This collection of lovely, weird short stories is full of heart. I saw this described elsewhere as sci-fi and a few of the stories fit that description, but mostly I see these as fairytale-adjacent. Most have some magic, but all have characters you want to root for. My only quibble was that there were SO many stories! I usually only read one story a day from a short story collection and this took a long time to get through because it's full of mostly very tiny stories. But again, I loved very close to all of them.

I adored On Fragile Waves, and while I was reading Jewel Box I felt it was so vastly different I could hardly believe it was the same author. But after finishing and re-familiarizing myself with Waves, I see the through-line more clearly.

Favorite quotes:
"The reader of fairy tales will understand when I say that I did not hesitate or question the strange requirement, as one would ordinarily do, for at times there is a certain silver inevitability about our choices that no amount of reasoning can explain."

"The world is stranger than I thought. It always is."

"None of us can change what has happened to us, the clawed creature said. But if we are lucky, we live. If we are lucky, we do not lose more than we can afford."

Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

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adventurous emotional funny lighthearted relaxing slow-paced

5.0

Y/N by Esther Yi

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challenging reflective

3.0

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

3.5