I am not usually a fan of short stories, but this collection is an exception. I was blown away by the stories in this book, especially the modern take on Arthur, which is more of a novella than a short story. I also loved the story of the Glass Saints... their description (and the entire story really), just fascinated me. It was so different and unusual. I love how the author took things myths and fairy tales we know and turned them sideways in so many of the stories. Rich, powerful, and highly recommended. ( )

‘’My own curse had been silence. It’s common enough, particularly for girls. We’re so often encouraged not to speak, and that practiced quiet makes it easy for a curse to steal our voices.’’

16 stories of women on the brink of change. 16 myths inspired by fairytales and legends, retold for contemporary readers who KNOW that every civilisation is based on the enticing, enchanting blend of facts and fiction. From Arthurian legends to anecdotes from the Lives of Saints, Kat Howard creates a powerful literary potion that transports us to the centre of mythical worlds that co-exist within our mundane reality. Aspiring writers who wish to retell the myths that shaped our world, THIS is how it’s done. Pay attention…

A Life in Fictions: A writer’s muse narrates the different roles attributed to her. A poignant, symbolic piece on the danger of losing our personality.

The Saint of the Sidewalks: The musings of an urban, unwilling ‘’saint’’. Extremely unique.

Maiden, Hunter, Beast: A moving retelling of the myth of the Maiden and the Unicorn.

‘’The scent of apples is everywhere. Cloying and too sweet. The thick white of their blossoms, the sharp crispness of the fruit. the heady cider of the overripe bodies fallen to the ground. The rot where they lie. It should be impossible for each version of the fruit to exist at once, all together, but really, everything about this should be impossible.’’

Once, Future: An astonishing retelling of the Arthurian legend, set in a charismatic university community. A professor assigns roles to her students. Arthur, Mordred, Lancelot, Nimue, but above all, Morgan. She is the heart of the story and she is about to steal your heart. This collection is an A+ from this story alone.

Translatio Corporis: A city lost in translation…

‘’What kind of story do you tell about a garden of dead girls?’’

‘’They spoke of a storm, and wind and rain washed over me, soaking my skin. They spoke of betrayal, the death of love, and my mouth ran red with blood, thick and salt.
They whispered of vengeance, and my legs ached from the chase, and the howls of the hunted echoed in my ears. They told me of falling beneath the ground and dreaming the graves that covered them. Beloved sisters.’’

Dreaming Like a Ghost: A woman keeps on finding traces of the people who inhabited her new apartment, and befriends a ghost residing in a mysterious graveyard. Perfection.

‘’Sleep is dying, and has been for a long time, now through uncounted ticks of clocks and the flickers of thousands of too-brief candles. Sleep is dying, a slow exsanguination of dreams, a storm-tossed suffocation of nightmares. Sleep is dying, and she is not alone in her throes.’’

Murdered Sleep: A world made of dreams, masked dancers, dying flames, pagan deities and the choice between staying and leaving.

The Speaking Bone: An island made of bones which speak at dawn, and sing to the pilgrims…

‘’There are rituals. Traditions. A curse, once broken, breaks easier a second time. Death becomes one hundred years of sleep, becomes one thousand and one nights telling stories. We know what our curses are when we see them, and we know their undoing.’’

Those Are Pearls: A story created by the finest parts of our beloved fairytales. Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Snow Queen, Eliza and the Swans, all dancers in a haunting dance.

All of Our Past Places: A young woman tries to find her best friend through ancient maps. A moving story about friendship and the enchanting science of cartography.

‘’It was growing late, the approaching winter bringing on the darkness sooner and sooner each day. They sky was a cauldron of clouds, slate splotches pushed about by the wind. There were streaks on the sand, patterns left by the wind. the air felt thick and heavy, like a storm coming in.’’

Saints’ Tide: A haunting tale with a distinctive Celtic atmosphere of a community where the saints can be seen, where each resident can become a saint at the time of their birth. A baby is born, and the two women who are its guardians must contemplate the sacrifice required by their faith. A story about motherhood, tradition and sacrifice.

‘’Even in his bird form, Sweeney recognised New York as a city of the mad. Not that one needed to be crazy to be there, or that extended residency was a contributing factor to lunacy of some sort, but living there - thriving there - took a particular form of madness.
Or caused it. Sweeney had not yet decided which.’’

Painted Birds and Shivered Bones: Sweeney has been cursed to turn into a bird. Hiding in the parks of New York, he finds his fate changed when an artist unwittingly decides to make him her model. A moving retelling of the Irish myth of Mad Sweeney.

Returned: The musings of Sleeping Beauty in a sensual, dark lullaby.

The Calendar of Saints: Obscure saints, fictional saints. Saints that lived and suffered the human fate.

The Green Knight’s Wife: The wife who resides in a castle that has become Death’s playground.

‘’Half Sick of Shadows
A boat rests beneath a willow tree.
Scattered near the boat are pieces of discarded armour.
Among them, the white shield, three bends gules, of Sir
Lancelot.
A white dress drapes the armour.
The lady is in the water, not drowned, but smiling.
The light on the water is brilliant, bright glints like
scattered diamonds. Like the pieces of a shattered mirror.’’

Breaking the Frame: A hypnotic tribute to the women who shaped our tales. Persephone, Delilah, Dafne, Ophelia, Beauty, Euridice, Ariadne, Elaine.

‘’Because silence was one of the traditional curses, there was already a plethora of known ways to break it: I could weave or sew a certain number of shirts out of some material rough enough to cut my hands and stain the fabric with my blood, all without weeping. I could endure a loveless relationship for a year and a day. I could perform some tremendously useless task: find one mis-sorted seed in a barrel of its near-identical cousins and nurse the plant to flowering, my voice to return with it blooming.’’

My reviews can also be found on https://theopinionatedreaderblog.wordpress.com/ ( )

OK, I admit it, that name made me think of the meme about your YA novel name. Short stories riffing off of fantasy tropes, or at least written as if they are in narrative self-consciousness—a couple involve a woman touring through different narratives, none of which quite fit her. The longest, in which an attempt to retell the Arthur story makes itself real, was my favorite. I think I like Howard best at a longer length, when she can develop themes beyond “stories are powerful/dangerous/seductive.” ( )

This collection of fantasy-adjacent short stories was full of really fascinating ideas and premises, all retelling and reshaping myths, legends, and the ideas and tropes contained within them. While the collection was hit and miss for me, with some stories working much better than others, unfortunately on the whole most of them simply didn't land. For most of the stories I was thrilled and enchanted by the premise, by the idea of whatever reworking Howard was doing in that tale, but at the end of the story I didn't feel like I got much out of it beyond that premise. It was as if the interesting bit was solely the "what if," and the execution of the full story around the what-if was never as strong as the hook. Disappointing, but also: YMMV. I have a long track record of not loving short stories, so if you *do* love them, this collection may work much better for you. ( )