Eyes Like Sky And Coal And Moonlight

by Cat Rambo, Lawrence M. Schoen (Editor), Michael Livingston (Editor)

A collection of fantasy short stories by Cat Rambo. Includes "Her Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight," "The Accordion," "Magnificent Pigs," "Narrative of a Beast's Life," "Sugar," "The Dead Girl's Wedding March," "In Order to Conserve," "The Towering Monarch of His Race," "I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said," "Eagle-haunted Lake Sammamish," "Heart In a Box," "In the Lesser Southern Isles," "Up the Chimney," "The Silent Familiar," "Events at Fort Plenitude," "Dew Drop Coffee Lounge," "A Key Decides Its Destiny," "Rare Pears and Greengages," "A Twine of Flame," and "Grandmother's Road Trip" (only available in the e-version). Also includes author's notes and a chronology of Tabat

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Short Story Collection, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Collections

180 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2009

About the author

F&SF writer Cat Rambo lives and writes in the Midwest. They have been shortlisted for an Endeavour Award, Locus Award, World Fantasy Award and most recently the Nebula Award. Their debut novel, BEASTS OF TABAT, appeared in 2015 from WordFire Press, the same year she co-edited AD ASTRA: THE SFWA 50TH ANNIVERSARY COOKBOOK. Their most recent book is DEVIL'S GUN (novel, Tor Macmillan). They are a former two-term President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and still volunteers with the organization.
They run the popular online writing school focused on fantasy and science fiction, the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers. (academy.catrambo.com)

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Reviews

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth reading for the story with chickens alone. Not really a miss in this collection.

[Meran · Rating 4 out of 5]

20 Short stories. Don't let the small size of this book fool you. At only 177 pages and 1/2" thick, it's misleading. There are 43 lines on each page and the print is small. Using those numbers, there are about 430 words per page. Yeah, some pages are blank. Still, it took longer and I got more enjoyment from it than much larger tomes!

There were also 9 5 star stories and ONE I HAD to give a 6 star review for. So, it's a winning read.

It's so nice to read COMPLETE short stories! So many times, one needs the background of a long series to comprehend the story just read. This author knows how to write them! Imaginative, fabulous, surprising, lovely, exquisite, rich, sweet, heart-breaking, fresh, innovative, full of wonder, strong women, and intelligent! I want more!

_______________

Intro is by Michael Livingston - Fun, upbeat promo of Cat and her writing, in which I agree with the writer, Livingston…

Her Eyes Like Sky, and Coal, and Moonlight - In a tavern, a tale is told of a woman warrior, strong and persistent and kind, and how the meeting of her marked the young girl in positive, strong way, even through the toughest times of her adult life. - 5 stars

The Accordion - A fun little love story, involving 3 chickens, their eggs, an accordion, and 25 other instruments, all beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. - 5 stars

I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said- (A Tabat Story) A manticore name BUPUS; that alone is funny! [I'LL GNAW YOUR BONES… love this! I need to say it. Often.] (A Tabat Story) LOVED this one, though I didn't understand the last paragraph. Will enjoy reading the rest when the author decides to write more. - 5 stars

Heart in a Box - Feminist story for sure! What women do for love of a man. Even to distraction. The story fells mean, authentic. - 5 stars

In the Lesser Southern Isles - (A Tabat Story) A kidnapped lesser girl child surprises everyone, herself included, by a trip to the Southern Isles. I want to know more! - 5 stars

Up the Chimney - So funny! A one-page story, succinct, complete Fairylands vary. Who knew? - 5 stars

The Silent Familiar- With this tale, the author makes you love the characters, gives you joy, then rips your heart out through your tears, shamelessly. - 6 stars

Events at Port Plentitude - (A Tabat Story) Hunger in the harsh winter at a settlement, which is beset by creatures that kill with pleasure. They say that freezing to death is almost pleasant. It seems they want the babies. Not fully explained for a short story; needs more storyline. - 4 stars

Dew Drop Coffee Lounge - I could see this entire story as being absolutely true. It makes me feel like there really is a plan to how things happen. - 4 stars

