fiction! “Elephants and Corpses” is a characteristically gritty fantasy story that will appeal to fans of her character Nyx. The protagonist can jump into dead bodies, but he’s in a pickle when he fishes the wrong body out of the river and suddenly someone’s trying to kill him.
Charlie Jane Anders story “Six Months, Three Days” deals with the theme of fate vs. free will when two people who can see the future start dating. Is it worth going through a relationship you know will end badly? Are the good times worth the bad? How much control do you really have over your own future? The story doesn’t have answers, but it raises some interesting questions.
I’d recently gotten into Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut novels, and while I knew they started with a Tor.com short story, I’d never read it. When I got to “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” I discovered that it followed a couple of characters I was already familiar with… but when they were near the end of their lives. It was a very bittersweet story, because, on one hand, they’re dying, but on the other, I now know that Elma accomplished much of what she wanted in life.
“These Deathless Bones” by Cassandra Khaw just reinforces how much I love her work. It’s a fairy-tale type piece, about a woman who’s stepping into the role of an “evil” stepmother but still gets her happy ending. It’s so great.
In a similar vein, both “Daughter of Necessity” by Marie Brennan and “Among the Thorns” by Veronica Schanoes are reenvisioning older fairy-tales and myths. In “Daughter of Necessity,” Penelope’s weaving isn’t just a trick; she’s literally weaving different possible futures and unraveling them until she finds the ending she wants. “Among the Thorns” deals with an incredibly anti-Semitic fairy tale where a man with a magic pipe straight up murders a Jewish peddler and is still somehow the hero of the tale??? Anyway, Schanoes creates a new story following the peddler’s daughter who is out for vengeance.
I spent the summer interning for Apex books, which is creating an anthology of SFF stories about resistance. When I read “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” by Tina Connolly, I felt like it fit with that theme perfectly. In a fantasy kingdom with a cruel king, a cook makes food that has you relive memories. His wife is forced to be the food taster for the king, and the memories her husband is showing her tells her that something big is coming.
“In the Sight of the Akresa” by Ray Wood is another medieval fantasy type story, but I wasn’t as fond of this one. The protagonist, Claire, is simply horrible. At least I think she’s supposed to be horrible? She’s a noblewoman who starts a clandestine relationship with a former-slave girl whose tongue was cut out. I started getting “Claire is bad news” vibes earlier on when she hurts an animal as an excuse to see the girl she’s attracted to. Anyway, it’s also a queer tragedy so FYI, I guess.
This review is getting ridiculously long and I’m ridiculously busy, so I’m going to highlight a few more stories before wrapping it up.
“Brimstone and Marmalade” by Aaron Corwin was absolutely delightful. A young girl wants a pony but her parents give her a pet demon instead.
“Ponies” by Kij Johnson is about a little girl who actually has a pet pony, who has wings, a horn, and talks. This is completely normal, and every girl has a pony like this. What’s also normal is having parties where ponies are ritualistically mutilated to fit in with the crowd. It’s a strange and macabre story about the costs of fitting with the crowd… and the costs of going against it.
“Your Orisons May Be Recorded” by Laurie Penny was a great story that I liked a lot. The protagonist is an angel, only she’s basically stuck working the prayer phone lines and can’t actually help anyone. Plus, she keeps getting in trouble from her boss for not being efficient enough.
“The Cage” by A.M. Dellamonica was ridiculously cute. It’s this super sweet story about lesbian moms taking care of a baby werewolf and I love it so much. The moment I finished reading it I sent a link to my best friend telling her she had to read it RIGHT NOW.
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky is another story I linked my best friend to, but that’s mostly because she’s obsessed with robots. A robot sets out to find himself, leaving the human wife who had long lobbied for robot rights.
My least favorite story of the collection was Jeff VanderMeer’s “This World Is Full of Monsters,” but it’s also 100% a Jeff VanderMeer story. By which I mean that it’s weird as all get out and full of squishy biological things.
