Queen Victoria's Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
350 pages
Published 2013
Read from November 27 to November 29
Rating: ★★½ out of 5
An anthology of original stories recruited from contemporary top names in the subgenre -- I haven't read this sort of thing since After the King, almost two years ago. I haven't read a Datlow and Windling anthology since 1988's Year's Best Fantasy, just about one year ago. Both books were disappointing. But I'm cautiously optimistic about this one. The theme has promise: gaslamp fantasy is a catch-all term for fantasy derived from the 19th century and all things British-y, a classification that includes but isn't necessarily defined by steampunk. If even a third of these stories have the charm and verve of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, we're in for good times. Though given the inconsistent quality of stories delivered to themed anthologies, and Datlow and Windling's questionable tastes way back in the '80s, we'll just have to see. The names I recognize on the contents page rarely disappoint, at least so far, so that's something.
"Queen Victoria's Book of Spells" by Delia Sherman. Which came first: The name of this story or the title of the anthology? This entry almost reads as if Sherman were tasked with constructing a story around the title. Which is not to say it's bad or even unenthusiastic. The story is brisk and competent. But it's a bit on the simple side, following a very basic stock story format: Magical grad student unlocks the spells concealing secret passages in the young Queen Victoria's titular commonplace book, while grumbling about the parallels in his own life, viz. a tyrannical doctoral advisor and a struggle for self-determination. His crisis of conscience provoked by Victoria's secret and shady past helps him resolve the academic conflict entangling him, and gets him a date with the unexpectedly sweet and perceptive magical archivist to boot. It's unsurprising stuff that just about any fantasy author could write in their sleep. But still, it has charm.
"The Fairy Enterprise" by Jeffrey Ford. Interesting but half-cooked satire on Victorian industrialism. There are a couple images and incidents that tantalize with possibility, but the bulk of the narrative feels hastily assembled, scribbled down without the delicate magic I expect from Ford (and far more potty humor than I associate with him, including the immortal line "I shat a populace"). This, I fear, may be the risk of original anthologies -- everything is written to order and hurried to meet deadlines, rather than cultivated organically.
"From the Catalogue of the Pavilion of the Uncanny and Marvellous, Scheduled for Premiere at the Great Exhibition (Before the Fire)" by Genevieve Valentine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the title, this is an epistolary story, heavy on catalog entries and scholarly notes, light on personal letters or affect. If there had been a strong tradition of faery fantasy in the 1950s or early '60s, I could well imagine this sort of story appearing then -- it has that same businesslike tone, recording the "facts" of the case from various snippets but not fleshing out story and character per se. It's okay, I guess, so far as it goes, but it's a disappointing use of a terrific title.
"The Memory Book" by Maureen McHugh. Another middling effort, dusting off the usual set dressings -- a governess, a tawdry family, fashion as a competition for status, a vacation at the seaside -- to sketch a tale of sympathetic magic. Nothing special, and in fact its denouement is a bit too similar to "Queen Victoria's Book of Spells" -- it felt like an inferior repeat.
"La Reine d'Enfer" by Kathe Koja. The first story in this collection with a bang-up opening and a distinctive, urgent narrative voice, and the first excellent story overall. Easily the best story so far, a superb and sensual joining of style, incident, and character, giddy with vengeance.
"For the Briar Rose" by Elizabeth Wein. Another which-came-first problem: Did I have trouble getting into this story because the narrative doesn't flow well, or did I feel the narrative didn't flow well because I couldn't get into the story? A fictionalized snoozer on the life of Margaret Burne-Jones (daughter of the artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones, who did a famous series of paintings on the subject of Briar Rose), which inevitably (and artlessly, I thought) mingles in a touch of Briar Rose folklore before concluding that childbirth can suddenly make everything in life clear and that motherhood is "a great act of creation" equal to poetry or art. The message is a bit too breeder-chic for my tastes, but my real issue with the story is how boring and unremarkable it is.
"The Governess" by Elizabeth Bear. In execution this is a workmanlike and too-predictable gothic piece of domestic and sexual tyranny, but the thematic linkage between the captivity of a selkie and the complex social traps of gender and class subjugation is inspired. I always appreciate a story that employs its genre conceit to illustrate a social injustice.
"Smithfield" by James P. Blaylock. This story is almost the reverse of "The Governess," in that it's an atmospheric and boldly-penned piece built around a corny premise: a young Arthur Conan Doyle taking photographs in Smithfield at the end of the gaslight era and discovering supernatural orbs caught on his plates (which, of course, vanish as soon as the electric lamps get switched on). It's been a while since I read anything by Doyle (aside from The White Company, which is in an archaic style and doesn't count), but I've read more books by him than by anyone else (except Stephen King, who also doesn't count). I don't think Blaylock quite catches Doyle's cadence. I appreciate that he made the effort, though -- it's only the second story in this collection that tries to do anything interesting with the narrative voice. I also appreciate the Ackroydian image of Doyle's plates "developing" into consecutive layers of Smithfield, accumulating backward through the ages until they become completely blackened and impenetrable. It's too bad the story itself is nothing much.
