Short Stories – Required Reading

Fantasy, Fiction, LGBTQIA+, Short Stories, Young Adult

Vampires Never Get Old

September 29, 2020October 16, 2020 Shay Shortt

Edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker

ISBN 9781250230003

“There is no one way to write the vampire. After all, a being with the power to shape-shift should wear many faces and tell many tales.”

Vampires Never Get Old brings together a variety of stars from the world of young adult fiction to provide fresh takes on the vampire story, with a particular focus on diversity and inclusion. The collection consists of eleven short stories, each with their own spin on the vampire mythology. To each story the editors add a quick note on the aspects of the vampire tradition used, transformed, or subverted in that tale. The stories include a wide variety of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC protagonists, as well as a fat slayer and a vampire with a disability.

For unique form and dark and creepy vibes, I want to call out “Mirrors, Windows & Selfies” by Mark Oshiro. The story is written in the form of an online diary or blog, but the commenters perceive it as a work of ongoing fiction, which gains in popularity over time. The writer is a young vampire who was born, not made, and although I really hate this trope, I still enjoyed Oshiro’s execution. Cisco has been moved around the country his entire life by his vampire parents, but as he nears adulthood, he begins to question the secrecy and the rules, and wonders why exactly his parents have been keeping him hidden and isolated from vampire society.

Perhaps the most chilling tale is “In Kind” by Kayla Whaley, a dark revenge fantasy in which a disabled teenage girl is murdered by her father, an act which the press dubs a “mercy killing.” Grace then faces the choice about whether to use her new powers to punish her father for what he has done. The story is also notable in that while becoming a vampire makes Grace stronger and more powerful in many ways, it is not able to restore her ability to walk. Her vampirism is empowering, without being a miracle cure for her disability, which is a core part of her identity.

The funniest story belongs to Samira Ahmed, who contributes “A Guidebook for the Newly Sired Desi Vampire.” A brand new vampire wakes up alone in a dark warehouse, and has to undergo Vampire Orientation 101 by Vampersand, a newly minted vampire tech start up for young Indian vampires who have been unexpectedly turned by careless British vampire tourists. Filled with snark and anticolonial bite, this was the only story that made me laugh out loud.

Most of the stories stand alone well, but several had strong potential as novel starters. In particular, I would definitely read a f/f novel with a vampire and a slayer, something that Julie Murphy explores in “Senior Year Sucks,” and which Victoria Schwab also features in her tale, “First Kill.” However, the stand out in this regard was absolutely “The House of Black Sapphires” by Dhonielle Clayton, in which the Turner women return to New Orleans’ Eternal Ward after centuries away. Descended from vampires, but distinct, Eternals can only be killed by Shadow Barons, but none of the Turner girls have ever met one until they return to their mother’s home in New Orleans, and discover that their mother was once in love with a Shadow Baron herself. This story had atmosphere and world-building potential galore, and I would dearly love to read an entire novel set in this world.

Vampires Never Get Olds marks a delightful return to the mythology of vampires, filled with unique tales and fun little extra nuggets. Read through the author bios to find out each contributor’s favourite vampire, and check out the copyright page for a vampire-themed book curse! If like me you’ve been missing vampires, this collection might just quench your thirst, at least for a while.

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For more vampires, you might also like:

Urban Fantasy Vampires

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Certain Dark Things

Fiction, LGBTQIA+, Short Stories, Young Adult

Fresh Ink

August 28, 2018August 28, 2018 Shay Shortt

Edited by Lamar Giles

ISBN 978-1-5427-6628-3

Disclaimer: I received a free advance review copy of this title from the publisher at ALA Annual 2018.

“It became pretty freaking clear that, book after book, adventure after adventure, the heroes weren’t like me at all.” –Lamar Giles

Fresh Ink is collection of short fiction highlighting diverse voices, put together by Lamar Giles, who is credited as one of the founders of the We Need Diverse Books movement. The majority of the stories are contemporary, with a strong focus on romance, but historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy are also included. The short format also includes one comic, and one play. With the exception of the reprint of “Tags” by Walter Dean Myer—to whose memory the collection is dedicated—the stories were written for this anthology. Contributor Aminah Mae Safi won a contest seeking new writers to feature in the book.

