REVIEW: “The Swamp Hag’s Apprentice” by Szmeralda Shanel

Review of Szmeralda Shanel, “The Swamp Hag’s Apprentice”, in Skull & Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga, edited by Kate Wolford (World Weaver Press, 2019): 101-124 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Despite the change of location — shifted from the Slavic forests to the southern American swamps — and the translation of the names — from Vasilisa to Queenie — the first half of the story is identical to the classic story of Baba Yaga and Vasilisa the Fair. Once Queenie finds the swamp hag, the story shifts into something new, as the swamp hag sets her not impossible tasks but a variety of lessons, training Queenie to be her apprentice.

Unfortunately, this story didn’t quite do it for me. It was too repetitious of others in the anthology in the beginning, and the plot and motivation in the second half were not clear to me. I also found the overall “voice” of the story unclear; sometimes it slipped into dialect, sometimes it read in quite a high register, most of it was in the past tense, but sometimes it shifted into the present tense. I’m not against these types of things in principle, but I want to see clearly why an author choose the voice they do at each point. For instance, if the dialogue was in dialect and the narration in the high register, that would make sense; or if the entire story were told in dialogue, including the narration, that would also make sense, and would have been enjoyable. Similarly, if the shift in tense happened in particular scenes, or particular characters, that would make sense; but as it was, it was a sentence here or there, in the middle of a paragraph in the past tense, leaving me uncertain whether it was a deliberate choice or simply a mistake.

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REVIEW: “The Partisan and the Witch” by Charlotte Honigman

Review of Charlotte Honigman, “The Partisan and the Witch”, in Skull & Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga, edited by Kate Wolford (World Weaver Press, 2019): 79-100 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This story is the crown jewel of the anthology, taking the myth of Baba Yaga and transplanting it into World War II Poland. Chaja is a young Jewish girl in hiding who has already seen her brother and sister, Zivek and Rywka, die. When the farmers who are protecting her can do so no longer, the farmwife tells her there is someone in the depths of the forest that may be able to help her. So Chaja sets off to find Baba Yaga and beg of her to kill the three riders, the white, the red, and the black, who are roaming the countryside slaughtering her people.

This was a superlative example both of how to take a historic myth and completely reinvent it, and how to write good modern historical fantasy. Every word breathes life into Chaja and her siblings and friends, and I was riveted.

Sara L. Uckelman2 Comments

REVIEW: “Baba Yaga: Her Story” by Jill Marie Ross

Review of Jill Marie Ross, “Baba Yaga: Her Story”, in Skull & Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga, edited by Kate Wolford (World Weaver Press, 2019): 47-77 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

In this long short story — long enough to nearly be a novelette, long enough to take up almost an entire bath time before the water grows cold — Ross spins out an origin story for Baba Yaga. Who is she, what was she like as a child, how did she get to be how she is? It’s richly detailed, weaving in many other Russian and Slavic mythic elements, and deeply satisfying.

The one thing that put me off a bit was the use of parenthetical glosses for the assorted Slavic phrases dotted here and there. First, these glosses were inconsistent; some foreign words were not glossed. Second, some of the foreign words seemed unnecessary, e.g., why call the oven pech instead of ‘oven’. Third, while I love seeing foreign words and phrases incorporated into a story, I’d rather see them used in a such a way that their meaning is clear from context, so that they don’t need to be glossed. But this is only a minor point.

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REVIEW: “A Tale Soon Told” by Lissa Sloane

Review of Lissa Sloane, “A Tale Soon Told”, in Skull & Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga, edited by Kate Wolford (World Weaver Press, 2019): 16-46 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This story starts off so similarly to the preceding that it irritated me a bit, but that irritation quickly left me as Sloane developed the story of Vasilisa into a three-part arc that drew upon the maiden-mother-crone triune, other Slavic folklore (such as the story of Finist the Falcon), and turned it all into an origin story. It was beautifully told, and very satisfying.

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REVIEW: “Vasilisa the Wise” by Kate Forsyth

Review of Kate Forsyth, “Vasilisa the Wise”, in Skull & Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga, edited by Kate Wolford (World Weaver Press, 2019): 5-15 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

This opening tale of the anthology is a straight-up, no frills, no changes retelling of the story originally recorded by Alexander Afanasyev (don’t let the title confuse you: this is story of Vasilisa the Beautiful, not the story of Vasilisa the Wise, which is a version of “The Frog Prince”). Vasilisa is sent by her stepmother out into the darkness to borrow fire from Baba Yaga. Along the way, Vasilisa meets three horsemen, one white as dawn, one red as noon, one dark as night, and once she’s within Baba Yaga’s clutches, she must rely on her wits, her kindness, and the advice of the doll that her mother gave her before she died to perform the tasks that Baba Yaga has set her.

It’s quite a classic fairy tale, with bits recognisable from many other tales in the tradition of the Grimm brothers — the evil stepmother, the trek through the woods, the witch who eats people, the three tasks — and Forsyth’s retelling maintains the classic, antique “voice” of the fairytales of childhood. It sets a good stage for the rest of the anthology.

(Originally published in Vasilisa the Wise & Other Tales of Brave Young Women, Serenity Press, 2017).

