REVIEW - The Solaris Book of New Fantasy (Part 2)

Following my serialized review of The Solaris Book of New Fantasy, there are four more short stories reviewed today. For those who missed it, part one is here.

The fifth story is The Prince of End Times by Hal Duncan. It tells the story of the Darkartist, member of a court of similar nobles titled after their roles, in the eve of his tattoing/coronation as the Lightprince, a role held by his recently deceased brother. We follow his anguish, as he clearly doesn't want this burden, searching for "a way out".

The story is about the nature of names and how they change reality in micro and macro scales. The Darkartist begins the story researching on a book which text is written with a living ink, the bitmites of his Vellum/Ink books, and that even narrate part of the story. Unable to find the answer he wants, the Darkartist must face his coronation and a final riddle from the former Lightprince.

The story seems to be a direct sequence to his The Tower of Morning's Bones, from Paper Cities, and uses much the same non-linear structure present in almost all of Duncan's fiction: highly poetic, dense and so full of subtext that it needs several readings to capture. Part of the fun here is to ride on Duncan's neologisms, fusions and wordplay. Another pleasure is to pick literary and mythologigal references scattered over the text. I'll risk and say that it has many things to do with Milton's Paradise Lost. Another great story.

Jeff VanderMeer brings King Tales, a set of three short-short stories about, well, kings. But instead of human sovereigns, Jeff uses animals and makes us remember that fantasy, as we know it, began with fables.

In The Trouble With Bears, a girl is imprisoned and enslaved by the King of Bears, the only bear in the forest, and tries to escape. In The Unreliability of Cats, an ordinary man witnesses the funeral of the King of the Cats and is surprised by the reaction of his own feline pet. Finally, in The Indecisiveness of Birds, a race is the only way to settle the dispute on who's the King of the Birds.

As all fables, the stories have morals within them. Issues about the nature of power, wisdom and the rights to rule are all addressed. Jeff uses a direct and clear prose, so kids actually can read it, or have the stories read for them.

In Between Dreams by Christopher Barzak, is a modern fairy tale. The author tells the story of Ai, a room cleaner girl responsible for an apartment that holds a secret: a man perpetually daydreaming in one of the rooms. Although she's forbidden to make contact, they end up in a blind and deaf friendship. While he talks to her about his memories, without her ever answering, she remembers her own history, which includes a ghost/spirit in a lake.

Something kept telling me that I knew which fairy tale this one was retelling. By the time the very last scene was described I couldn't help but smile. Barzak was able to put a classic story in modern terms and give it his own twist. A story about love, freedom and self-discovery.

Barzak uses the first person and it happened to be the best way to do it. One gets very close to Ai, her motivations, her struggles and fears. The reader is able to feel her change through her memories. A very nice work.

In And Such Small Deer, Chris Roberson tells the strange meeting between Abraham Van Helsing and Dr. Moreau in an island north of Sumatra. Something is killing workers in the tobacco fields, which leads Van Helsing to a short expedition to kill the supposed beast.

I still can't say if I liked the story or not. Sure it is well-written and funny, so I guess I could say I did. But being in a fantasy anthology, I was somewhat disappointed by the fact that the story's only supernatural element is the possibility of Dracula's existence, far away in Europe. He's not even mentioned, but one assumes that, if Van Helsing exists, so does his nemesis. On the other hand, it was quite nice to see these classical characters meeting.

Roberson alternates Moreaus's letters with Van Helsing's journal entries with simple, but formal prose. I´d definitely like to read another story in the same setting, but I feel much more amused by Roberson´s Celestial Empire stories.