Everyone will have different favourites in a short story collection, and for me there were a few standouts in Fresh Ink. Sara Farizan, author of Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, and If You Could Be Mine, offers up “Why I Learned to Cook,” the touching story of a bisexual Persian girl who is out to most of the people in her life, but struggling with how to tell her grandmother, whose rejection she fears. This one put tears in my eyes. I was also gripped by “Catch, Pull, Drive” by Schuyler Bailar, a transgender athlete who draws on his own experiences in a tense, first person narrative about a high school swimmer facing down the first day of practice after coming out as trans on Facebook. Both writers spoke at ALA Annual 2018, along with Malinda Lo, author of Ash and Adaptation, who contributed “Meet Cute,” a story about two girls who fall for one another in line at a fan convention, one dressed as Agent Scully, the other as gender-flipped Sulu.

The collection comes to a strong close with “Super Human” by Nicola Yoon, author of The Sun is Also a Star, and Everything, Everything. The world it is set in seems much like our own, but featuring a super hero who has become disillusioned with the people he is trying to save. The point of view is that of the young woman who has been given the seemingly impossible task of convincing X that humanity is still worth saving. But first she must get X to tell her why he has given up hope. This little story packs a big punch, and nicely rounds out an anthology that offers a variety of short fiction which allows diverse readers to see themselves reflected, often in the words of an author who shares their particular experiences.

Fiction, Historical Fiction, Novella, Short Stories, Speculative Fiction

Seven Stones to Stand or Fall

August 15, 2017August 15, 2017 Shay Shortt

by Diana Gabaldon

ISBN 978-0-399-59342-0

Seven Stones to Stand or Fall contains seven works of short fiction set in the world of Outlander, including two that have never been previously published. The stories stretch across the span of the main series, filling in gaps here and there. The earliest story is a prequel set in 1740, covering Jamie Fraser and Ian Murray’s time as mercenaries in France. The latest recounts the story of how Roger Wakefield was orphaned during the London Blitz. The pieces range in length from long short story to meaty novella, and deal largely with secondary characters.

Diana Gabaldon is a very detail-oriented person, and her introduction helpfully contextualizes all of the stories, providing information about where they fit in the series timeline, which characters they deal with, and where they were originally published (if applicable). Given that the main series now stretches to eight books, and with several Lord John books on the market, this introduction will prove crucial for folks like me, who have not read the other books in a while.

For my own sanity, I threw over the arrangement of the novellas in the book, and used the information provided in the introduction to read the stories in chronological order. (If you’d like to do this as well, the order is: Virgins, A Fugitive Green, The Custom of the Army, A Plague of Zombies, Besieged, The Space Between, and A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows.) This had the distinctly beneficial effect of allowing me to keep events and people relatively straight, and also bracketed the book with the two stories I was most interested in reading. The only downside to this order was that things got a little Lord John heavy in the middle, with three stories in a row based on his exploits.

Although many of these stories were originally published in anthologies where they would theoretically be read as standalones, many of them make most sense in the context of the series as a whole. However, my personal favourite in the collection was A Fugitive Green, one of the two original stories, and one which I think stands alone better than many of the others. It recounts the exploits of Minnie, a teenage forger living in Paris with her English father, who brought her into the family business. Readers of the series will know that Minnie eventually finds herself married to an English lord, and A Fugitive Green reveals just how that unlikely event came about.

Given the range of the timeline and characters covered in Seven Stones to Stand or Fall, it is unsurprising that the stories vary widely in tone and content. Some touch more on the supernatural elements of the series, and others are more pure historical fiction. Lord John’s stories tend towards military exploits and mysteries. In short, there is a little something for everyone, with the caveat that I don’t think this is how I would recommend introducing anyone to the world of Outlander. The main series is a much better place to start.

Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Fiction, Graphic Novel, Short Stories

All Hallow’s Read: Troll Bridge

October 27, 2016November 15, 2016 Shay Shortt

Original Story by Neil Gaiman

Adapted by Colleen Doran

ISBN 978-1-50670-008-3

“It is good for children to find themselves facing the elements of a fairy tale. They are well equipped to deal with these.”

A young boy in rural England follows an abandoned train track until he crosses under a bridge. There he meets the troll, who declares that he will eat the boy for daring to enter his domain. But the boy is clever and strikes a bargain with the troll, promising to return to be eaten later, after he has lived more of life. After all, someone who has read books, and flown on airplanes, and seen America must be tastier than a little boy who has done none of these things. But as he grows up, the boy becomes desperate to renege on his bargain.

Troll Bridge is a graphic novel based on Neil Gaiman’s 1993 short story of the same title. This new edition from Dark Horse was adapted and illustrated by Colleen Doran. Gaiman’s original story can be found in his short story collection Smoke and Mirrors. It is a dark fairy tale that—in the manner of many Gaiman stories—is about children, but not for them. The boy starts out clever and beguiling, talking the troll out of eating him immediately. But that survival instinct takes a dark turn as he grows up and goes to ever greater lengths to avoid being consumed. The little boy who seems resourceful to escape the troll becomes the kind of teenager who describes his first love in terms that make your skin crawl: “I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.”

Doran’s work suits the atmosphere of the tale well, equally capable of capturing the fairy tale and the gothic. Some sections have distinct comic-book style panels, but Doran also incorporates large illustrative spreads that suit the fairy tale vibe. Her troll is grotesque and monstrous, and the colours of the illustrations become progressively darker as the boy grows up and innocence recedes. In fact, this is Doran’s second crack at Troll Bridge; in an interview with Comic Book Resources, Doran discusses making an initial pen-and-ink attempt at it in the 1990s.

A creepy adult fairy tale about a dark coming-of-age, Troll Bridge is a perfect fit for an All Hallow’s Read.

All Hallow’s Read is an initiative by Neil Gaiman to encourage readers to share scary books at Halloween. Learn more at: http://www.allhallowsread.com/

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You might also like The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Canadian, Fiction, Pandemic, Short Stories

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures

August 25, 2016September 22, 2020 Shay Shortt

by Vincent Lam

ISBN 9780385661447

“Her family, she said, was modern in what they wanted for her education, and old-fashioned in what they imagined for her husband.”

Four young medical school students start out on the road to becoming doctors, sure of their nobility of purpose and their calling, the real and trying rigours of the medical profession still ahead of them. Ming, Fitz, Sri, and Chen come from different backgrounds and have different career paths awaiting them. In a series of twelve interlinked short stories, Dr. Vincent Lam takes the reader behind the scenes of the medical world, from medical school to residency to the emergency room and the operating room. He also draws on his experience in international air evacuation medicine and his knowledge of influenza pandemics to create richly detailed fictional accounts.

Lam touches on a lot key moments in a doctor’s medical career, from getting accepted to medical school, to the first cadaver lab, to the long nights of residency, losing a patient, and even working during a pandemic. “Contact Tracing,” the story about the SARS outbreak, holds up remarkably well over a decade later, perhaps because it could really be the story of any unexpected pandemic.

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures also touches on important cultural issues. In “Eli” Fitz is called on to treat a patient who he believes to have been the victim of police brutality. He must decide if he is willing to be complicit in helping them cover up the abuse, or if he has the strength of character to stand up to them. In “Winston” Sri is faced with a patient who has had a mental break down. When Winston fails to return to the hospital for follow-up care, Sri has to choose between letting the case go, and stepping outside the usual bounds of the doctor-patient relationship to track down his charge.

For fans of Lam’s 2012 novel, The Headmaster’s Wager, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures also contains “A Long Migration” in which Chen is called on to care for his ailing grandfather. He travels to Australia, where his family depends on him to call them in from around the world in time to attend the patriarch’s last moments. His grandfather, Percival Chen, is the protagonist of Lam’s novel, where he featured as the gambling, womanizing headmaster of an English school in Saigon. But in “A Long Migration,” he is an old man in his last days, considering his life and possible conversion to Christianity.

