The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories

by Kij Johnson

A surprising and exciting new collection of speculative and experimental stories that explore animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories.

The Privilege of the Happy Ending collects award-winning writer Kij Johnson’s speculative fiction from the last decade. The stories explore gender, animals, and the nature of stories, and range in form from classically told tales to deeply experimental works. The collection includes the World Fantasy Award-winning “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” and “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe,” as well as two never-before published works.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction, Mythology, Science Fiction Fantasy

303 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 24, 2023

About the author

Kij Johnson is an American writer of fantasy. She has worked extensively in publishing: managing editor for Tor Books and Wizards of the Coast/TSR, collections editor for Dark Horse Comics, project manager working on the Microsoft Reader, and managing editor of Real Networks. She is Associate Director for the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, and serves as a final judge for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

Johnson is the author of three novels and more than 38 short works of fiction. She is best known for her adaptations of Heian-era Japanese myths. She won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short story of 1994 for her novelette in Asimov's, "Fox Magic." In 2001, she won the International Association for the Fantastic in the Art's Crawford Award for best new fantasy novelist of the year. In 2009, she won the World Fantasy Award for "26 Monkeys, Also The Abyss," which was also a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards. She won the 2010 Nebula Award for "Spar" and the 2011 Nebula Award for "Ponies," which is also a finalist for the Hugo and World Fantasy awards. Her short story "The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" was a finalist for the 2007 Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards. Johnson was also a finalist for the 2004 World Fantasy Award for her novel Fudoki, which was declared one of the best SF/F novels of 2003 by Publishers Weekly.

Reviews

[Algernon · Rating 4 out of 5]

“That was exciting,” Chena said when the cold salt sea had drained from her mouth.” I saw a thing like a ray, and a forest of black kelp, and a car that wept, and a shark. What did you see?”

What makes us human? Our tools, our science and our ability to control our environment? Our wars: the aggressivity and the weapons that made us the dominant species on our planet? Our our dreams, our imagination, our capacity to see the impossible, the unreal and to learn from it?
Kij Johnson, whom I discovered through a book about a cat in medieval Japan that goes on an epic journey of self-discovery, continues in this collection of short stories her exploration of dreams and her re-interpretation of myths and legends from exotic cultures around the world.
The cat from Fudoki is joined by a creature half-girl and half-squid, a giant squirrel, praying mantises and butterflies, ravens and coyotes, sphinxes and horrors from outer space, a famous toad and even a white farm chicken.

Because no chicken has spoken within your hearing, do you assume none ever has?

The collection is marked, like a musical key, with the inscription S/M/L as in short, medium and long stories. To me, this looks a little like a confession about the rambling and opportunistic nature of the selection, like throwing in a basket all the bits and pieces that were laying around on the writer’s table at one moment in time. Yet, as I myself collected all the bits and pieces that I bookmarked during lecture, the random element is gone and the overall argument about myths, human nature and imagination becomes the focus of the whole exercise:

What is life but stories, and love?

>>><<<>>><<<

I have favorites among the stories here. Who wouldn’t? I find myself enjoying the longer pieces more than the playful literary exercises that flex the imagination with alphabetical lists or musical variations on a given theme. My top story would have been the longest novella here: The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe which I skipped, because I’ve already read and reviewed it on Goodreads [link here my review ].
About half of the book is composed of rather lightweight literary pieces:

Mantis Wives
Butterflies of Eastern Texas
Five Sphinxes and 56 Answers
The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary
The Apartment Dweller’s Stavebook
The Apartment Dweller’s Alphabetical Dreambook
Crows Attempt Human-Style Riddles, and One Joke

I wouldn’t dismiss these shorter exercises as gratuitous and playful though. The deeper message is there for those who care to notice, not so much deeply buried as disguised in poetical, whimsical word play. The praying mantises invite us to consider the power dynamics between sexes, the butterflies somehow mirror our journeys with strangers on commuting trains, when we try to stave off boredom by making up stories about our fellow travellers, the sphinxes ask existential questions and explain the process of learning, the whole apartment dweller’s set is about the forced isolation of the pandemic years and the effects of loneliness on the social animal.

One tatamy grows lonely.

Heaven and hell both seem exhausting. Maybe death will be like dreaming, or ticking off everything on your to-do list and seeing what the empty page looks like.

To dream of a calendar signifies a sudden interest in football, charitable donations, sport cars, cloud-watching, tango, the prints of Hiroshige, cosplay, or sharks. Is this true because you have dreamt of a calendar and then read this list, or would it have happened anyway?

