"The Fox's Tower and& Other Tales" by Yoon Ha Lee (short stories; collected 2015)

 **Flash fiction, some stories less than a single page, but still able to capture elusive but undeniable magic**

"How the Andan Court"

 

Actually, I cannot offer you roses.  Roses that taste like crystallized desire when you try to smell them.  Roses whose buds are softer than the hands of the morning mist.  Roses pierced through by the needles of nightfall.

Roses that count the season’s clock with their petals, disrobing red by red until all’s gone except the sun’s winter angles.  Roses growing in walls around the wells of your heart.  Roses crowding the boundaries of your cards until every shuffle is a procession of brambles.

Roses laid upon the swelling waters to be swallowed by black tides.  Roses that candy themselves as they pass your lips.  Roses so shy you can only glimpse their shadows as you fall asleep.

I would rather give you roses than a bouquet of words, but I do not speak the petal language adequately and it does not admit translation; this will have to suffice.

Yoon Ha Lee is a joy, one of my favorite authors working today.  From his fantastic space opera trilogy to his excellent young adult fiction released on Rick Riordan's imprint, he simply does not miss.  Sometimes as we'll see discussing this particular collection) he indulges in the most florid of prose, sometimes he keeps in simple and just enjoys telling a story.  Regardless, I legitimately don't think he knows how to write a bad book.  And as a trans Korean-American kid who grew up in the American South, he never fails to bring the perspective of the outsider, the misunderstood, in an absolutely gorgeous way

I'm serious.  You see his name on the cover, you know at the very least you're going to get a fun adventure with wonderfully developed queer characters and probably a heavy infusion of Korean mythology and folkore

But (as mentioned in my review of "Machineries of Empire"), I first came across Lee through his flash fiction, and in many ways that's still what I love best about him.  Tiny, tiny short stories of maybe one or two pages at most, often written from a prompt given on his livejournal (for those that don't know what that is, ahh the stories we could tell . . .), a page or two doesn't leave much room for vast characterization or dramatic plotting.  More like parables, these stories often have a very simple point to share, but it's the way he shares them, filled to the absolute brim with magic, that is truly wonderful.  This collection contains a lot of my favorites:

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Magician's Feast

The story of a magician, living far far out on the edge of the world.  It's a solitary existence, and her only interactions with other people are the caravan traders who visit her occasionally--and the food that they bring her, delicacies from around the world . . .

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Harvesting Shadows

Less than a page, telling of a temple in the mountains whose priests are dedicated to the practice of harvesting shadows.  Why do they do this?  Not for the reason you think

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Two Bakeries

There is a town with two bakeries, side by side.  One sells gorgeous confectionaries, the other sells simple loaves.  They each have their place

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Tiger Wives

Of course, tigers make the very best wives, everyone knows that.  But of course, they are in the position to be choose about whom they marry

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The Youngest Fox

Since time immemorial, foxes have been masters of the art of seduction.  This is a nice little story about one who perhaps isn't quite as good as her older siblings, but she finds a way

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The Firziak Mountains

There is a mountain range in which each mountain has its own flavor that it imparts to a cup of tea drunk on its peak.  The locals have thoughts

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Listen, I don't have much to say here.  I've already literally written more than one of these stories.  But please, if you have time (and it doesn't take much), let Yoon Ha Lee add a little bit of magic to your day

I loved this book

The Workshop

She is not an angel, but angels visit her workshop.  Some are crowned in light from the universe’s first exhalation.  Others come with swords forged from final kisses, and still others bring wine pressed from ripe stars.  (Angels have indifferent palates, but she is kind enough not to tell them so.)

Angels visit her when their wings want mending.  She has tools fine and terrible: needles hammered from indiscreet mirrors and nails that bite like first love abandoned, bandages woven from the susurration of seafoam and bonesaws that recite anatomical treatises in the language of entropy.  No one questions her skill with these things.

But it is not her skill the angels think of when they come to her.  Rather, it is that old story of an angel who unwinged herself that her comrades might fly again.  When they mention it to her, however, she only laughs and says she could build herself wings any time she liked; it is their company she wants.