Emily B. (LibraryEm42) reviewed Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History on + 26 more book reviews
This is one of the best speculative fiction anthologies I've read.
Setting aside the familiar generals and princesses and other powerful, leader-ly characters means these stories offer the unexpected, and it's both powerful and delightful. Many of the settings aren't often seen in Anglophone fiction, and even those that are more familiar are told from uncommon perspectives--for instance, a Jewish immigrant family's experience of the US Civil War.
It's hard to single out stories for comment, because I enjoyed them all, but "The Colts" has some of the most amazingly quotable lines. It's an unconventional zombie story set just after the 1514 Hungarian peasants' revolt was crushed: "He told his tormentors, with us there to witness, that each rebellion they crushed would rise again, and again, until the nobles were driven from the land. At the time it seemed a far-fetched thing to say. We would do right by him, even if we ate them one by one."
"Free Jim's Mine" by Tananarive Due (go check out her short story collection "Ghost Summer" and her African Immortals novel series, starting with "My Soul to Keep") is the best kind of scary campfire story, one with deeper resonance that stays with you. How do you escape slavery? "You got to sell your heart for freedom... The ones who run--well, they don't listen to their hearts, do they? Their hearts are cold as ice."
"Ogres of East Africa" is a catalogue of ogres, and also the story our narrator writes in the margins, which his employer cannot read. Even this story is not the full story. "I ask myself if there are words contained in Mary's margins: stories of ogres she cannot tell to me. Kiptebanguryon, she says, is homeless now. A modern creature, he roams the Protectorate clinging to the undersides of trains."
Highly recommended.
Setting aside the familiar generals and princesses and other powerful, leader-ly characters means these stories offer the unexpected, and it's both powerful and delightful. Many of the settings aren't often seen in Anglophone fiction, and even those that are more familiar are told from uncommon perspectives--for instance, a Jewish immigrant family's experience of the US Civil War.
It's hard to single out stories for comment, because I enjoyed them all, but "The Colts" has some of the most amazingly quotable lines. It's an unconventional zombie story set just after the 1514 Hungarian peasants' revolt was crushed: "He told his tormentors, with us there to witness, that each rebellion they crushed would rise again, and again, until the nobles were driven from the land. At the time it seemed a far-fetched thing to say. We would do right by him, even if we ate them one by one."
"Free Jim's Mine" by Tananarive Due (go check out her short story collection "Ghost Summer" and her African Immortals novel series, starting with "My Soul to Keep") is the best kind of scary campfire story, one with deeper resonance that stays with you. How do you escape slavery? "You got to sell your heart for freedom... The ones who run--well, they don't listen to their hearts, do they? Their hearts are cold as ice."
"Ogres of East Africa" is a catalogue of ogres, and also the story our narrator writes in the margins, which his employer cannot read. Even this story is not the full story. "I ask myself if there are words contained in Mary's margins: stories of ogres she cannot tell to me. Kiptebanguryon, she says, is homeless now. A modern creature, he roams the Protectorate clinging to the undersides of trains."
Highly recommended.
