REVIEW: “Princess Gräcula” by Friederike Helene Unger

Review of Friederike Helene Unger, Eve Mason, trans., “Princess Gräcula”, in A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020): 1-23 — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology.)

This story kicks off with everything you expect of a fairy tale — a childless royal couple who are finally blessed with a daughter, Gräcula; a fantastic christening visited by a loathsome witch; a child gifted with all the jewels, gold, beautiful dresses one could desire — and then morphs into a bizarre combination of traditional fairy tale trappings, Dante’s Inferno, and that bit in Pinocchio where he gets turned into an ass.

Unger’s story operates on many levels within the structure of a typical fairy tale; there is the story itself, populated with characters that do not fill the standard fairy-tale tropes (Gräcula’s mother, Sentimentale, is a prime example of this. Rather than being either absent or evil, she is a complex combination of characteristics, delighting in learning and education, reading Greek and enjoying philosophy, but also wanting nothing more than to be a mother.), and then there is the social criticism layered on top — of learning philosophy without first establishing a foundation of good sense and character; of penal institutions in which behavior generally “worsened rather than improved” (p. 20); of the aristocracy.

It’s a bit of a whirlwind. Also: I had no idea telegraphs were already in existence in 1804, so learning that was cool.

(Originally published in German in 1804.)

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REVIEW: A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women translated by Eve Mason

Review of Eve Mason, trans., A String of Pearls: A Collection of Five German Fairy Tales by Women (2020) — Order here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

A String of Pearls is a collection of 19th-century German fairy tales written by women, translated into English by Eve Mason, beautifully illustrated by Susan Sansome. Mason’s informative introduction provides the wider context they exist in, including an important emphasis on the fact that the first two centuries of the genre were, in fact, dominated by women, even if by now we typically associate fairy tales with men such as the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Anderson. More of this historical context is also provided in Joanna Neilly’s foreword.

Why have women been dropped out of the history of the fairy tale? Mason outlines how the two dominant traditions in contemporary fairy tale studies leave no room for the alternative, subversive function of fairy tales as written by women, as vehicles which “allowed them to explore alternative realities and subtly criticise patriarchal values and conventions” (p. iv). The stories that Mason has chosen to translate for this collection all illustrate this, putting the women central, where other stories sharing the same archetype might put the emphasis on the male characters. Her introduction includes a synopsis of each tale along with biographical information about the authors.

The stories are not wholly unproblematic, as Mason points out herself: They include racists and misogynistic comments and tropes prevalent in that period. But I approve of her choice to leave these comments in rather than erase them, which would be problematic in itself; when we seek to restore women authors to their rightful place in the history of literature, we cannot turn them all into paragons of virtue. We must instead grapple with the fact that they — just as the men of their time — wrote flawed stories, and may have been flawed themselves. This does not make their work any less important.

The entire collection is a delight: From the historical and contextual information provided in the introduction (all of which was unfamiliar to me) to the stories themselves, told with verve and intrigue and feeling both strange and familiar. My only complaint is that there are but five stories; I hope that Mason continues her collecting and translating work in the future!

As is usual, we will review each story separately, and link the reviews back to this post as they are published.

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REVIEW: “Unit Two Does Her Makeup” by Laura Duerr

Review of Laura Duerr, “Unit Two Does Her Makeup”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

I didn’t expect a story of make-up, misogyny (okay, that isn’t fun, but the way it was casually ignored was), and a conscious navigation of the uncanny valley to end up being so empowering. It was an accomplished telling from the POV of an AI, who sometimes awkwardly, sometimes smoothly straddles the line between being herself and being more humanlike, and I’m considering reading it to my newly-discovered-make-up daughter. I think it’s got a message that she’d value hearing.

(Weirdly, though, this was the second story of this issue that had proofreading issues: Sometimes it’s Suzanne, sometimes Susana, and I think the one lone instance of “Maya” was meant to be Suzan(ne/a). Frustrating.)

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REVIEW: “Stones and Bones” by Devon Widmer

Review of Devon Widmer, “Stones and Bones”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The other day I saw someone asking for recommendations for SFF with humor; if only I had read this story then, I could’ve recommended it, because it is laced with delightful comedy! And that’s in addition to the queer romance that blossoms into a ghost-exorcism business. All in all, this was a good fun read.

The only drawback — unusual for LSQ — was how the typesetting marred the story; about two-thirds of the way in, all of a sudden most of the capital letters were lost. No fault of the author, but it was still unfortunately distracting.

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REVIEW: “Lemon” by Mara Regan

Review of Mara Regan, “Lemon”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

“When someone is dying, the rest of us do weird things.”

This. This is why I read short SFF fiction. Because of lines like this, which hit you in the stomach and ring so full of truth.

It hardly matters what the rest of the story is, once you read a line like this, because the story has fulfilled its purpose. It was an added bonus that the rest of the story was so good — and so sad.

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REVIEW: “The Wandering Fae” by Alex Grehy

Review of Alex Grehy, “The Wandering Fae”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

On the one hand, you have Finn, the Fae, who lounges and loafs around and is generally reckless and idlesome; on the other hand, you have Belladonna, the witch, who cooks and cleans and weaves and cares and does all the things that need to be done to keep a shared life going. I think we were supposed to read this story partly as a sweet fairy-tale love story, but I kept tripping up against the structural misogyny encoded in the two main characters, and never quite found myself enjoying it.

I totally did not expect what came when they encountered the Dark Fae, though. So, half a thumb up for unexpected surprises.

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REVIEW: “Them Oranges” by Nicole M. Wolverton

Review of Nicole M. Wolverton, “Them Oranges”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

Lettie knows that every summer, when the scent of “them oranges” comes wafting through the windows, she will be called on to perform a necessary sacrifice to protect her village — just like her mother before her, and just like her daughter-to-be will after — whatever the sacrifice might cost her, personally.

This was a bit of a surprising story for LSQ — more to the horror than the SFF side of things. Perhaps that’s why it was one I’d file under “not for me”, because it was stronger on the shock and gore than it was on the world-building and scene-setting. I would have liked to know more about what Lettie’s sacrifice was protecting the village from.

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REVIEW: “The Mirror” by Alice Paige

Review of Alice Paige, “The Mirror”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

The titular mirror is located inside the Black Box, part of a long-running particle physics experiment run by Dr. Fredric Vasquez. Viv has been working for Dr. Vasquez for a few years, mostly doing data analysis, but now it’s her chance to do something more — to be the thirteenth person to enter the Black Box. Viv is in the box because she believes that there is magic inherent in the study of the universe, and she wants to contribute to that study in the most personal of ways: Her girlfriend Anna is missing, and this might be the only way to find out what happened to her.

This was a good solid story; while the basic tropes involved were familiar, the details of the execution were distinctive.

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REVIEW: “Vegoia” by Patrice Rivara

Review of Patrice Rivara, “Vegoia”, Luna Station Quarterly 46 (2021): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This was a story richly full of entirely foreign tradition and ritual. I really enjoy it when a story can nail the sense of the world being written about is not ours, not just because it is “ours but tweaked” but because it is wholly different. This can be hard to do in a short story; but Rivara does it, and the skill with which this is done makes the ending all the more unexpected!

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