I’m going to run through the rest of the stories super quickly. Ready?
“Damage” by David D. Levine is about a spaceship in an abusive relationship (pretty good story).
“The Best We Can” by Carrie Vaughn shows that first contact can actually be quite boring (okay, probably wouldn’t reread).
“About Faries” by Pat Murphy has a depressed woman hired to help design a virtual fairyland for children (wouldn’t reread).
“The Hanging Game” by Helen Marshall (Tw: miscarriage) is as creepy as all get out. I might reread it someday.
“A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap has a woman meeting a kappa (probably won’t reread)
“Reborn” by Ken Liu asks big questions about identity through a conquering alien species that is constantly erasing memories (might reread).
“Please Undo This Hurt” by Seth Dickinson asks if you could make yourself never have existed… would you? I probably wouldn’t reread it, but the concept has stuck with me.
“The Language of Knives” by Haralambi Markov has the protagonist baking his deceased husband into a ritualistic cake (wouldn’t reread).
“Last Son of Tomorrow” by Greg van Eekhout is obviously influenced by Superman and asks whether or not immortality is actually that great (wouldn’t reread).
“La beauté sans vertu” by Genevieve Valentine is a haunting story about a fashion house and a model who disappears. It’s really stuck with me, and I might visit it again in the future.
“The End of the End of Everything” by Dale Bailey has drugs, parties and the end of the world (wouldn’t reread).
“Breaking Water” by Indrapramit Das has Krishna finding a dead body and the dead walking again (might reread).
“Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar is about people going to Mars to die (wouldn’t reread).
“Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch” by Kelly Barnhill follows the relationship between a woman and a Sasquatch and how the town views it. It was one of my least favorites of the collection, and I won’t revisit it.
“A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon A Star” by Kathleen Ann Goonan isn’t specifically science fiction but was a decent enough story.
Okay, so I realize I was moving fast at the end, but this review is already over 2,000 words! Anyway, my end analysis would be that while there’s of course some middling stories and stories I didn’t care about, Worlds Seen in Passing also has an impressive number of stories that I really liked. Probably a higher than average ratio. There’s also a fantastic author line up.
If you’re looking for a short story collection that includes some of the best stories of the past ten years, you don’t need to look much further than Worlds Seen in Passing.
I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review.
Review originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
I was already familiar with some of the stories in the collection, either from anthologies collecting “best of the year” stories or from reading them on Tor.com’s site. For the most part, I didn’t reread them in Worlds Seen in Passing, but I did like most of the stories I already knew!
One such story was “The City Born Great” by N.K. Jemisin, where the spirit of New York City is about to be born. A homeless young gay man is selected as the midwife, and it’s his job to defend the city from predators. I don’t love the story as much as some of Jemisin’s novel-length works (how can you beat The Fifth Season?), but it’s still a solid tale.
In another, “Waiting on a Bright Moon” by JY Yang, a futuristic society depends on separating queer women and having them create a connection across planets through song. It’s as wonderfully written as you would expect from any story by JY Yang.
I originally read “The Litany of Earth” by Ruthanna Emrys as an extra at the end of her book Winter Tide. The story takes place before the novel, and it introduces Aphra, a daughter of Innsmouth who lost almost her entire family when the government placed them in an internment camp far from the ocean. When an FBI agent comes asking for her help with an investigation, Aphra is naturally reluctant.
“The Shape of My Name” by Nino Cipri remains one of my all-time favorite time travel stories, and back when I was doing short story lists for Queership, I featured it there. I don’t want to say too much about the story… but it’s about the protagonist discovering himself and his troubled relationship with his mother, who refuses to accept her son’s gender.
“The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere” by John Chu is another story I’d featured on Queership. When you tell a lie, water starts falling on you. If it’s a minor bending of the truth, maybe you just get a little mist. If it’s a flat-out whopper, you get completely soaked. This makes life awkward for Matt, who’s not out to his traditional Chinese parents but is having dinner with them and his boyfriend.
