![]() Lily Yu – The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees If this were the beginning of a novel or novella, I would buy it in a heartbeat.The way it is, I’m a bit sorry that I don’t know how it all ends… Rating: 8,5/10Į. I loved this story so much that I was a bit baffled by the abrupt and rather cliffhanger-y ending. What started out as a hilarious story of a gentleman trying to keep his house in order turns into a creepy hunt for a larger and larger black spot. In fact, whenever you look away or so much as blink (Doctor Who, anyone?), the spot appears in a different place. An aristocrat and his butler are trying to deal with a mysterious black spot that appears on the table cloth but that won’t stay there. One of my biggest worries was that the titular Unnatural Creatures would be dealt with only in a Very Serious fashion, but this little story took turns in making me chuckle and horrified. I am not kidding, this is the actual title of the first story, and it set the perfect tone and mood for this collection. That just goes to show how timeless stories are and how undying our love for the fantastic. I had no idea (and wouldn’t have guessed from the stories themselves) that some of them were first published over 100 years ago. At the very end, the list of contributors and the date of publication for each short story, offered another surprise. But Samuel Delany’s adventure short story took me by surprise, as did Grahan Wilsons “Inksplot”. I wasn’t surprised to love the stories by Nalo Hopkinson and Diana Wynne Jones the most, as these are two writers who have already stolen my heart with their novels. Different as they are in tone, style, and theme, these are all brilliant stories by fantastic writers that will – one day – make a great storybook for my own children. That was the case here as well, but the good stories easily outweighed the bad ones, and almost every single unnatural creature was a joy to discovery. I am not a big short story reader, even less a reader of collections, because even if I love one or two stories, I inevitable dislike others. This was an unexptected and incredibly pleasant surprise. Sales of Unnatural Creatures benefit 826DC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students in their creative and expository writing, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Nesbit, Diana Wynne Jones, Gahan Wilson, and other literary luminaries contribute to the anthology. The magical creatures range from werewolves to sunbirds to beings never before classified. The sixteen stories gathered by Gaiman, winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards, range from the whimsical to the terrifying. Unnatural Creatures is a collection of short stories about the fantastical things that exist only in our minds-collected and introduced by beloved New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman. (eds.) Neil Gaiman, Maria Dahvana Headleyįirst sentence: (from the introduction) When I was a boy, the best place in the world was in London, a short walk from South Kensington Station. It’s good to know your readers can rely on you even when we don’t read your own work. But short stories came to save me! I picked this up on a whim – and because Neil selected these stories – and from the first page of the first story I was all in. I think Cat Valente is at least partially to blame because, let’s face it, after reading her work, everything else is a little bland im comparison. Turns out my reading slump is still going on in the back of my brain. ![]()
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