REVIEW: A Light in the Sky by Shina Reynolds

         

Image from Wink Road Press via Amazon

It has been years since I have read YA fantasy. I seem to remember clocking out around the time Holly Black’s Wicked King was released, and staying away since. Who can succinctly say why we enter reading slumps? Perhaps the most universal explanation is a host of internal and external factors clogging one’s mind. And when one’s mind is clogged, a return to known avenues that provide easily digestible escapism is a pretty solid way to return to the field. 

I had hoped that Shina Reynolds’s debut, A Light in the Sky, would be that return for me. It tells the story of Aluma Banks, the seventeen year old daughter of a war hero and an aspiring Empyrean rider - a soldier defending the kingdom of Eirelannia from the back of a winged horse. The premise of this story - the cavalry-like prestige and camaraderie of mounted soldiers, both a physical and political arena, and a young adult on the older end of the scale coming into her own - seemed like it could add something new and subversive to the otherwise familiar pathways of a magical destiny promised by the blurb. However, “familiar” ended up being the defining trait of this novel. And while familiarity was what I was going in for, I was still hoping for some oomph, something that pulled my emotions from my chest even if it didn’t challenge the foundations of my being.

REVIEW: The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories by Nina Allan

Image from Titan books

This review contains mild spoilers for the stories Amethyst, Heroes, A Thread of Truth, and Marielena in this collection. 

Short story collections serve many purposes. They are catalogues of an author’s smaller opuses, or a snapshot of one era in their careers. The Art of Space Travel and Other Stories is a map, one in which the author as cartographer charts a journey that the reader is invited to follow. The stories, edited into one volume, are active participants in a larger tale exploring the author’s craft, and are “evaluating their relationship to a world that has changed since they were created”, as she says in her introduction. The introduction is, in and of itself, a highlight of the collection, replete with erudite and imagery-rich ruminations on the skill and imaginative power that drives and is driven by short fiction, in particular speculative fiction. Her commentary on the place of short stories in the careers of debut writers entering the market is set to strike a chord in every creative heart that has sought to have its words heard by others.