Lam’s characters are complicated and flawed, fallible humans who have been trusted with unthinkable responsibility, and faced with terrible dilemmas. This adds depth to the rich detail of the author’s own medical experience, making for an intriguing collection.

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You might also like When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Fiction, Short Stories, Speculative Fiction, Steampunk

Final Flight

May 10, 2016May 10, 2016 Shay Shortt

by Beth Cato

eISBN 9780062411280

“This is sedition, Mr. Hue. We’re not merely subverting the command of a Clockwork Dagger, but Queen Evandia herself. Recollect the so-called traitors we often see hanged near ports. Many of them die on hearsay alone. How will we be judged?”

No sooner had he rid himself and his airship of the troublesome medician Octavia Butler, and the spy Alonzo Garrett, Captain Hue finds the Argus commandeered by the Caskentian government for a secret mission. With Clockwork Daggers and royal soldiers aboard the ship, Captain Hue finds that he has no choice but to fly towards the Waste, bearing a cargo that could change the course of the war. But the further they fly, the less certain he is they will ever return, and worse, the Crown seems to have designs on his bright young son, Sheridan.

Final Flight marks a brief return to some minor characters who appeared in The Clockwork Dagger, and tells the story of a man forced to choose between his loyalty and the lives his obedience may cost. His son, his crew, and the people of the Waste will all pay the price of whatever decision he makes when he realizes the terrible cargo that has been brought aboard his ship. Worse, its presence on board necessitates the removal of the Argus’ aether magi, lest the artifact drive them mad, and so the ship is flying blind into dangerous territory. The calculating Mrs. Starling is also paying an unusual amount of attention to Captain Hue’s fourteen-year-old son, Sheridan, a canny young man who is only a year away from being eligible for conscription into military service. One step out of line could cost Captain Hue the person he loves most, making the stakes of this little adventure extremely high.

The Kindle edition is rather shorter than you initially expect; the second half of the file is a tantalizing sneak peek at Beth Cato’s upcoming novel, Breath of Earth, which is about a lone female geomancer on the eve of San Francisco’s catastrophic 1906 earthquake. But that minor disappointment aside, Final Flight provides one more adventure-filled glimpse into the world of The Clockwork Dagger.

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You might also like Wings of Sorrow and Bone by Beth Cato

Fiction, Short Stories

The Tsar of Love and Techno

October 15, 2015October 14, 2015 Shay Shortt

by Anthony Marra

ISBN 978-0-77043643-8

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this book at ALA Annual 2015. All quotes are based on an uncorrected text.

“That morning, the last images of Vaska’s face had been scratched into oblivion with a one ruble coin. That afternoon, I began to paint him into everything.”

From Grozny in the south, through St. Petersburg, and on to Kirovsk in the high Arctic, a painting of a field—a minor work by a Chechen master—connects a Soviet-era censor to a blind art historian, and a Russian oligarch to the granddaughter of a disgraced prima ballerina. A Russian soldier is killed in the field the painting depicts, and his former lover sets out for war-torn Grozny, determined to purchase the piece. In a series of nine interlinked short stories, three of which have been previously published, Anthony Marra depicts the many compromises and disappointments of ordinary Russians as they struggle under Communism, and then continue to struggle once they have thrown it off.

Beginning in Leningrad in 1937, a censor who once dreamed of being an artist is charged with expunging enemies of the state from official photographs and paintings. He is even required to insert the image of a party boss into a painting, defacing the work of a Chechen master. Unbeknownst to his superiors, for every person he disappears, he paints the brother he betrayed somewhere into the background of the photo. It seems as if he will get away with this small act of defiance indefinitely, until he becomes fascinated by the photo of a disgraced ballerina. Decades later and a thousand kilometres away, Kolya returns home from the war in Chechnya to the Siberian mining town of Kirovsk, only to discover that his high school girlfriend has married the thirteenth richest man in Russia, and become a beauty queen and movie star. In Grozny, an art historian blinded by the explosion that destroyed the museum where she worked despairs of ever finishing her dissertation on the censor who painted a mysterious man into all of his works because she cannot afford the surgery necessary to restore her sight.

