PAPER CITIES - Review (long)

EDIT: typos and hiccups removed.

Think about a city. Any city. There's always a story, a fable, a wonder in every alley. Something terrible, or fantastic, or magical under the shadow of a high office tower, deep inside the sewers, just beyond the gates. Paper Cities: an Anthology of Urban Fantasy, edited by Russian writer Ekaterina Sedia, is such a gate. In about 260 pages, the book released by Senses Five Press, brings 21 tales where the urban environment is not only the setting, but in many cases, the theme and the plot itself. From traditional high-fantasy to more unconventional and surreal metropolis, all those different faces of the quintessential city are characters in an anthology that definitely works.

But just like there are different neighborhoods within a city, with different architectures, demographics and all subtle details that give or take away comfort or the notion of being at home, there are all sorts of stories within this anthology. Some excellent, many good, and just a few that didn't work for me. But stories so different among them that readers may find most interesting in some level.

After a nice introduction by Jess Nevins, it's up to Forrest Aguirre to begin the city tour. His Andretto Walks the King's Way is set in the surroundings of a castle of an unnamed kingdom about to face ultimate doom. Not traditional high-fantasy-style apocalypse with evil lords and epic battles, though the story may be labeled medieval fantasy, but a doom that can be interpreted as something very modern-day. Plague. Maybe related to something very close to the end of our century. Beyond the concept, Aguirre uses high-level prose and different structure to tell his story: little vignettes of one or two paragraphs that tell the stories of a prince, a dwarf, and in the end, a whole kingdom getting sick.

Next comes Hal Duncan with his The Tower of Morning's Bones, a surreal experiment of poetic prose in the edge of space and time. Duncan has two playgrounds: words and myths. Here, he mixes the two things to tell a tale of a city made of words and its maker. Now, Duncan is not an easy writer and one needs several readings to grasp the whole of his stories. But he writes with so much beauty that readers just have a good time hearing those words in the "mind's ear". Other than that, there's everything people love and hate about the author: comparative myth, wordplay, metaphysics and hyperscience. I must add that I love this writer and loved this story.

Richard Parks is the author of Courting the Lady Scythe, a cautionary tale about wishes and love, but a story devoid of any happy ending. It follows Jassa, a man in love with the Lady Scythe, a woman that holds the traditional position of the realm's executioner. Jassa likes her enough to seek a lost god and make a deal with it, just to have his muse. Parks manages to tell a very nice story, gripping and with nice worldbuilding. It is a good story, but wrapped in a too short form. The three distinct "acts" (the opening, the prophecy and the meeting with the aforementioned god) seems to be blocks not from the same narrative. Worth reading, anyway.

First letdown: Cat Rambo's The Bumblety's Marble. In the city of Tabat, Doolia is gifted with a tiny marble. She literally stumbles upon Dion, a character who doesn't say who he really is and what he is looking for. They both fall in a hole, the dominion of the Piskies, and are held captive and then are forced to free a captive Piskie, on the contrary, the marble (which has a lot of sentimental value to Dion) will be destroyed. Unfortunately, the story has no emotion, the characters are bidimensional and the plot is shallow. Maybe it was supposed to be a children's story, but it didn't work for me. Above everything, the urban environment is abandoned in the story's very beginning. It was even worse because Cat Rambo is a great writer, responsible for many good pieces. But this ain't one.

Fortunately, there was Promises: a Tale of the City Imperishable, by Jay Lake, in the next page. This story is set in the same city presented in Trial of Flowers and follows a lesbian-virgin-parkour-practitionar-warrior-nun in her steps toward full membership in her sisterhood. The story has some strong scenes of consented rape and child abandon, all dealt with seriousness and literacy. Besides gender, the story discusses identity, the lengths one goes to take revenge and both what you do and who you become when you finally reach the peak, in the roofs of The City. Amazing.

Greg Van Eekhout was one of my most pleasant discoveries. His Ghost Market is one of the shortest, but also one of the strongest in this antho. The cities' darkest sides, under the bridges, a market of drugs. Made of souls. And there, a guy seeks his next fix, looking for the best "stuff", a rare and very prized kind of soul. Of course, things are not what they seem, nor do they end very well. I'd love to read more things in this setting.

Cat Sparks offers another love tale in her Sammarynda Deep. Mariyam is disguised in a foreign city, seeking her loved one which has abandoned her some time ago. And through the customs of the people of this very city she will discover the reason of her former lover's abandon. Sammarynda's citizens' custom of self mutilation as a means to have honor is the high point of this story. And one with lots of meanings both inside and outside of this nice piece of fiction.

Another discovery followed: Steve Berman's Tearjerker. A city in which reality collapsed. Drugs made out of tears. Rain made of vinegar. A living, breathing, anthropomorphic addictive story book. Held captive. And a girl feeding it/him against the will of its/his owners and her patrons. A piece in which the sole number of delicious weird ideas pays the ticket of the story. I'd love to visit this city again.

