Clockwork Phoenix Review © 2008 Mario Guslandi
Another "new weird" collection, perhaps? A slipstream opus? Whatever — set somewhere between fantasy, SF, and something else, the stories selected by editor Mike Allen have an unique property: they are never tedious. Some are beautiful, some alien and odd, a few irritating, several too incredible to be taken seriously, but none leave the reader indifferent or bored. This is no minor accomplishment for any anthology, so praise to Allen who, incidentally, is already assembling a second volume that should be available soon. But back to Volume 1, to mention the most enticing and noteworthy among the stories included therein.... The best tale in the book is, by far, John Grant's "All the Little Gods We Are," an outstanding piece of fiction in which the special, perfect spiritual link between a boy and a girl wavers between the dream of an impossible future and the actuality of a lonely existence. Can the two distinct realities coexist in two different levels? Thought-provoking and compelling, the story proves once more Grant's uncommon talent as a storyteller. "The City Of Blind Delight" is yet another of Catherynne M. Valente's beautiful stories, featuring a man driven to a fantastic city and a peculiar train station, a gentle prostitute requiring used train tickets as a payment, and the writer's exquisite musical language, for which she's rightly famous. Tanith Lee, always an extraordinary fabulist, enchants the reader with "The Woman," a yarn in which the only woman left in the world is hopelessly courted by one young man after another. With the cute "The Dew Drop Coffee Lounge," Cat Rambo pulls our feet back to the ground or, to be more precise, to the floor of a city cafe to explore the secrets of blind dates, while in "There Is A Monster Under Helen's Bed," Ekaterina Sedia provides a splendid metaphor of incommunicability by describing the inability of a couple of foster parents to recognize the existence of a real monster under the bed of their adopted daughter. The offbeat but fascinating "A Mask Of Flesh" by Marie Brennan depicts a wooden female creature who, after taking the shape of an actual woman of flesh and bone, is selected to become the Rain Bride, only to end up burning on a pyre. Another excellent contribution is "Choosers Of The Slain" by John C Wright, a sad, lyric tale of time travel in which an old warrior, doomed but intrepid, refuses to be lured by a shining future and proudly goes to his death. Finally, Deborah Biancotti spellbinds the reader with the marvelous "The Tailor Of Time," a fantastic fairy tale portraying a man whose daughter is dying and who seeks additional time for her from the mysterious Tailor who, appointed by an even more elusive Engineer, stitches days and nights by means of his sewing machine. I highly recommend the book to anyone looking for top-notch fiction irrespective of genre labels.
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Clockwork Phoenix assembles eighteen "tales of beauty and strangeness" defying labels, crossing genres, experimenting, and trying to astonish. 