Anthony Marra takes these many disparate events, and weaves them together into a portrait of the hushed acts of complicity and rebellion that are necessary to negotiate life in Russia. In addition to the pleasure of Marra’s beautifully rendered prose, there is the anticipation of finding the connection between the assorted tales. Just when it seems like there is no link to the previous stories, Marra sweeps in and ties it all together. He even manages to slip in the occasional, passing reference to familiar figures from A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, his striking 2013 debut novel, which won numerous fiction awards. The Tsar of Love and Techno has the same heart-breaking melancholy and absurd dark humour here that was present in his phenomenal novel, and his powers of description are strongly in evidence. Particularly exceptional is the second story, “Granddaughters,” which uses the collective voice to share the disappointments of six women who live ordinary lives in Kirovsk while they watch one of their classmates rise to fame and fortune.

As a novel, these events would be loose, somewhat shapeless, and stylistically uneven. As short stories, they are deeply interconnected, and reflect the variety of experience in a country with a turbulent history. The connections feel natural rather than forced, and the collective result is greater than the sum of its parts.

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You might also like An Italian Wife by Ann Hood

Fiction, Short Stories, Speculative Fiction, Urban Fantasy

Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson

June 9, 2015June 6, 2015 Shay Shortt

by Patricia Briggs

eISBN 978-1-101-60950-7

“Humans, in her experience, were weak and fragile things prone to dying and breeding with about the same frequency.”

As the subtitle of this short story collection might imply, Patricia Briggs’ popular protagonist, Mercy Thompson, does not feature at all in many of the stories in Shifting Shadows, or appears only in passing, or by mention. Rather, many of the stories feature secondary or other minor characters from the series, allowing them to briefly take centre stage. The collection consists of four new stories, and six previously published works, along with two bonus scenes, outtakes from drafts of Silver Borne and Night Broken. Each work is introduced and contextualized by the author, along with a note about where it fits in the series timeline.

Perhaps the best of these is the previously published “Alpha and Omega” which follows Bran’s son Charles to Chicago during the events of Moon Called, where he meets his new mate, the Omega wolf Anna. Charles and Anna jump to life on the page, with fantastic chemistry, and Briggs’ fans can be forever grateful that her editor took one look at the story, and asked Briggs if she could write Charles and Anna their own series, leading to the publication of Cry Wolf in 2008.

“Seeing Eye”, featuring the white witch Moira and Tom of the Emerald City Pack, has a similar energy, and fans have long been hanging on Briggs’ promise that she will write more about them (perhaps their own series?) in the future. Moira and Tom first appeared together as a couple in Hunting Ground, but “Seeing Eye” goes back before the events of Moon Called, to their first meeting, and the realization that Tom can be Moira’s eyes. This tantalizing story will only makes fans hungrier for their story to get its own book.

Another standout is “Roses in Winter”, which finally follows up with Kara, the youngest known survivor of a werewolf attack, whose father approaches Mercy for help in Blood Bound. In addition to revealing the fate of an off-page character who sparked a great deal of curiosity among fans, “Roses in Winter” also develops another popular character, Asil, who has been living with the Marrok’s pack for fifteen years, expecting a death which is slow to come. While “Alpha and Omega” and “Seeing Eye” were both previously published, “Roses in Winter” is one of the new stories in this collection.

Some of the stories in Shifting Shadows are beginnings and stand alone quite well. Others gain most of their resonance through their connection to Briggs’ larger world, which fans have come to know and love. In general, the stronger stories are those which feature popular series characters who don’t normally star. Warren gets his own detective story in “In Red, With Pearls” and “Silver” delivers Samuel and Ariana’s tragic backstory, only hinted at in the series. The exception to this rule is “Redemption,” a story about how Ben’s protective pack instincts are slowly eroding his misogyny, which should be redemptive as the title suggest, but instead is unfortunately bland. However, the majority of the stories in the collection are interesting either for what they reveal about some of our favourite characters, or the glimpse they offer into a corner of Mercy’s world that we don’t normally get to see.