Narrative of a Beast's Life (A Tabat Story) From a Centaur's POV, I thought at first "how unusual!" But this tale seems almost verbatim of many American African slaves' tales that I could not, in good conscious, give it a high rating, Not at all original. Sad. I'm trying to remember the name of the slave this tale parallels to the end, but I can't recall. The genre is called "slave narratives." Though I agree entirely with the story, as who connote, I wish it had been done in a different format. - 1 star

Eagle Haunted Lake Sammamish - A sad tale of good intentions probably gone wrong. Maybe. - 3 stars

Sugar - (A Tabat Story) [Supposed to be a pirate tale, but I wouldn't have known if not told by the author.] A love story, with Death already present, and the new love already engaged. - 3 stars

A Key Decides Its Destiny -(A Tabat Story) Excellent story of an apprentice learning to be a wizard, despite the odds. - 5 stars

The Towering Monarch of His Mighty Race - Not a flattering view of PT Barnum, but then I'm not sure one could admire the man. Almost from Jumbo's POV, the reader will definitely fall in love with him! The author breaks my heart once again. Jumbo was still a sensation when I was a kid, a legend by then. - 5 stars

In Order to Conserve - What if, instead of conserving gas or water, it was less tangible things like color, or music, or the Arts, we were losing? What would the world be without those? - 3 stars

Rare Pears and Greengages - A very sad, inevitable fate for a bastard baby and its unfortunate mother. Fairies figure heavily in this tale and they aren't the Disney kind either. - 4 stars

A Twine of Flame - (A Tabat Story) A woman carries a plague of flame, claiming lives of many in order to save her sister(s) from a sorcerer. Is the price too great? - 3 stars

The Dead Girl's Wedding March - (A Tabat Story) Will LOVE take down a city that has stood, unchanged, for over 5000 yrs? - 3 stars

Worm Within - A machine with a metal illness as if it were human. In fact, it thinks it IS a human. Interesting. - 4 stars

Magnificent Pigs - And again, the author breaks my heart. A 10 yr old girl, a litter of pigs, a budding tattoo artist older brother, no parents around. Build THAT into a heart-breaking story! - 5 stars

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first discovered this book from Twitter. Kurt Busiek (who writes some of the best super hero tales in his series Astro City) tweeted out that it was available on Kindle for free. I'm a sucker for short stories, and if he liked it, there was a decent enough chance that I too would like it.

The author, Cat Rambo, doesn't sound familiar to me, even though her name is quite unusual. But the more I thought about it, the more it did sound familiar. It's possible that I've come across her name before but I don't quite remember where. (It's possible I met her at the SFWA event that I went to since she's the local president.)

Eyes Like Sky . . . is a collection of stories firmly in the fantasy genre. Some more than others. From the introduction, her words were described as poetry, and I can definitely see why they're described like that. Her ability to build a world that I could see, and in the constraints of a short story, reminded me quite a bit of Joe Lansdale or Harlan Ellison.

Now here's the hard part - I didn't LOVE this collection. Quite a few of the stories are set in a world that she created for a video game that never came to be. A few of those stories were enjoyable, but then there were quite a few that I didn't enjoy as much. I felt like I had no idea of the makeup of this world. I felt lost.

But there were four stories that I enjoyed - and two of them that I loved. Like LOVED.

Heart in a Box - a different take on the Little Mermaid myth/fairytale.

Eagle-haunted Lake Sammammish - Heartbreaking. Amazing. Tragic. This made the book for me. Cat Rambo now follows me on twitter because I said this to her.

Grandmother's Road Trip - my grandmother passed away a little over a year ago and I imagined that this could have been her. As noted in the notes, a semi-biographical tale.

Magnificent Pigs - this one took a twist that I wasn't expecting and turned an okay story into a great one.

This collection was firmly in the three star pile but those four tales above were enough to push it to five stars.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for LIterature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)

So before I even begin to say anything about genre veteran Cat Rambo's new book, Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight, let's first plainly acknowledge two facts about it that play into my particular biases as a critic: first, that it's a story collection, which as regular readers know I don't care that much for (I feel that short stories generally lack the gravitas and opportunity for development that come with full-length books); and second, the particular genre Rambo works in is fantasy, and I'm not much of a fantasy fan either (mostly because of the overwritten, contraction-free, ponderously purplish prose that inevitably always seems to come with such stories).

