musingaloud | Realms of Fantasy

I don't fancy myself any sort of reviewer. I'm pretty easy to please in my reading. I want stories and characters that steal my imagination and take it into another world. I don't want to think too hard about what the story means. I prefer a magical ride with no blind corners.

What I am trying to do is to learn more about story construction by paying attention to it when I read. And I'm trying to learn to synopsize stories a little better. So a couple of issues ago I started doing it with Realms of Fantasy issues. I'm supposed to be doing it with the books I read, too. But since I haven't much reading time anymore, there aren't too many of those.

So, if you wish to read on, a short little list of the stories in RoF, April 08 issue:

REALMS OF FANTASY - April 2008

"Gift From A Spring" by Delia Sherman

Desdemona Whittier is an artist that cannot find her own style. Broke and downhearted, she takes a job in the south of France for a performing art school for children. The school is run by a retired director named Peter Collingsworth and his wife, Ondine, a once-famous dancer whose face seems to alternate between youthfulness and age. On the property is an old spring, to which the entire camp troops to once a week to do their washing. Whittier, as she likes to be called, brings up the idea of buying a washing machine, which sets off an argument between Peter and Ondine. The story keeps the reader barreling along to what he knows will be a disaster of some sort, but yet unsure of the outcome. In the process of loss and redemption, Whittier begins to find her true eye, and paint the truth of the land.

"The Doom of Love in Small Spaces" by Ken Scholes

Drum Farrelley, who considers himself somewhat of a troll, works in Central Supply, way down in the cellar of life. Harmony Sheffleton, a beauty in red, trudges down the flights of stairs (a 3-week trip) to put in a requisition for love. Drum is hesitant, she's convincing. Eight weeks for the love to arrive. Drum invites her to wait with him--he does have a bathtub, after all. Every day, she takes her bath, and he sits outside the door and they talk. On the seventh day of their eighth week, the truth finally comes out. Drum knows the love isn't coming, there's none to send. As for Harmony, she's not from the fifth floor, but from the seventh--the Board--and she's here to replace him. But Drum has a secret store.

This story was hard for me to get a handle on at first, it was so outrageous. But let it take you for a ride, and I think once it's done, you might just want to go again.

"On the Banks of the River of Heaven" by Richard Parks

Kaiboshi the Divine Herdsmen and his wife, Asago-hime, the weaver, are separated by the River of Heaven--the Milky Way to mortals. On the seventh day of the seventh month, they are allowed together, but only by crossing the river by a Bridge of Birds. For three years in a row, it has rained so hard on that day, the birds cannot build the bridge, and Kaiboshi is forlorn, sure his love will forget him. Even through his despair, he grants Otter a favor, allowing him to hold a fish, rather than just chase them. Otter, able to swim the river Kaiboshi cannot cross, takes Kaiboshi's gift to Asago-hime, and then decides that he will try to help them. In the process, he must discover why it rains so hard every year on that certain day, and who is trying to keep the two lovers apart. Is it Asago-hime's father, the Lord of Heaven? Or the Rain God or his twin brother, the River God?

I enjoyed this story. It had the feel of an old-fashioned fable, and a nice little moral about doing good deeds for others.

"Girl in Pieces" by Graham Edwards

The detective with the magic coat is back, this time to reluctantly help a sanitation worker who also happens to be golem (who knew golems were made of orange river clay and a square of parchment with Hebrew binary code?). The golem is in trouble. He's found a chopped up girl and an axe in a garbage can and the cops think he did it. They get the girl put back together long enough to tell her story, but then she starts to disintegrate, and things get pretty rocky. Who knew golems had a heart?

I liked the tone of this story, liked how the author made me care about the golem, poor misunderstood creature that he is. The coat is always fun, as our hero folds it and unfolds it, to see what comes out of it, or what it turns into, or where it leads them. The one thing I did not like was the magazine chose to use black paper and white print. The way the light reflects off shiny black paper made it hard for me to read--especially without my glasses, which I resist wearing.

"The Dinosaur Diaries" by Scott William Carter

Jerry's life is a shambles. His girlfriend of three years is moving to California to go to college, his older brother is at college in Des Moines and refuses to help out on the farm, his mother hasn't been the same since the fire fifteen years ago that took his baby brother's life, and his 10-year-old sister refuses to leave her room and plays chess on the computer with their dead father. And now they're finding T.Rex footprints in the corn fields, on the road--three feet long, two feet wide. Then the storm blows in and Ma insists Jerry take his sister and leave so they'll be safe. Whether or not Jerry's dad is a T. Rex, we do know one thing: Jerry endures.

This story had a fable-fairytale quality to it that I very much liked.