Just finished the first volume of Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, an anthology by Mike Allen. This one came out in 2008, and is very loosely themed around fire, gears and resurrection, with an unconventional introduction about a phoenix and a magical train.
The contributing authors (or "pinions" as Allen calls them), features many of the decade's big names in SFF and horror. Catherynne Valente's "The City of Blind Delight" is most closely tied to the themes and has the rich, multisensory charm for which she is known. Cats Rambo ("The Drew Drop Coffee Lounge") and Sparks ("Palisade") both make fine appearances, and Tanith Lee provides a characteristically glamorous look at another world where all the gender and sex stuff has Gone A Bit Wrong ("The Woman"), though not without a few silver linings!
There are a lot of dystopias here, and though in most cases the promised element of beauty is certainly there, as the anthology proceeded through one awful future or parallel world after another I did struggle with the downbeat vibe. There are also a couple of high fantasy numbers that have dated badly, both as regards shallow depiction of women and/or rape and in terms of general cliched style (though I guess anyone who deliberately reads a story called "Choosers of the Slain" deserves what they get).
My favourite stories were both set in what is pessimistically referred to as the "real world": Michael J. DeLuca's "The Tarrying Messenger", about a self-righteous student on a cycling tour who comes upon a strange form of evangelism in the Arizona desert, has beautiful writing of a kind that seems to have fallen from fashion lately, and which draws a strong feeling of magic from beautiful, sharp observations of places and buildings (and, of course, people). And I also liked "The Occultation", an early one by Laird Barron. Like many Europeans I am a bit obsessed with American motel culture, especially when things get ghostly.
And finally Leah Bobet's "Bell, Book and Candle" also deserves a mention. None of the main characters in it are truly human but Bobet makes the reader identify with them as if they were, while still keeping their essential otherness and weirdness intact. That's difficult to achieve - so difficult, in fact, that I tend to avoid books with casts of non-human characters.
Anyway, although I'm by no means a fan of all speculative fiction - I skew towards horror and dark fantasy - the quality in most of these stories is high, there's plenty of variety, and I sense I will be reviewing more of these books in future! I also recommend ordering directly from Mythic Delirium: mine crossed the Atlantic impressively fast and with a signed dedication!
https://mythicdelirium.com/clockwork-phoenix-tales-of-beauty-and-strangeness
#MikeAllen #LairdBarron #LeahBobet #CatSparks #CatRambo #CatherynneValente #TanithLee
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