But I do have a standing promise here to at least give an overview of any book that a person takes the trouble to send me (with some exceptions, of course -- see CCLaP's submission policy for more); and so when it comes to this, I can at least say that Moonlight is easy on the eyes and not difficult at all to make one's way through, and even in fact contains a host of different kinds of fantasy writing -- overly serious Grand Mythology Tolkien-style stuff, light and humorous Pratchett-style work, even contemporary alt-reality New-Weird-type tales. But as far as doing a critical analysis of this work, I'm afraid this is one of those times when I'm simply going to have to recuse myself, in that I literally don't know enough about the short fantasy format to begin with to make a fair qualitative judgement about any particular piece of it. I will leave it up to bigger fantasy fans than myself to give you an actual opinion of this book (which of course I highly encourage you to do in the comments below), but I did at least want to make you aware of its existence, since Cat was nice enough to send me a copy in the first place.

Out of 10: N/A

[José Vázquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

DISCLAIMER: Sorry for poor English, not my native language.
A solid fantasy anthology, covering all flavors from magic realism in the South American style to the more Tolkien-esque, but always with a very distinctive touch. Interesting and well written stories, all of them. The main problem is (like in many others one author anthologies) that they tend to become repetitive in tone and not be as brilliant as when you read one by one along other authors in monthly publications (bear in mind that most of them were originally printed in magazines or other anthologies). Cat Rambo is definitely an author to follow in the near future, and I am looking forward to read new short stories, or even longer fiction if she publish more. I would rate it more as 3.5/5 than 3, in fact.

[Lee Dunning · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't read a lot of short stories. For the most part I find them unsatisfying, many of the stories feeling like fragments of story ideas rather than fully fleshed tales. Peter S. Beagle is one of the few authors I've read who seems to be able to write both short and long pieces with equal skill. That brings me to Cat Rambo's work. This book was my first exposure to her writing, so I do not know anything about her longer pieces. I can however say that I was delighted with this short story collection. I picked it up because of a recommendation by another author, and frankly, because her name is so darn cool. What I found inside the book was a wide variety of stories ranging from full-blown fantasy to real-world with a hint of magic. PoV varied, and she handled all with equal aplomb. The level of imagination was impressive and even intimidating. I kept thinking, how the devil did she come up with that? The only story I found a bit of a letdown involved robots and an unreliable narrator. The truth of the story seemed obvious from about the third paragraph on. Aside from that, each tale left me hungry to read more. A couple even brought a few tears to my eyes.

[flossie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know where to begin with how much I adore this collection and Cat. Her voice is effortless, there is a wonderful mixture of melancholy and joy and hilarity in her stories, and I had legitimate moments where stories moved me to tears or had me laughing out loud. Many of these stories deal with her fictional world of Tabat and now all I want is to dive deep into her Tabat novels.

A taste of a perfect opening paragraph. Just 3 sentences long, but it delivers so much information and the voice is so strong:

"Once upon a time a dead girl lived with the other zombies in the caverns below the port of Tabat, in the city beneath the seaside town, the city that has no name. Thousands of years ago, the Wizard Sulooman plunged the city, buildings and all, into the depths of the earth, and removed its name, over some slight that no one but his ghost remembers. There life continues."

[William Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the sake of keeping the rating high, 4 stars. When I boil this down, the stories are too sparse to hold my interest. And not in the way I appreciate sparse poems with heavy meaning. Instead, they are wispy in that they follow a pattern of telling and not showing, which, we all know is writing class lesson 1. Rambo seems to be in a rush to tell us a thing happened, and not taking the time to tell us much else, so in more places than not, it reads like a diary than an engaging collection. Some of the 20 stories are bangers. To me, I mean. As always, I am very hard on collections like this but if you're into sci-fi or fantasy and also happen to be into Diane Williams and Donald Barthelme, you should give it a whirl.

