Fiction Reviews
Sun Rising: Short Stories
(2024) edited by Ravit Helled, Flame Tree Press,
£20 / Can$40 / US$30, hrdbk, 430pp, ISBN 978-1-804-17444-9
As with many of these Flame Tree collections, this book blends traditional World myths, extracts from classic novels, such as Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee At The Court Of King Arthur, and brand new commissioned stories in a seamless run, listed alphabetically by title.
Cara Giles – 'Baba Yaga’s Red Rider' – The truly terrifying witch Baba Yaga, a character from Russian folklore, kidnaps and enslaves the Sun, and her brothers, Twilight & Night, but with the aid of a mortal slave girl, the Sun works carefully for their freedom.
Alysa Taguilaso’s 'Birthday' – A man meets his mysterious lover when she literally crashes into his house through the window. Over the years she is keen to help celebrate his birthdays but avoids revealing the date of her own. When one year, she treats him to a special birthday gift of a holiday in Egypt, he sees how easily everything round her catches fire in the build-up to the revelation of which mythical being she actually is, though the reader will often work it out way before the final reveal.
A rare shift from the general mythical realm comes with Simon Newcomb’s 'The End Of The World', a pure science fiction tale on the lines of Edwin Balmer & Philip Wylie’s 1933 classic, 'When World’s Collide', in which a dark star is on a collision course with our Sun. This packs in more apocalyptic incident and care for its characters than many modern disaster movies.
As with many of the newer tales, there is an attempt to capture the language and feel of the traditional myths, glaringly obvious in a collection combining old and newly commissioned tales. This is doubly seen in Christopher R. Muscato’s 'The Flight Of Nikaros', a reworking of the Icarus flight which is successful as the winged hero heeds his father’s advice not to fly too close to the Sun, especially as the actual Greek Icarus myth is also included in the collection.
Andrew Knighton’s 'Breaking Bread Against The Dark' may be my favourite tale. It has a very different take on the battle of Ragnarök than the general myths or MCU Thor stories do. As the heroes and gods perish in the final great battle and the very firmament begins to break, the women-folk go from baking bread to baking up a new replacement World as quickly as they can. Strangely delightful. You would think this was a classic myth if its author’s identity was not revealed. The story, and the book overall, show that we are still telling and re-inventing the great legends and sagas with the stories presented today.
Conversely, 'White Cloud’s Visit To The Sun-Prince', an authentic slice of Native American Folklore, reads like a precursor to many modern fantasy quest sagas. White Cloud, and a number of braves from his tribe, set out to visit the Sun. Many do not make it. Various threats including riddling wizards pop up, and some tribesmen fall for their tricks. Offered a chance to live for centuries, some jump at the chance, and get turned into trees. It’s the old 'be careful what you wish for' small print. White Cloud and a few others complete the journey and gets the benevolent prince to shine on his people more and make their crops bountiful.
Joshua Lim’s 'The Frog Who Swallowed The Sun' – One of the most imaginative modern fables told here. During a blistering heatwave a boy discovers that a little talking white frog his brother has imprisoned is actually able to grow ginormous and swallow the Sun whenever it overheats. Its imprisonment is so the boy’s brother can exploit the heatwave and sell more ice cream to the people. The boy is now morally torn between helping his brother or saving the frog and cooling down the weather.
J. A. Johnson’s 'Sol Invictus' –A pre-Kipling 'Just So' style fable in which humans and animals conspire to banish dark nights by getting their gods to make a second Sun, until a wise hare reminds everyone of the need for sleep and respite from the blazing heat of mid-day sun and heatwave at which the scheme is quickly abandoned.
A lovely mix of styles, with old tales reading with great modernity and new authors proving they would have been a match for Aesop, Homer and other classic story writers and the oral bards preceding them in many cultures.
Arthur Chappell
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