“A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong is as lovely and powerful as any story she’s written (if you haven’t read Alyssa Wong, you need to change that NOW). The story centers on two sisters who can jump from reality to reality, but no matter how many times Hannah tries, she can’t save her sister.
On the whole, I like Max Gladstone’s novels more than his short stories, but “A Kiss with Teeth” remains the exception. It’s a vampire story about marriage and fatherhood, and I like it enough that I’ve read it at least twice before.
I read “The Witch of Duva: A Ravkan Folk Tale” by Leigh Bardugo as part of her collection The Language of Thorns, where it was my favorite story of the collection. Nadya and her brother live with their father, a carpenter, in a small village in the woods. Then their mother dies, local girls begin to go missing Nadya’s brother leaves, and her father remarries. It’s a super dark story, and I loved the creeping sense of unease that permeated it.
There was really only two stories I’d already read that I wasn’t wild about. No matter how much I read by Kai Ashante Wilson, I’ve never really loved any of his stories, and that includes “The Devil in America,” the story of a family with supernatural powers that lost the knowledge of how to use those when they were enslaved and shipped to America. I’m in a similar boat with Maria Dahvana Headley’s work, and I think it’s just a case of authorial style not matching up with the reader. In any case, I wasn’t a fan of “The Tallest Doll in New York City” the first time I read it, so I felt no qualms about skipping it here.
While I’d already read the stories I mentioned about, the majority of the collection was new to me. That includes stories by authors I’m familiar with but just hadn’t gotten around to yet. For instance, I’m a huge fan of Yoon Ha Lee, but I’d never before read “A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel,” which describes several alien species and their forms of space travel. I’ve seen stories of a similar style, and I think they may make up their own subgenre? For instance, it reminds me a lot of “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species” by Ken Liu or “Invisible Planets” by Hao Jingfang. This type of story is more focused on ideas and descriptive language than the plot structure of a traditional Western short story.
I’m also a huge Kameron Hurley fan, but I can never keep up with all her short fiction! “Elephants and Corpses” is a characteristically gritty fantasy story that will appeal to fans of her character Nyx. The protagonist can jump into dead bodies, but he’s in a pickle when he fishes the wrong body out of the river and suddenly someone’s trying to kill him.
Charlie Jane Anders story “Six Months, Three Days” deals with the theme of fate vs. free will when two people who can see the future start dating. Is it worth going through a relationship you know will end badly? Are the good times worth the bad? How much control do you really have over your own future? The story doesn’t have answers, but it raises some interesting questions.
I’d recently gotten into Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut novels, and while I knew they started with a Tor.com short story, I’d never read it. When I got to “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” I discovered that it followed a couple of characters I was already familiar with… but when they were near the end of their lives. It was a very bittersweet story, because, on one hand, they’re dying, but on the other, I now know that Elma accomplished much of what she wanted in life.
“These Deathless Bones” by Cassandra Khaw just reinforces how much I love her work. It’s a fairy-tale type piece, about a woman who’s stepping into the role of an “evil” stepmother but still gets her happy ending. It’s so great.
In a similar vein, both “Daughter of Necessity” by Marie Brennan and “Among the Thorns” by Veronica Schanoes are reenvisioning older fairy-tales and myths. In “Daughter of Necessity,” Penelope’s weaving isn’t just a trick; she’s literally weaving different possible futures and unraveling them until she finds the ending she wants. “Among the Thorns” deals with an incredibly anti-Semitic fairy tale where a man with a magic pipe straight up murders a Jewish peddler and is still somehow the hero of the tale??? Anyway, Schanoes creates a new story following the peddler’s daughter who is out for vengeance.
I spent the summer interning for Apex books, which is creating an anthology of SFF stories about resistance. When I read “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” by Tina Connolly, I felt like it fit with that theme perfectly. In a fantasy kingdom with a cruel king, a cook makes food that has you relive memories. His wife is forced to be the food taster for the king, and the memories her husband is showing her tells her that something big is coming.