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REVIEW: Skull & Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga, edited by Kate Wolford

Review of Kate Wolford, ed., Skull & Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga (World Weaver Press, 2019) — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

In this anthology, folklorist Kate Wolford collects seven tales of Baba Yaga, the dangerous and deceptive crone-witch figure of Slavic mythology. The collection is introduced by Amanda Bergloff, who delves into the history of the Baba Yaga character, and the subversive ways in which she acts, both in historical myth and in the present set of stories. The stories themselves range from retellings of the classic Baba Yaga tales, including the most well-known of them, “Vasilisa the Beautiful”, found in Alexander Afanasyev’s 19th century Russian Fairy Tales, to ones that depart from the classic tradition much more, focusing on Baba Yaga’s origins, or transferring her from the Slavic myth to World War II history.

Three of the stories (Forsyth, Sloan, Shanel) are straight up re-tellings of the original story, although sometimes extended or transplanted. Two (Honigman, Coates) are stories of Baba Yaga in modern times. Two (Ross, Cook) explore Baba Yaga’s history. As isolated stories, each can more than stand on its own merits. However, rather perversely for a themed anthology, having three tellings of the same story in the same book got a bit repetitious. The ones I loved the best were the ones that reinvented the story, rather than merely retold it, and made something wholly new. On this count, Honigman’s story is the bright shining jewel of the anthology.

The seven stories are listed below, and we will review each in turn, linking them back to this post when the reviews are published.

Sara L. Uckelman7 Comments

REVIEW: “The Story of a Star” by Æ (George William Russell)

Review of Æ (George William Russell), “The Story of a Star” in A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction, edited by Jack Fennell (Tramp Press, 2018): 71-75 — Purchase here. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman. (Read the review of the anthology).

Unlike some of the other stories in this anthology, with their quite detailed science, this one seems almost more fantasy (or perhaps magical realism?) than science fiction — though Robert, the narrator (what is it with all the men writing stories with egotistical, megalomaniac first person POVs? I mean, the narrator of this story imagines himself to be the reincarnation of one of the magi!), is dealing with subject matter that could be called science, such as the birth of stars and planets, the way he deals with them is not through observation, investigation, or scientific method, but through contemplation, dreaming, and fugue states.

(Originally published in 1894).

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REVIEW: “Girls Who Do Not Drown” by A.C. Buchanan

Review of A.C. Buchanan, “Girls Who Do Not Drown”, Apex Magazine 115 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.

On an unnamed island in the cold ocean, girls grow up knowing that the sea may kill them as they grow up, when glashtyns will come to lure them beneath the waves. That is the way it has always been and the way it will always be. For Alice, this destiny is complicated by the fact that everyone else thinks she is a boy. But when a glashtyn comes for her anyway, she realizes that if the water horse can see what she really is, then someone else may figure it out too. She walks into the ocean.

The writing and the storytelling here floored me. It’s a simple story on the surface, but Buchanan brings forward every ounce of pathos, delivering it to the reader like an offering. There is violence here, and a deep isolation, but it never feels overwrought. If anything, the descriptions are surprisingly restrained, and the mirroring of supernatural and real-world themes is allowed to speak for itself.

I am not ashamed to admit that the ending of the story made me cry. It is a good ending, and more hopeful than I would have believed. I won’t spoil it beyond what you can infer from the title, but this is a beautiful, resonant story.

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REVIEW: “The Curse of Apollo” by Diana Hurlburt

Review of Diana Hurlburt, “The Curse of Apollo”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This is a story of a story, set in ancient Greece where a story teller recites the tales for each season — counting tales “a more pleasant way of counting the seasons than taxes”. This particular story that the story teller tells us of is of two horses born to the same mare six weeks apart. Is this a miracle of nature? Is it divine intervention? Are the horses gods? Or silly young foals to be sacrificed to the gods? No one knew what to do, except one person, and he was not consulted: And so that is how the titular curse came about. No one thought to ask one of the most important twin gods what he thought, and Apollo felt slighted…

The best myths are ones where you aren’t entirely sure what is real and what is not. This story feels like it could’ve come straight out of the Homeric tradition of classical Greek mythology, though it’s not a myth that I recognise — whether this is because of a fault in myself or because the story is truly new, I do not know. Either way, I enjoyed it.

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REVIEW: “Wise Woman” by Regina Higgins

Review of Regina Higgins, “Wise Woman”, Luna Station Quarterly 36 (2018): Read online. Reviewed by Sara L. Uckelman.

This wasn’t meant to be a horror story (I don’t think), but there are few things that I can imagine that are scarier than false accusations. When Charlotte finds out from her aunt Sylvia that Mildred, whom Charlotte has been going to all her life, has been accused, Charlotte’s first response is to ask what proof there is being the accusations. Sylvia’s response is chilling:

“Oh, there’s no proof. Not yet. She’s just been accused.”

Behind those words is the chilling truth, that proof doesn’t matter. When a woman is accused, proof isn’t needed. When a woman accuses, proof is required.

It is fear that drives Charlotte to ask Mildred to read the cards: The Empress, the Emperor, the broken tower, symbol of destruction. But while Charlotte fears destruction as a dangerous, harmful thing, Mildred embraces hope: Hope that what is to come is the shattering of oppressive power structures. Mildred’s hope is so calm and steadfast, it is difficult not to believe in it. Hope in the face of oppression is always something worth reading about.

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