"The Unwanted Women of Surrey" by Kaaron Warren. Not a bad story, but one suffused with 1980s-style nihilism, in which a group of "hysterics" maintained in a home for the convenience of their husbands and families become the agents of a cholera plague, believing their actions will please the Grey Women and reward the "hysterics" with free will. It reads at times like earnest, Russ-esque venom and vengeance fantasy, but the ending -- in which the Grey Women greedily slurp up the blackened, shriveled soul of the plague-spreading ringleader, and all the other women utter a collective "Oopsie" -- complicates any allegorical reading. I should note that it isn't a great story, either.
"Charged" by Leanna Renee Hieber. This brief character study has enthusiasm but clatters along in amateurish prose: "My gift urged me to live by reinvented terms" has a certain lack of polish more consonant with the unpaying underbelly of online publication, and this sort of "arrogant antihero grasps at what he believes is rightfully his" boilerplate is a yawn.
"Mr. Splitfoot" by Dale Bailey. A solid entry, nicely chilling horror playing with the "reality" behind the sham of the Fox sisters. This sort of horror has a limited palette, but Bailey employs it to good effect. Though the "stinger" at the end (the devil was loosed upon the world just in time for the 20th century!) is eye-rollingly unoriginal.
"Phosphorus" by Veronica Schanoes. This is exactly the sort of story I want to write: A remorseless look at working conditions during the height of capital's power -- when workers were replaceable parts and could be worked to death without a second thought, poisoned into walking corpses, all the more gruesome because it's based on historical fact -- and the early, all-too-often forgotten working heroes who began the struggle against it. That said, something about this particular story leaves me cold. Much of the blame is on the second person narration, which sacrifices character and depth in favor of a false sense of immediacy. Then there's the plotline hinging on the magical Irish grandmother, a cheap and easy storytelling device that leaves me unsatisfied. The subject matter here is worth digging into (and it enriched me with the knowledge of phossy jaw as well as the London matchgirls strike itself -- who says fantasy can't be didactic?), but Schanoes' execution is only average. Schanoes' afterword (each of the stories here is followed by an afterword in which the authors explain their inspiration) is almost more moving than the story itself.
"We Without Us Were Shadows" by Catherynne M. Valente. Almost as good as "La Reine d'Enfer," this a charming piece on the Brontë siblings done in full The Girl Who... mode. It could be a lost chapter from that series; that sense of familiarity undercuts the effect, just a little bit, with the feeling that Valente has brought us here before and shown us identical wonders. Nonetheless a satisfying effort.
"The Vital Importance of the Superficial" by Ellen Kushner and Caroline Stevermer. Charming and hilarious. An epistolary story, again, but this time composed of unfailingly polite correspondence between contending wizards as well as their long-suffering family members. This one is definitely up there with "La Reine d'Enfer" and "We Without Us Were Shadows" as the best stories so far.
"The Jewel in the Toad Queen's Crown" by Jane Yolen. You'd never guess a story in which Prime Minister Disraeli uses kabbalistic magic to turn Queen Victoria into a toad (twice) would be boring, but this one is. Rather than demonstrating their working relationship in any way, Yolen has them thinking daggers at each other, Dune style, but without the dense political intrigue and interest factor of Dune. The internal monologues dammed any sense of impetus or flow, leaving me flipping pages to see how much more of this I was expected to read. I'm not sure what would suggest the connection between Disraeli and kabbalah in the first place, aside from, you know, the fact that he was born into a Jewish family. That creeps a little close to Magical Negro territory, so to speak, for my tastes. It's a shame -- a title like that, penned by Yolen, had led me to expect a charming fairy tale of a toad monarch in a mighty pond.
"A Few Twigs He Left Behind" by Gregory Maguire. Ah yes, another Maguire fanfiction -- I mean, another Maguire reinterpretation of/addendum to a beloved classic, this time A Christmas Carol. It's adequate enough, not as good as "Scarecrow" (reviewed here), not as godawful as Wicked, which I couldn't even finish (and so never reviewed). Maguire tries too hard, I think, to be Dickensian and picturesque, but with only indifferent success.
"Their Monstrous Minds" by Tanith Lee. A steampunk yawn centered on a cold, indifferent, megalomaniacal genius-inventor hurling lightnings and giving life to a Frankenstein superman on a remote island. Mechanical, omniscient prose, emulating the less enjoyable aspects of early Victorian storytelling, contributes to the reheated feeling of the piece.
"Estella Saves the Village" by Theodora Goss. Estella Havisham (I thought the name sounded familiar, but I had to look it up; I haven't, alas, read much Dickens yet) races to save a village populated by various other Victorian characters (from Lady D'Urberville to one Mr. Holmes) from a plague of nothingness -- which turns out to be memory loss in the brain of the modern woman in whose imagination the village exists. This sort of thing is corny in an inoffensive way, and kind of sweet. I'd hoped for a more bang-up closer, but hey, this story was palatable, and at least the book is done.
While I'm happy to have had the chance to read "La Reine d'Enfer," "We Without Us Were Shadows," and "The Vital Importance of the Superficial," most of the stories here were slapdash affairs, middling at best, tedious at worst. I'm beginning to suspect that original anthologies represent a easy cash-in for authors able to meet deadlines, not a promising field for all-time great works.
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