“In the Sight of the Akresa” by Ray Wood is another medieval fantasy type story, but I wasn’t as fond of this one. The protagonist, Claire, is simply horrible. At least I think she’s supposed to be horrible? She’s a noblewoman who starts a clandestine relationship with a former-slave girl whose tongue was cut out. I started getting “Claire is bad news” vibes earlier on when she hurts an animal as an excuse to see the girl she’s attracted to. Anyway, it’s also a queer tragedy so FYI, I guess.
This review is getting ridiculously long and I’m ridiculously busy, so I’m going to highlight a few more stories before wrapping it up.
“Brimstone and Marmalade” by Aaron Corwin was absolutely delightful. A young girl wants a pony but her parents give her a pet demon instead.
“Ponies” by Kij Johnson is about a little girl who actually has a pet pony, who has wings, a horn, and talks. This is completely normal, and every girl has a pony like this. What’s also normal is having parties where ponies are ritualistically mutilated to fit in with the crowd. It’s a strange and macabre story about the costs of fitting with the crowd… and the costs of going against it.
“Your Orisons May Be Recorded” by Laurie Penny was a great story that I liked a lot. The protagonist is an angel, only she’s basically stuck working the prayer phone lines and can’t actually help anyone. Plus, she keeps getting in trouble from her boss for not being efficient enough.
“The Cage” by A.M. Dellamonica was ridiculously cute. It’s this super sweet story about lesbian moms taking care of a baby werewolf and I love it so much. The moment I finished reading it I sent a link to my best friend telling her she had to read it RIGHT NOW.
“Eros, Philia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky is another story I linked my best friend to, but that’s mostly because she’s obsessed with robots. A robot sets out to find himself, leaving the human wife who had long lobbied for robot rights.
My least favorite story of the collection was Jeff VanderMeer’s “This World Is Full of Monsters,” but it’s also 100% a Jeff VanderMeer story. By which I mean that it’s weird as all get out and full of squishy biological things.
I’m going to run through the rest of the stories super quickly. Ready?
“Damage” by David D. Levine is about a spaceship in an abusive relationship (pretty good story).
“The Best We Can” by Carrie Vaughn shows that first contact can actually be quite boring (okay, probably wouldn’t reread).
“About Faries” by Pat Murphy has a depressed woman hired to help design a virtual fairyland for children (wouldn’t reread).
“The Hanging Game” by Helen Marshall (Tw: miscarriage) is as creepy as all get out. I might reread it someday.
“A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap has a woman meeting a kappa (probably won’t reread)
“Reborn” by Ken Liu asks big questions about identity through a conquering alien species that is constantly erasing memories (might reread).
“Please Undo This Hurt” by Seth Dickinson asks if you could make yourself never have existed… would you? I probably wouldn’t reread it, but the concept has stuck with me.
“The Language of Knives” by Haralambi Markov has the protagonist baking his deceased husband into a ritualistic cake (wouldn’t reread).
“Last Son of Tomorrow” by Greg van Eekhout is obviously influenced by Superman and asks whether or not immortality is actually that great (wouldn’t reread).
“La beauté sans vertu” by Genevieve Valentine is a haunting story about a fashion house and a model who disappears. It’s really stuck with me, and I might visit it again in the future.
“The End of the End of Everything” by Dale Bailey has drugs, parties and the end of the world (wouldn’t reread).
“Breaking Water” by Indrapramit Das has Krishna finding a dead body and the dead walking again (might reread).
“Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar is about people going to Mars to die (wouldn’t reread).
“Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch” by Kelly Barnhill follows the relationship between a woman and a Sasquatch and how the town views it. It was one of my least favorites of the collection, and I won’t revisit it.
“A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon A Star” by Kathleen Ann Goonan isn’t specifically science fiction but was a decent enough story.