[Teresa Edgerton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Often, I find short fiction unsatisfying because the characters and the plot seem undeveloped. That was not so with the stories in this collection. Almost every story finds its perfect length, and between them they showcase Rambo's capacity for invention -- some stories set in fantasy worlds, others in our own contemporary world where magic intrudes on the mundane -- as well as her insight into human nature. Her prose, which has been praised by others, is so beautifully clear that it is easy to overlook the poetry, with metaphors that evoke ordinary things in ways that are surprisingly eloquent.


There is a sadness to many of these stories, a darkness lurking around the edges, though there is hope, too, and transformation. Those that impressed me most were the title story, "Her Eyes Like Sky, And Coal, And Moonlight," "Magnificent Pigs," "The Towering Monarch of His Mighty Race, Whose Like the World Will Never See Again," and "The Dead Girl's Wedding March." The last story in the collection, "Grandmother's Road Trip," is a story about the indignities of old age and the dilemmas of caring for an aging parent. Despite (or because) of the fantastical element, there is such a painful authenticity to this story, at times I found it difficult to keep reading. Implicit in the story is the knowledge that with the passing generations roles change.

[Heidi Vlach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like any short story collection, some offerings are stronger than others. I found a few of the stories too bleak, so focused on their uniquely awful situations that they didn't manage much development or meaning. But overall, the collection is an interesting read covering several different flavours of fantasy.

I found a lot of the stories really charming. A wide variety of fantasy beings populate the stories, with many takes on how they would interact with humans. I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said was my favourite for its touching take on which creatures are worthy of being considered people. The well-imagined details of each fantasy scenario match well with the literary style used throughout -- because, hey, if you're going to use a showy turn of phrase, why not use it to paint another world in bold strokes? I picked at this collection whenever I had just a few minutes to read, and it filled the gaps nicely.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like how Rambo does speculative fiction. Her span is great: there are tragic robots in here as well as enslaved centaurs and zombie girls. There's a beautiful, sad story about Jumbo the elephant (the real one, from Barnum & Bailey's circus) which I highly recommend: "Towering Monarch of His Race." There's a creepy, tragic tale of pioneers suffering through a deadly winter: "Events at Fort Plentitude," also highly recommended. There's humor and epic fantasy and fairy tales and pirates. It's all stuff you might also come across in Steven Millhauser or Kelly Link or George Saunders, but Rambo has her own distinct, highly readable take on it, and I gobbled this collection up in just a few days. Delicious.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

So, somebody gives you a box of candy, a type of candy you haven't had before. And, each piece is better than the last, each piece is your favorite. That is how I feel about this book of short stories. There was only one story that I didn't really care for, all the others were magical. But, the last story, Magnificent Pigs, that is the treasure. If you don't find yourself in tears at the end, well, I just don't know. If nothing else, find a copy of that story.

[Chas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read the first story and felt straight away this wasn't for me. I think mainly the style of the tale, very ethereal. Then in the notes I saw it was a tie-in to an on-line game which is a total turn off.

[Lynette Aspey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cat Rambo's writing is evocative and detailed, complex and illuminated. This may not be everyone's cup of tea because each story requires investment (concentrate or you'll lose the nuance!) but I have a fondness for the surreal and the daring, and this collection delivers.

[Kira · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently it is impossible for me to finish short story collections. Rambo definitely has some great ideas, although sometimes her execution leaves something to be desired. "I'll Gnaw Your Bones, the Manticore Said," "Events at Fort Plenitude" and "Sugar" were my favorites.

[Brightdreamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite a few dull clunkers, this is a decent collection of fantasy stories, with enough variance in theme and tone to keep from growing repetitive. There are some truly magical moments to be found in here.

[Nathan Shumate · Rating 5 out of 5]

A moving and thoughtful collection of stories. (Or is that a collection of moving and thoughtful stories? Whatever.)

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lost interest halfway through. Dropped.

[Kelly Horn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A nice variety of speculative fiction tales with a lovely job on the audio version by Folly Blaine.

[Tim]

Includes a story titled "Eagle-haunted Lake Sammamish".

[Meryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Beautiful writing, fascinating characters, evocative storytelling.

[DotBlack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully written, imaginative, awesome. Love the cover, too.

[Kristi Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uneven, but some very good stories.