I'm not normally too into short story collections (don't I say this in every short story collection review? I think I do), but years ago I read one called Words of the Witches. It had some of the best fantasy short stories I ever read. I've been looking for some sort of sequel ever since. Well, now here's one!
Stories included here:
- Dead and (Mostly) Gone features a future world where a witch works for the police, summoning the spirits of the dead to find out information. Our narrator is pretty closed to burned out on the job, until the chief comes to her with a case that's personal for him...
- Silkie's Diary is the diary of an 18-year-old (or so) deaf selkie girl living with her adoptive family and working in their fishing business. She's just been dumped by her boyfriend for being more heroic than he is (hey, it's her job to save people!), and goes looking for other selkies...and has a heroic moment again. Very cool girl, that Silkie. Wouldn't mind reading more about her someday.
- A Valkyrie Among Jews features a heroine of Jewish extraction and pagan religion- with a fondness for Wagner- working at a Jewish retirement home while working on her own confused religious issues.
- Draw Down is what happens when an Irish witch comes to the Old West, and the sheriff mediates the inevitable religious dispute.
- A Nose For Magic features a computer guy wtih the title talent meeting a friendly witch who wants to help him with the curse his ex just put on him. Fun one to read.
- From Our Kinds to Yours is a futuristic tale, featuring people becoming addicted to buying products from corporate-run towns. There isn't a solution to it, exactly, but it ends on a note of hope. (And there's a concept likely to happen in real life someday...) Doesn't really intermix the spirituality with the story so much, though.
- Under a Double Rainbow is...well, lesbian rainbow porn at a GoddessFest in Kansas. A bit silly for my taste, but with a good message.
- Selk River features a grieving widow/mother roaming around her dead husband's home country of Iceland in a haze. She meets a very unexpected person who may very well relate to her grief.
- The Rune Hag's Daughter features a chick who's obligated to have a child- but she got raped and impregnated by it in the past (she miscarried) and doesn't want a man again. This is how she solves the problem.
- The Bitter Herbs of Camelot features an old witch woman who deals in death magic (especially abortions) and her friend dying of AIDS who lives with her. It's a pretty touching tale.
- We Have Come Home is a sad one about planetary immigration, when teachers left their original planet with their students before the parents did...and then the parents don't make it.
- Seabird features a divorced shaman living in the magic-friendly north visiting his daughter in the south. The mother in it is pretty stereotypically heinous (sigh, even her boyfriend doesn't agree with how she acts. Why is he still with her?), and Dad finds himself contemplating doing what he said he wouldn't do. Like Silkie's Diary, this is a world I'd like to return to again.
- Black Doe "was written in response to a friend's challenge to write something about 'survivor's guilt over food poisoning and a bad haircut.'" And boy, does the author make it work, into a tale about a tribeswoman who gets exiled for the accidental death of her husband's first wife's child. Trayja has no love for her abusive husband or for being a second wife (due to her father's shame, she had to settle), and appeals to the gods for help. This has unexpected results that work out in intriguing and VERY surprising ways.
Five stars. Awesome.
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