Okay, so I realize I was moving fast at the end, but this review is already over 2,000 words! Anyway, my end analysis would be that while there’s of course some middling stories and stories I didn’t care about, Worlds Seen in Passing also has an impressive number of stories that I really liked. Probably a higher than average ratio. There’s also a fantastic author line up.
If you’re looking for a short story collection that includes some of the best stories of the past ten years, you don’t need to look much further than Worlds Seen in Passing.
I received an ARC in exchange for a free and honest review.
Review originally posted on The Illustrated Page.
miss_fish's review
3.0
Read or tried the entries from Carrie Vaughn, Ken Liu, and Tina Connolly.
Vaughn's The Best We Can was excellent; an astronomer trying to do her job in spite of all the bureaucratic red tape.
Liu's Reborn lost me on page 3 with the alien sex.
I have not read anything by Connolly before, picked The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections because of the excellent title. It turned out to be a food-based bit of magical-realism set in an anachronistic kingdom in upheaval. If ever there were a premise more perfectly selected for me..
Great story, will look for more of her work.
Vaughn's The Best We Can was excellent; an astronomer trying to do her job in spite of all the bureaucratic red tape.
Liu's Reborn lost me on page 3 with the alien sex.
I have not read anything by Connolly before, picked The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections because of the excellent title. It turned out to be a food-based bit of magical-realism set in an anachronistic kingdom in upheaval. If ever there were a premise more perfectly selected for me..
Great story, will look for more of her work.
laurareads87's review
3.0
As a definite fan of Tor, I was happy to pick up this anthology when I saw it featured on the sale table at a local bookstore. Unsurprisingly, I found the book varied a lot -- I did rate each story individually for myself, and they ranged from zero/DNF up to five stars. I'd read two of the stories before -- "The City, Born Great" by NK Jemisin and "The Lady Astronaut of Mars" by Mary Robinette Kowal -- both of which I loved. I'm happy to say that I found some new five star reads here, some by authors I'd not read before. In this respect, I especially liked "Damage" by David D Levine, "The Water that Falls on You From Nowhere" by John Chu, and "Reborn" by Ken Liu. I'd also previously read other works by JY Yang, Yoon Ha Lee, Max Gladstone, Jeff VanderMeer, and Kai Ashante Wilson, and was happy to see them all included here and enjoyed all of their stories as well. One or two felt like they were perhaps excerpts from longer works, and a few stories I simply did not like at all but overall I'm glad I picked this up.
katymm's review
4.0
This is such a solid anthology; I loved reading stories by old favorites and new voices alike. Not counting the stories by N.K. Jemisin and Ken Liu that I had read prior to this collection, my favorite inclusions were JY Yang’s “Waiting on a Bright Moon,” Kameron Hurley’s “Elephants and Corpses,” John Chu’s “The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere,” Kij Johnson’s “Ponies,” and Laurie Penny’s “Your Orisons May Be Recorded.”
drewsof's review
5.0
Even if some of these stories won't be your cup of tea (and several weren't mine), it's hard to think of this book as anything other than a home-run-out-of-the-park. Tor.com (or now Tor Dot Com in publishing iconography) has been steadily delivering fantastic speculative fiction for more than a decade now, and this look at some of the very best from that first decade is a must-have for any lover of speculative fiction. There are big names like Liu and Jemisin and VanderMeer but also plenty of folks I didn't know, like Kowal and Khaw and Yang. Worlds seen in passing indeed, but now I'm looking into my return trips.
Intriguing side note: the book tilts towards the back half of the 2008-2018 decade, which I'd love to know more about. I assume it has a lot to do with the website getting up and running etc, but it's interesting to see the huge boom in the mid 2010s. Someday, I'm thinking somebody's gonna track all of this and show that that's roughly around when the discourse started to change, popularly, about the powers of speculative fiction to envision our brighter future.