Stephanie Campisi's The Title of this Story has many things to do with Borges. Metafictional, it tells the story of an onomastician who's asked to translate and then name a religious book. The story is, of course, about the power of naming and ultimately questions if something might exist without a name, or a classification. For this reason, this is a good story, but could have been better if more things have happened. For instance, the city portrayed in it, though visually very interesting, is too static. But it has enough good ideas to entertain many readers.

One aspect present in any city is the bar. Mark Teppo's The One That Got Away takes the concept of bar stories, those little lies friends tell each other between drinks just to make life a bit less painful, and makes them real. A group of such friends gets tired of the same old lies and decide to do something different: hunt a unicorn. The problem is that only the innocent can see the beast. Good story with a nice twist.

Alex and the Toyceivers, by Paul Meloy, suffers from the "book excerpt syndrome". For this reason, maybe, I didn't understand what was going on, nor did I care. Most of all, I wanted it to end because I had no more breath left. In the story, Alex, who happens to be caught in the middle of some secret war, runs away from strange mythic monsters. He keeps running and can't possibly react. He runs until he reaches the cottage of a friend and they both run away and embark on a train and leave. No reason to care. No answers given. And "the city" is basically the two houses in which action takes place. It left me no curiosity, though the story is well written.

The shortest story, Godivy, by Vylar Kaftan, is also incomprehensible. It is a surreal piece set in an office in which employees have sex with photocopiers. Contrary to Jeff VanderMeers' The Situation, also set in a bizarre office, Godivy gives no narrative reason for all the surrealism. Maybe it should be read as a comment or satire about the common man and its working environment. Or maybe its just plain nuts.

In Paiting Haiti, Michael Jasper tells a supernatural urban horror story about an immigrant artist facing an old, mystical, serial killer. But more than that, the story is about being a foreigner and recovering your roots, culture-wise. Very interesting magic system and quite nice portray of Haitian myth. The end is a delight.

The Funeral, Ruined, by Ben Peek is a bittersweet tale of life and death. In a city ruined by war and dotted with huge public crematories, ex-soldier Linnette gets ready to the ritual tattooing that marks the funeral of her former lover. But is he dead? Peek keeps the readers attention "reading" the last letter Linnette's lover left her. A good cheat, Peek makes the reader believe in a suicide letter, but the case is quite the contrary. The Morticians and their tattoos are an awesome idea.

Down to the Silver Spirits, by Kaaron Warren, on the other hand, is a good idea undeveloped. A group of married couples with difficulties with having babies are convinced to seek, underwater, the spirits of drowned kids and kind of adopt them. They come back with their wishes fulfilled but not with a price. A sort of Cthullu-lite, the groups acceptance and their meeting with the souls feels somewhat artificial and not convincing, even for desperate would-be fathers and mothers.

Fantasypunk? Cybersorcery? Hackermagic? In They Would Only be Roads, Darin C. Bradley mixes genres and comes up with a story that substitutes cyberpunk's tropes, and a bit of The Matrix, with magic. Where would be a hacker, there's a sorcerer. ICE programs for spells. And a datacenter is a protected by magical wards. Extremely nice idea, well executed, but which suffers from the fact that, even this way, cyberpunk motives are much worn out. Also, the plot itself is only ok.

Then a pack of demon dogs attack in Jenn Reese's Taser. They don't do much more than bark and show off their teeth. It tells the story of two young dogs that follow the pack leader for the first time. And for the first time they rebel. Not bad, but nothing noteworthy.

The Somnambulist, by David Schwartz has a pulpish feel with weird ideas. A contemporary fantasy with a wizard stuck in the body of a mouse tries to use his wife to get himself a new body. The problem is: the girl must keep believing in their love. The somnambulist in question uses the girl to steal and do other crimes while she is asleep. Sort of a Jason Bourne while dreaming. A spy thriller with somnambulants would be great. For now, the short piece is good enough.

The most amazing setting with the least story is in The Age of Fish, Post-Flowers, by Anna Tambour. It reads like a city-guide, only it wasn't supposed to be so. The world is flooded and people are trapped in the top of the old buildings. Without food, without goods. Besides, they are fighting the orms: sea creatures that terrorize the citizens. The problem with this one is that until the very end nothing of significant happens.

Barth Anderson has created a sort of fantasy Houdini. The Last Escape is the story of The Scarab, a stage magician that manages to escape from every handcuff, every prison and every trap. When some strange ships dock in the port of the city, he tries to warn about their ill intentions. But he has no other option than to use his talents. Nice setting, great character. But the end of the story doesn't seem to give answers or a satisfying final mystery.

The last story, Palimpsest, is a preview of Catherine M. Valente's homonymous novel, yet to be released. It is about a viral city that is transmitted via sexual intercourse, with some infected people wandering in it and trying to find others into this kind of subculture. The city of Palimpsest is amazing, dreamlike. Something that it should be. The story is divided between flashes of the city and a girl in our world searching for other women marked with the city's illness.

With such numbers and diversity of authors, themes and settings, it would be impossible for this anthology tobe 100% good. But the weight of the amazing pieces, added to the good ones, surpasses the amount of weaker stories. In the end, Paper Cities is an amazing anthology that will be cited as one of the definitive of the urban fantasy subgenre.