Short story collections are always a hit or miss situation. Even with a familiar author, they can jump genres, throw in weak stories to bulk the page count, or get monotonous if the stories are all in the same vein - but I was pleasantly surprised to find Jemisin’s collection to be packed full of great stories. Of the 22 stories contained herein, there was only one that I felt I struggled with - and that wasn’t so much the story, but the fragmented e-report style of narration that was a challenge to navigate in terms of storyline. The rest of the tales ranged from traditional-feeling mediaeval fantasies to futuristic missives of an abandoned and dystopian Earth, all with predominantly Black or BIPOC characters leading the way through narratives grounded by Jemisin’s ever-shifting (but continually strong and engaging) voice. My favourite story (expectedly) was that which introduced readers to her living cities motif that would later become the Great Cities series, based on the awakening of New York, but I was pleased to see her take on genres that are absent in her longer novels. Treading the streets of a flooded New Orleans (with lurking beasts in the waters), revolting against the takeover of parasitic Masters, and bringing the quiet magic home in realistic settings, it is clear that she is a voice to be reckoned with in the Fantasy genre, and we can only hope for more of this calibre from her is to come. ( )

10 gazillion stars. The writing goddess strikes again. ( )

A solid collection, with some real bangers in the back half! Jemisin's fantasy is great, but I think the more sci-fi mood stories were some of the highlights. And it ends super strong - both 'On the Banks of the River Lex' and 'Sinners, Saints, Dragons, And Haints...' were heartbreaking and uplifting! I'll surely read both of them again. ( )

First of all, I’d like to thank Vroman’s Bookstore of Pasadena, California, for sending me this book. I don’t doubt for a moment that I never would have found my way to these fascinating, metaphorical stories, told in N.K. Jemisin’s meticulous, crystalline, prose without Vroman’s generosity. The simple fact of the matter is that with very few exceptions, science fiction and fantasy have never been my cup of tea. I bear the genre no intellectual or readerly malice—it was just never something I developed an interest in reading.

So, I make an odd choice to receive, read, and consequently review a book like this one. Now that I’ve said that, I want to be very careful not to pigeonhole a writer of Ms. Jemisin’s talent and intelligence in the box that a genre identification can create; it is worth mentioning, in this connection, however, that she has apparently won all the major awards—Hugo, Nebula, and Locus—conferred on writers of science fiction and fantasy. Nonetheless, these are allegorical stories rife with highly literate and allusive plots and characterizations; they are more akin to what are called, at least in a course I took in one of this nation’s best liberal arts colleges, “novels of ideas.” This is a short story collection, so I suppose one would call these “stories of ideas.”

My own frame of reference for understanding these stories springs from philosophical allegories in fiction. But I also see them through the extremely limited frame of reference that my small amount of reading in science fiction—to wit, Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, furnishes me. To evaluate Ms. Jemisin’s stories through the lens of my experience of these two authors is of course reductive. I will say this, though: I’ve read most of Mr. Dick’s novels twice, and their salient characteristic, in my experience, is their concern with what it is that makes us human. You may recall, if you’ve read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or seen the movie which sprang from it, Blade Runner, that the means to discover whether or not someone was a replicant (a cybernetic organism) was to test him or her for empathy. I rest my case.

A similar concern for humanity and humanness pervade Ms. Jemisin’s stories. The first story in the collection, “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” describes a city called Um-Helat that by any standard is a utopia—but for one of those hitches that…well, I’ll leave it at that, rather than spoil the story. The subtle way that Ms. Jemisin delivers the devastating contradiction in the story—and, well, the story itself—quickly acquainted me with Ms. Jemisin’s gifts as a writer.

Food serves as a metaphor for life in two of the most compelling stories, to my sensibilities, in this collection. To describe them in any detail (this might be said of just about every story in this book) is to betray their confidences, so I’ll simply name them and move on: “L’Alchimista,” a fascinating tale, and “Cuisine des Memoires.”

To my mind, the standout story in this collection, for a variety of reasons, is “The Effluence Engine.” Owing to my rather limited horizons in this genre, I couldn’t help but hear sonic resonance, even to the degree of syllabification, of Bruce Sterling and William Gibson’s masterpiece of counterfactual history (which as a genre of fiction is known as alternate history, speculative history, and hypothetical history) The Difference Engine. Again, this story will suffer from a summary, but it is certainly well within the genre of speculative history. For me, it was an exercise in wish fulfillment: in the time of the Haitian Revolution, the new nation is on the verge of becoming an economic superpower. Is there anyone who wouldn’t want that?

Blurbs are notoriously unreliable, and even dishonest at times; they are more an economic than a cultural enterprise. But one of the blurbs on this book, from award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer Connie Willis, really does accurately describe its content and merit: “Every single story here is riveting, provocative, and remarkable.” I agree, and I agree with the stipulation that I didn’t fully understand every one of these stories.

So, thanks again to Vroman’s for exposing me to this fine book. And Pasadenans? Get yourselves to Vromans! It looks like you might have one of the great American independent bookstores in your midst.

Would give 10 stars if I could! Jemisin's writing is so vivid and engaging. I really wished that many of these tales were longer... What happened next?! A superior talent, for sure! ( )