missroserose | Review: Human Tales, edited by Jennifer Brozek

I have a love-hate relationship with anthologies. On the one hand, they provide unique opportunities: the chance to sample work from a broad spectrum of authors, the option to enjoy a story or two at a time without committing to a novel-length journey. On the other, consistency is their cold iron - a weak point inherent to their multi-authorial construction. It was with some trepidation, therefore, that I started reading the copy of Human Tales kindly provided to me by Jennifer Brozek; I loved the premise, but was uncertain how the individual stories would hold together.

I'm pleased to report that this collection contains some truly excellent stories. The opening yarn - Ivan Ewert's "Bloody Spindle", a sexualized version of a classic fairy tale - might seem overwrought enough to be a parody; but it never winks at its audience, only amps up the energy and emotional stakes until any reader with a pulse will find themselves caught up in its sensuality. Matthew McFarland's "Caleb", while somewhat quieter, views a heartbreaking family situation through the innocent eyes of the Fae, and leaves you wondering which of the worlds is truly the more barbaric. And Jess Hartley's "Hunger's Child", another retelling of a classic, spins a universal human foible out into a nearly Shakespearean tragedy, where the best of intentions on all sides cannot keep human (and faerie) nature from taking its course.

Unfortunately, there were the inevitable few stories that could have used more work. "The Human and the Sea Sprite" and "The Price of Cream" seemed to be aiming for a tragic angle, but ultimately were about annoyingly passive characters who end up miserable for no real reason other than their unwillingness to fight back. "Color" and "The Griffin's Tail" both take place in potentially interesting worlds, but the implications of those worlds are never really explored, and their respective conflicts suffer from similar underdevelopment.

The problems with these stories are made all the more frustrating by their obvious potential; on the whole, this is a skilled group of writers Brozek has gathered, and several of their tales feel only a revision or two away from "amazing". In addition, the quality generally declines over the course of the book; which, while it doesn't detract from the good-to-excellent work, does leave the reader feeling a little frustrated that the later stories don't live up to the standards of the earlier ones. And nitpicky as it is, my PDF version had a slightly higher incidence of typos than one would expect from a published book.

All that said, I still very much recommend this anthology - the caliber of writing on the whole is above par and the concept irresistible to those of us who enjoy peeking behind the curtain of a story to see what it looks like from behind. And it doesn't hurt that the typesetting is lovely, too. B+