cover image Wishes and Sorrows

Wishes and Sorrows

Cindy Lynn Speer. Dragonwell (Ingram, dist.), $16.95 trade paper (312p) ISBN 978-1-940076-04-1

The sorrows outnumber the wishes in this frustrating collection of 13 intriguing but unevenly executed ideas. “The Fortunate Ones” imagines a lineage of magically lucky women enslaved to their husbands, but falters in extending the story beyond its cruel conceit. “What Will I Do When the Dream Is Over?” similarly abbreviates the prospects of a unicorn rider in contemporary middle America who has fulfilled her fantastic destiny. Slender characterizations and jarringly modern language (“And I can’t believe he thought Corpsy was me... I mean, that’s a male body!”) mar secondary-world efforts like the supernatural revenge tragedy “The Jester’s Heart” or the Arabesque “The Tower in the Desert.” Speer (Unbalanced) has room to range through subgenres, but her strengths show most clearly in the retellings: the bleak false gifts of “Every Word I Speak,” the richly ambiguous ending of “A Necklace of Rubies,” and the nested Cinderella variants of “But Can You Let Him Go?”, positing their cross-cultural ubiquity as the result of a fairy godmother’s quest for redemption. The apologetic introduction would make a better afterword. (Nov.)