i rarely review each individual story in a collection but this one’s short and i have distinct enough thoughts about most of the stories so let’s gooo

1998 : it felt like a literary version of a nightmare room story (the bizarre short-lived children’s horror series by r.l. stine), which is to say it was one of my favorites in the collection.

gretel : not gonna lie, “all men in the world have died” is a premise that generally makes me uneasy as soon as i hear it because more often than not it’s way too bioessentialist, but this story pleasantly surprised me, both with the aspects of the premise it focused on, and with featuring a trans protagonist.

blindness : one of the only stories i really hated…yeah yeah the blindness is a metaphor for repression and blah blah blah i get it. however, Disability As Metaphor makes me viscerally sick to my stomach, and the literal magical healing only made it worse. honestly, i was close to giving the whole collection 1 star just because of how vehemently i hated this story.

fellow’s gully : i loved the first half so much; it felt very shirley jackson-esque in the sense that you can feel that something is deeply wrong even if you’re not quite sure what or why. the reveal didn’t quite stick the landing for me but i have to respect the ingenuity.

1740 : solid piece of climate fiction. the only thing that brought this one down for me was the ending. like, i got the protagonist’s motivations, i just fail to see how those motivations led to the specific choices that get made.

mama : the only other story i actively disliked. it was gross and rancid and i failed to see the point of it. at least it was mercifully short.

the abduction : oh, what a breath of fresh air after the previous story! it’s about the horrors that capitalism inflicts upon bodies and art and pleasure, and i ate it up!!

Δάφνη, or daphne : this sure was…a story, i guess. it could just be that the oversaturation of greek myth retellings in publishing has turned me incredibly jaded but i failed to grasp what the point of playing with these particular mythological figures in this way was supposed to even be.

mcsb : i may be stupid

dorica kastra : thematically pretty interesting but it just didn’t grip me.

the sorrows of young lotte : werther haters of the world UNITE! <3 (in other words, this was another win, and also sweet, sweet vindication for high school me who kept angrily muttering “leave lotte alone u miserable little creep” while reading the sorrows of young werther)