She yearns to meet her mother, the mysterious Magda. A farm girl loves her chickens and dislikes her step-mother and new siblings.

One little girl shows her friend how to get into a hidden world. ***'Singing on a star' - by Ellen Klages. A man and his grandmother go out fishing in a really interesting sf world. ***'All under heaven' - by Chris Roberson. A little fetish-y for my tastes, the relationship with the father felt completely unreal, and I have no idea what happened when Midori turns into a spirit. Story about a modern-day kitsune who turns into a ghost. *'A thousand tails' - by Christopher Barzak. Fantastic until-the boy stays on, reliving memories forever, and it's supposedly a happy ending. A destitute boy tries to help a dying homeless man, and accidentally gets to relive all of the man's best memories. I liked this until the end, when the story abruptly shifts. When she stumbles across a powerful magic bracelet, her disappointment at being passed over bubbles up. The king's only child is a girl, who helps her father decide disputes and is well-loved by the populace, but will never rule the kingdom. Combined, they take the reader on an unexpected journey through the possibilities of the human imagination.***'Kingmaker' - by Nancy Springer. (“In the beginning there was a boy and in the middle there was a different boy, although he was really still the same, except for his teeth and his name and his location.”) Other standout tales include “Little Red,” a fractured anddark Little Red Riding Hood story set in a mental institution, by Jane Yolen and her son Adam Stemple, and Ellen Klages’s haunting “Singing on a Star,” based on a childhood memory.Īlternately funny, sinister, poignant, and always beyond the ordinary, each of these nineteen stories adds something unique to the collection and challenges assumptions about the breadth of genre fiction. The pieces range from Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s lyrical novella, “The Ghosts of Strangers,” which deals with loss through the eyes of a girl who has a special ability to see ghosts, to Laurel Winter’s bite-sized and inventive “The Myth of Fenix,” an affecting story related in an experimental, almost poetic style. Standard MARC Records Download Standard MARC Recordsįirebirds Soaring, a companion to Firebirds and Firebirds Rising, is a substantial compilation of speculative fiction, full of diverse offerings.

Firebirds Rising by Sharyn November