>>><<<>>><<<

A picture tells a thousand words, or so they say. I didn’t count the words in the Tool-Using Mimics story, but I loved the way our journey begins with this first example of the author’s method of imaginative storytelling constructed like the branches growing out from a common root and reaching out in surprising directions that lead to unexpected conclusions about pain and gender roles:

... her daughter will not grow up trying to guess the difference between the tastes of tears, and sweat, and the sea.

Speaking of roots and branches, Lovecraft I already made mention of, and Kenneth Grahame is probably very well known to Western audiences [I really should check out his classic novel one of these days]. The Native American legends and the Scandinavian mythology are also easy to spot, as is the name of one of my top dreamers:

This is Ray Bradbury country.

The real talent of Kij Johnson is made evident in the way she adapts her own voice to the source material, from the bittersweet evocation of childhood horrors in Ratatoskr to the gentle humour of The Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall . As I hope I already mentioned about Vellit Boe, Johnson doesn’t write fan-fiction, but keeps alive and vibrant our dream landscape by honoring the pathfinders and the explorers who first ventured into these foreign realms.

He was often a silly Toad and even a cowardly Toad, but he loved his friends, and he couldn’t let them risk their lives for him.

>>><<<>>><<<

What about that title though? Where are we going with the metaphors? Where does this pain and sorrow comes from and where does it lead?

Vellitt Boe descends into the pits of hell, Coyote and her friends journey into the land of the dead in search of her loved ones, a little girl and her chicken are all alone in a landscape ravaged by merciless predators, aboard Noah’s ark terrible deeds are done in the name of survival.
Personally, I consider this pervasive darkness to be another effect of the isolation years, of us being cut off from our social safety net and forced to reconsider our priorities, of thinking about family and friends that were taken away from us.

All authors leave a swath of destruction. We maim and we move on. The privilege of the happy ending is accorded to few.

An answer of sorts will be found within the pages of this collection. It might be a beloved pet to an apartment dweller, or an enhanced awareness of the miracle of other people on a commute train. Most probably it will be the presence of a friend who might or might not look like a white chicken with an attitude who will stick by you through thick and thin.

[Colin MacDonald · Rating 3 out of 5]

First off, if you don't already have the standalone book of The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, this is worth getting just because it includes that.

I'm not sure about the rest of the stories — I suspect I'll have to re-read them. They may have depths that I didn't appreciate on first contact, but it just may be that they don't resonate with me because I haven't been in enough really bad relationships. They're odd and often unsettling, but perhaps in good and useful ways.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of diverse, creative short fantasy stories unfolds in THE PRIVILEGE
OF THE HAPPY ENDING : S/M/L STORIES. Strong female characters as well as
intelligent animals of this world and beyond act as your guide(s).

My absolute favorite was the eponymous story, "The Privilege of........"
Set in the 11th century countryside, an ignored six year old orphan wandering in
the woods foraging for edibles learns of a horde of small dinosaur-like carnivores
awakened and devouring all life in its path. The creatures are called 'wastoures."
Young Ada accidentally comes across a wounded wastoure separated from the
main body and expects to be attacked. Ater a few tense moments, she watches
as it limps away. The author informs the reader :

"And now it is gone from this story as well. Imagine its ending as you would. If you
are kind, see it dead quickly in the jaws of a hungry young wolf a short league from
this place. If you are as cold as the world, then see pain, infection, hunger, and
death a mercy at last."

And trying to find safety among survivors, Ada soon learns of predators of the
human kind :

"And now they are gone from this story as well, the blinded thief and the grieving
woman and these other hard-faced or frightened roamers. I have not told you their
stories. They do not matter. They die alone, unremembered, pointless except to
make a point.
All authors leave a swath of destruction. We maim and move on. The privilege of
the happy ending is accorded to few."

[fatma · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of fantastic stories (of short, medium and long length) that shows how broad the author's writings can be. Stories that invite the reader to become part of the story, flash fiction and 'traditional' forms of writing can all be found here. Stories that I really enjoyed include a trickster Coyote's journey into the land of the dead, one involving Toad and other characters by Kenneth Grahame, a magnificent journey through a dreamland created by H.P. Lovecraft, and a story that asks the reader whether the characters should have the privilage of a happy ending.

- "Tool-Using Mimics": an unusual picture of a little girl wearing a squid or octopus-like costume triggers a speculative story about what the girl really is: just a girl in a costume, or perhaps an octopus mimicking a girl as a disguise, or something else.

- "Mantis Wives": the various ways female mantis deal with the fact that they eat the males.