Intriguing side note: the book tilts towards the back half of the 2008-2018 decade, which I'd love to know more about. I assume it has a lot to do with the website getting up and running etc, but it's interesting to see the huge boom in the mid 2010s. Someday, I'm thinking somebody's gonna track all of this and show that that's roughly around when the discourse started to change, popularly, about the powers of speculative fiction to envision our brighter future.
abetterjulie's review
5.0
I feel like I got away with something sneaky in purchasing this collection. How is it possible to pay such a small cost for such an enormous amount of excellent reading? There were only two stories I didn't like, and that was simply a personal thing, not because of a problem with the writing.
My favorites were:
The Hanging Game by Helen Marshall
Please Undo This Hurt by Seth Dickinson
Terminal by Lavie Tidhar
This World is Full of Monsters by Jeff Vandermeer
I'm not sure how the title was chosen for this anthology, but it really doesn't fit the deep emotional and insightful interiorality of these tales. Each one was like riding inside the mind of someone struggling or in wonder or both. Okay, maybe I just answered my own question.
My favorites were:
The Hanging Game by Helen Marshall
Please Undo This Hurt by Seth Dickinson
Terminal by Lavie Tidhar
This World is Full of Monsters by Jeff Vandermeer
I'm not sure how the title was chosen for this anthology, but it really doesn't fit the deep emotional and insightful interiorality of these tales. Each one was like riding inside the mind of someone struggling or in wonder or both. Okay, maybe I just answered my own question.
luanam's review
3.0
This was a very nicely balanced anthology that spans the many variations of styles to be found in speculative fiction. It is also a very decent size and the result is that even though I was disappointed by a couple of the stories by my favourite authors (whose inclusions were part of the my excitement in going for this book) the overall enjoyment was not impacted, especially as I found so many new authors and new stories from old favourites, among them:
About Fairies by Pat Murphy - a new author to me and writer of a story that is about fairies and magical worlds but also very deeply about our own and our emotional ties. It is a story that comes with a haunting sense of melancholy both from its magical realism but also from that touch of known reality about age and loss.
The story itself is available free at this link: https://www.tor.com/2012/05/09/about-fairies/
While more of the author's stories can be found (some free/some pay) at the below link:
https://www.tor.com/2012/05/09/about-fairies/
Another one by a new author, and one that was thoroughly enjoyable, was Brimstone and Marmalade by Aaron Corwin - this one had one of my favourite things - adorably funny dialogue. It also has an online story available free :) This next bit is a total spoiler and I was very tempted not to include Though the tone is mostly light there is a heart gutting moment.
https://www.tor.com/2013/10/30/brimstone-and-marmalade-aaron-corwin/
OoooOO I nearly forgot about this one! Damage by David Levine. This centres the story of an AI of a military ship in an intergalactic war who falls in love with her feckwit of a pilot and the decisions that the AI must come to. Story link also available: https://www.tor.com/2015/01/21/damage-david-levine/ (At this point of the review I am starting to wonder just how many of the stories are freely available online lol )
There was also one by one of my favourite authors and it explores different species and how they developed to navigate space. And it too is available to checkout free online! :)
A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel' by Yoon Ha Lee at link:
https://www.tor.com/2011/08/10/a-vector-alphabet-of-interstellar-travel/
There is also a very cute lgbtq story with a little twist in its werecub tail from another new author to me , Dellamonica and it too is available online :)
https://www.tor.com/2010/07/28/the-cage/
And probably one of the most impactful stories on the list is also a deeply harrowing one: 'The Devil in America' by Kai Ashante Wilson, is an intensely pointed and relevant read, set just after the civil war, it delves into the impacts and legacy of slavery across centuries in a story embedded with magic.
