A UNIVERSE OF WISHES review


Thank you, Netgalley, for this free review copy!

A Universe of Wishes is a #WeNeedDiverseBooks short story collection, featuring a wide array of authors and an even wider array of stories. Before I officially get into the review, I’d like to make a quick disclaimer: I had to skip two stories because they were from series that I either haven’t read or haven’t read in completion yet. One of which was the A Darker Shade of Magic short story that everyone was so excited about. Sorry!

Every story in this collection is either fantasy or sci-fi and, even though I’m not generally a fan of sci-fi, I found even those stories to be incredibly charming. Every author they chose is so talented, telling diverse stories that are either about the struggles of the minorities featured, or just about people who are PoC and/or LGBTQIA and just happily going about their lives. With so many stories, I’d struggle to review each one, so instead, I’m going to review four select favorites.

It opens with “A Universe of Wishes”, the short story the collection took its title from, by Tara Sim. It’s morbid, it’s dark, it’s weird, but it’s heartfelt and quietly romantic. Sim is never anything short of amazing, and this is no exception. Her prose is more beautiful than I’ve ever seen it before.

“Cristal y Ceniza” is by Anna-Marie McLemore. The author is nonbinary, so please remember to respect their pronouns in discussions and refer to them as they/them! Their story is a retelling of Cinderella, which was unexpected but very welcome as I love Cinderella retellings, and this one was different from any other one I’ve ever read. It handles undocumented immigration, gender identity, and the pain of being forced to live in the closet with the type of raw reality such subjects, which is an amazing feat for such a short number of pages.

“The Takeback Tango by Rebecca Roanhorse” is one of the sci-fi stories that thoroughly charmed me. It’s about a young woman from a conquered and colonized planet stealing back the artifacts of her people, which were stolen and put on grotesque display in museums. It’s a shorter story, but you fall in love with the main character and her charming snark within a page. I’d cry in excitement if Roanhorse wrote a full series about this character.

“The Weight” is by Dhonielle Clayton, the editor of this collection. While Clayton has a few books under her belt, I confess I’ve only read The Belles duology, and the basic aesthetic of morbidity underlying beautiful visuals and mind-bendingly weird rules holds true between those books and this story. Clayton shamelessly breaks the rules of romance and drama, creating something wholly unique here.

While those were the standouts, don’t think for a moment that the rest of the stories are in any way lackluster. They all employ poetic prose, different storytelling techniques, or heartfelt emotions, or any combination of the three. Sexuality, gender identity, and skin color are all played with, challenging the idea that any of them can make you lesser than anyone else and letting everyone shine no matter what. I’m so excited to look into the other works by all of these authors.


You can find A Universe of Wishes on Barnes&Noble here, where it's currently available for preorder in hardcover and nook book format!

(Note: I've chosen not to link Amazon pages anymore, except in cases where the author chose to publish through Amazon, and therefore it is the only place where the book is available. The lower the price, the less money the author gets, so support small businesses and authors by avoiding Amazon if you can afford it!)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Thank you so much to the author for giving a review copy of this book! A Generation of Poppies by Saga Hillbom is a WWI historical fiction centering around the lives of Rosalie Wilkes and Charles D'Aboville and their experiences in the war effort. I almost described it as a historical romance but opted not to as, while romance is very much a big part of the plot, our two main characters spend large swaths of it on other endeavors alongside their desires for each other. Rosalie, an upper-class young woman from England, lies about her age to join the VADs and is sent to France to take care of injured soldiers. Charles, meanwhile, had no active desire to join the war efforts, and only did to avoid the consequences of refusal. There's a lot of set-up, as there always is in Hillbom's books, showing us the idyllic lives both characters lived before the war. Good friends, ample free time, and delicious food make a harsh contrast to the horrors of war later in the book. It's al
Read more

An Interview With Clara Loveman!

Image
Crown of Crowns  by the illustrious Clara Loveman came out on August 11, 2020, and since then I've been helping build some hype towards the book! And today, I have the luck of having Clara Loveman herself answer some questions about her book and her writing process! Before we jump in, I'd like to share the Amazon blurb to jog your memory: In a kingdom where the ruling and lower classes live and die apart by law, a noblewoman and a commoner make a fatal mistake: they fall in love. Kaelyn, a young noblewoman, feels smothered under the harsh constraints of the Decens-Lenitas, the legal and moral code that governs the people of the Geniverd Kingdom. When she meets Roki, a handsome young man from the city with knowledge and aspirations beyond his status, Kaelyn realizes she’s not the only person trapped. She starts to question everything she thought she knew, including about the Gurnots, a group of rebels set on overthrowing the laws—people who the nobles have labeled as terrorists.
Read more
Image
Heart of the Fae by Emma Hamm is a Beauty and the Beast retelling with heavy, heavy inspiration from old Celtic mythology. Now, I can’t remember exactly how I heard about this book, but it was on my Amazon wishlist for a while and I stumbled across it again. I love books about faeries. I love books about healers. I love fairytale retellings. This is all three, and it is wonderful. The main character, Sorcha, is a midwife who lives in a brothel (side note: this book is sex work positive. How rare is that? Definite plus for me!) Her home, Uí Néill, is being plagued with horrible parasites, and her adoptive father falls prey to them. When begging for help from a mostly-forgotten goddess, Sorcha is sent on a journey that takes her to an island of exiled fae where a banished king, Eamonn, hides in an ancient castle. The writing is wonderful. Hamm is witty, descriptive, and thrilling in her style. Nothing moves too fast or too slow, and we get gorgeous descriptions of the fae lands and the
Read more