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lsparrow's review against another edition
3.0
I had wanted a bit more fantastical to these stories but there were some gems in this collection - ones that I will go back to and revisit in my mind.
sunn_bleach's review
dark
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.25
Plenty of strong works here, mostly leaning on the “fantastic” side with lots of commentary on social and political realities.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content and Violence
erinys's review
4.0
An anthology of short stories edited by Chris N. Brown and Eduardo Jiménez-Mayo. It's a ton of content in one place: 33 pieces of short fiction, all of them highly restricted in length. The whole collection fits into 235 pages of the trade paperback.
The brevity of the tales is definitely a characteristic that struck me repeatedly. The rules of what constitutes "fiction" or "story" are nicely flexible, so the authors are not constrained by the expectations that seem to govern most of the stories I read by English-language authors. You get to read some beautiful stuff that would probably never sell to most English-language magazines, precisely because it is weird and not "plotty" enough. It widens the notion of what constitutes a "story" in interesting ways.
Personal favorites from this collection include a few that would fit nicely in an issue of a literary or genre mag. "Trompe-L'Oeil" by Monica Lavin and "Future Nereid" by Gabriela Damian Miravete could fit in any sci-fi or fantasy magazine. The titular story "Three Messages and a Warning in One Email" by Ana Clavell and "Luck Has Its Limits" by Beatriz Escalante could both make excellent additions to any issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.
I also enjoyed the stories that seemed to serve as commentary om sexual politics, like "The Guest" by Amparo Davila, or "A Pile of Bland Desserts" by Yussel Dardon.
A few stories definitely felt like political satire, particularly "Lions" by Bernardo Fernandez and "The President Without Organs" by Pepe Rojo.
I think the stories that may stick with me the longest, though, are the really strange ones, which reach into the metaphysical. "The Return of Night" by Rene Roquet and "Wolves" by Jose Luis Zarate had a mystical feel, as did "You Walk A Narrow Path" by Maria Isabel Aguirre.
"Photophobia" by Mauricio Montiel Figueiras, "The Last Witness to Creation" by Jesus Ramirez Bermudez, "Future Perfect" by Gerardo Sifuentes and "The Nahual Offering" by Carmen Rioja all feel like tales of existential horror. The images of those stories will stick with me for a long time, even if the plot details fade.
At any rate, an interesting collection to read, especially if you're interested in story-telling as a craft, or the concept of a national "voice" for speculative literature.
The brevity of the tales is definitely a characteristic that struck me repeatedly. The rules of what constitutes "fiction" or "story" are nicely flexible, so the authors are not constrained by the expectations that seem to govern most of the stories I read by English-language authors. You get to read some beautiful stuff that would probably never sell to most English-language magazines, precisely because it is weird and not "plotty" enough. It widens the notion of what constitutes a "story" in interesting ways.
Personal favorites from this collection include a few that would fit nicely in an issue of a literary or genre mag. "Trompe-L'Oeil" by Monica Lavin and "Future Nereid" by Gabriela Damian Miravete could fit in any sci-fi or fantasy magazine. The titular story "Three Messages and a Warning in One Email" by Ana Clavell and "Luck Has Its Limits" by Beatriz Escalante could both make excellent additions to any issue of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.
I also enjoyed the stories that seemed to serve as commentary om sexual politics, like "The Guest" by Amparo Davila, or "A Pile of Bland Desserts" by Yussel Dardon.
A few stories definitely felt like political satire, particularly "Lions" by Bernardo Fernandez and "The President Without Organs" by Pepe Rojo.
I think the stories that may stick with me the longest, though, are the really strange ones, which reach into the metaphysical. "The Return of Night" by Rene Roquet and "Wolves" by Jose Luis Zarate had a mystical feel, as did "You Walk A Narrow Path" by Maria Isabel Aguirre.
"Photophobia" by Mauricio Montiel Figueiras, "The Last Witness to Creation" by Jesus Ramirez Bermudez, "Future Perfect" by Gerardo Sifuentes and "The Nahual Offering" by Carmen Rioja all feel like tales of existential horror. The images of those stories will stick with me for a long time, even if the plot details fade.
At any rate, an interesting collection to read, especially if you're interested in story-telling as a craft, or the concept of a national "voice" for speculative literature.
lmurray74's review
4.0
I'd love to read some of these stories in the original Spanish. Not that I felt the translations were clunky but I feel that with 'lo fantastico' the ambiguities present in the Spanish language are used to advantage. "Lo fantastico" is one of my favourite genres. You often never know until the end how things are and what was really going on. Not science fiction nor fantasy nor a mix of the two. Cortazar is maybe the best known of the writers who often use this genre and China Mieville's work is also reminiscent of lo fantastico. There were a lot of stories in here I loved, some I liked but none that I didn't enjoy. I'll definitely look out for many of these authors down the line. I'm grateful this anthology was put out.
ederwin's review
3.0
I'm glad I read it, but I found very few of the short stories here very interesting. "Stories of the fantastic" in this case mostly means some form of light fantasy or magical realism. Only one story ("Pink Lemonade") was solidly in a Sci-Fi genre.
Took me forever to finish because I prefer reading long-form fiction than short stories, so I would just dip into this from time to time.
Took me forever to finish because I prefer reading long-form fiction than short stories, so I would just dip into this from time to time.
tregina's review
3.0
Like most books of short stories, the quality was variable, perhaps more highly variable than usual for me. I tended to like the stories more as I went on, though I'm not sure whether that's because the stories got stronger, or because I got more used to the nuances of the way they were being told. There was overall a kind of gentleness to the style, and the stories were often (though not universally) neither violent nor intense; they also tended to have a very specific voice and point of view. Overall I'm not sure it was a strong collection, but for me it was an interesting one.
lagbolt's review
4.0
This is a wonderful collection of very varied short stories. This may sound stranger, but in general I found the short stories too short. I liked almost everything in the book, but nothing blew me away.
kevinjfellows's review
4.0
I was given this by a Small Beer Press representative at last year's World Fantasy Convention while I visited their table. It was thrown in for free because I purchased another book so I wasn't expecting much but I was wrong. The Guest, by Amparo Davila; The Hour of the Fireflies, by Karen Chacek; and The Last Witness to Creation, by Jesus Ramirez Bermudez are just a few of the gems in this collection. I hope to see other anthologies of translations like this.
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