Link https://www.tor.com/2014/04/02/the-devil-in-america-kai-ashante-wilson/
Waiting on a Bright Moon by JY Yang, was also another one I want to highlight. It was a beautiful and I want to say lyrical short story but it does involve the use of song magic to form connection portals so the pun quotient my be too high. The world building is pretty bare, even for a short story, but this is one where language and feel takes centre place. There are also points where some of the text is in Chinese and if you can read it, it most definitely would have added a dimension but unable to do so, I still found that I could enjoy the main passage lyricism without detraction just not with the plus :)
https://www.tor.com/2017/07/12/waiting-on-a-bright-moon/
Finally. I have to add The City Born Great by N. K. Jemisin is as always freakin great! I have read this short story a couple of times in other anthologies and it remains one of my firm favourites.
"In this standalone short story by N. K. Jemisin, ...the winner of this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel, New York City is about to go through a few changes. Like all great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it must be born; but there are ancient enemies who cannot tolerate new life. Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife… and how well he can learn to sing the city’s mighty song."
https://www.tor.com/2016/09/28/the-city-born-great/
There were other stories that also thoroughly enjoyable or thought provoking but this selection I felt highlighted the range to be found and I am sleepy now so will finish here :)
About Fairies by Pat Murphy - a new author to me and writer of a story that is about fairies and magical worlds but also very deeply about our own and our emotional ties. It is a story that comes with a haunting sense of melancholy both from its magical realism but also from that touch of known reality about age and loss.
The story itself is available free at this link: https://www.tor.com/2012/05/09/about-fairies/
While more of the author's stories can be found (some free/some pay) at the below link:
https://www.tor.com/2012/05/09/about-fairies/
Another one by a new author, and one that was thoroughly enjoyable, was Brimstone and Marmalade by Aaron Corwin - this one had one of my favourite things - adorably funny dialogue. It also has an online story available free :) This next bit is a total spoiler and I was very tempted not to include
https://www.tor.com/2013/10/30/brimstone-and-marmalade-aaron-corwin/
OoooOO I nearly forgot about this one! Damage by David Levine. This centres the story of an AI of a military ship in an intergalactic war who falls in love with her feckwit of a pilot and the decisions that the AI must come to. Story link also available: https://www.tor.com/2015/01/21/damage-david-levine/ (At this point of the review I am starting to wonder just how many of the stories are freely available online lol )
There was also one by one of my favourite authors and it explores different species and how they developed to navigate space. And it too is available to checkout free online! :)
A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel' by Yoon Ha Lee at link:
https://www.tor.com/2011/08/10/a-vector-alphabet-of-interstellar-travel/
There is also a very cute lgbtq story with a little twist in its werecub tail from another new author to me , Dellamonica and it too is available online :)
https://www.tor.com/2010/07/28/the-cage/
And probably one of the most impactful stories on the list is also a deeply harrowing one: 'The Devil in America' by Kai Ashante Wilson, is an intensely pointed and relevant read, set just after the civil war, it delves into the impacts and legacy of slavery across centuries in a story embedded with magic.
Link https://www.tor.com/2014/04/02/the-devil-in-america-kai-ashante-wilson/
Waiting on a Bright Moon by JY Yang, was also another one I want to highlight. It was a beautiful and I want to say lyrical short story but it does involve the use of song magic to form connection portals so the pun quotient my be too high. The world building is pretty bare, even for a short story, but this is one where language and feel takes centre place. There are also points where some of the text is in Chinese and if you can read it, it most definitely would have added a dimension but unable to do so, I still found that I could enjoy the main passage lyricism without detraction just not with the plus :)
https://www.tor.com/2017/07/12/waiting-on-a-bright-moon/
Finally. I have to add The City Born Great by N. K. Jemisin is as always freakin great! I have read this short story a couple of times in other anthologies and it remains one of my firm favourites.
"In this standalone short story by N. K. Jemisin, ...the winner of this year’s Hugo Award for Best Novel, New York City is about to go through a few changes. Like all great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it must be born; but there are ancient enemies who cannot tolerate new life. Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife… and how well he can learn to sing the city’s mighty song."
https://www.tor.com/2016/09/28/the-city-born-great/
There were other stories that also thoroughly enjoyable or thought provoking but this selection I felt highlighted the range to be found and I am sleepy now so will finish here :)