- "Butterflies of Eastern Texas": a train conductor on an unusual train meets a girl on the train that constantly releases butterflies.

- "Five Sphinxes and 56 Answers": a retelling of the story of Oedipus Rex, as seen from the viewpoint of the Sphinx, who wonders whether her task was worth all the trouble. Interspersed is another story about a girl who has her own Sphinx-like troubles with her mother.

- "Ratatoskr": a young girl is terrified one night when she sees an image of a giant squirrel in a storm, which she later decides is Ratatoskr, who in old Norse mythology is a squirrel who runs up and down the world tree Yggdrasil to carry messages between the eagles perched atop Yggdrasil, and the serpent Níðhöggr. This would lead her to a 'spiritual' connection with squirrels that she would later encounter.

- "Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead": the trickster, Coyote, and her friends, enter the Land of the Dead to search for her dead lover. But the search may be futile, for the lover may not be easily found during the strange and unusual dead world that they journey into; and possibly beyond.

- "The Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall": a tale based on the characters by Kenneth Grahame, this one has Toad telling a story to his friends of how a ghost haunts Toad Hall and possibly caused the death of his predecessors. Of course, the spectre turns up, and the friends look for a 'loophole' to prevent Toad's death. In the end, Toad prepares to meet his doom, but he may yet be saved by an unexpected loophole.

- "The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary": on the various beasts an apartment dweller can get or encounter and how they can fill your time or missing relationships with people.

- "The Apartment Dweller's Stavebook": on the various symbols you can draw on objects or yourself to encourage or discourage events.

- "The Apartment Dweller's Alphabetical Dreambook": on the meaning of various symbols or desires you see in your dream, and how to, maybe, interpret them.

- "The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe": a long and fascinating story set in the Dream World that may be familiar to those who have read Lovecraft. One day, a student from a women's college in the Dream World is enchanted by a man from our world (known as the Waking World) and runs away with him. Now, it is up to the Professor, Vellitt Boe, to track her down and bring her back. As the story develops, we learn more about this Dream World, where mad old gods rule and can bring death and destruction on a whim. And it is such destruction that Boe hopes to prevent when it is revealed to her how important the runaway girl is. She will have to travel through an underworld full of ghouls and other beasties, before she will meet the girl that, in a twist, may well change the nature of the Dream World.

- "Noah’s Raven": a raven on Noah's Ark laments the extinct birds that are lost as the ark struggles through the flood, until it is at last set free by Noah to find land.

- "Crows Attempt Human-Style Riddles, and One Joke": viginettes of jokes that may be told be crows.

- "The Privilege of the Happy Ending": a story of a girl and her old hen who set out on a journey to find a new home when their old one, and the surrounding land, are ravaged by marauding wastoures, hordes of devouring creatures. Their journey seems hopeless as they wander from place to place looking for a home, until an unexpected event makes them realise that the only way is to stop the wastoures. And the hen, who has special abilities for a hen, would have an unexpected role in this. But is the journey of the girl and the hen meant to have a happy ending? That depends on the author's whims and the reader's decision on when to stop the story; or not to end it.

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is subtitled 'S/M/L Stories', which is a truth-in-advertising way for Johnson to tell you that it's a compendium of diverse types and lengths of stories. Some of it reads like flash fiction, and some of it has considerable length and narrative pacing, like the title story and the novella 'The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe'.

Some of the shorter works deal are semi-autobiographical musings on her Iowa girlhood and the relationship with her mother. Some, like the 'Apartment Dwellers' series of shorts, are musings on relationships (mostly failed) and who was to blame (mostly the narrator).

She also likes playing in other authors' worlds. The Vellitt Boe story is a variation on the Lovecraft story, 'The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath', updated for the 21st century and away from that notoriously racist author's work. 'The Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall' is a lovely Christmas ghost story based on the characters in 'The Wind in the Willows', and is a charming coda to her novel 'The River Bank' which detailed further adventures of those animals, plus a few she invented.

Johnson is always a careful, conscientious author, and while some of the stories may not resonate with all readers, it is a pleasure to see another collection of hers, over ten years after her stunning collection 'At the Mouth of the River of Bees'.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are stories which interrogate the art of story-telling and the relationship between a reader and the words being read. I had to slow myself down to let myself read them one at a time, as like a good poem they instilled in me a need for a pause of reflection before jumping right into the next story.

I'll definitely give this one a re-read before too long.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's been over a decade since Kij Johnson's last collection of short stories, At the Mouth of the River of Bees. So, I was happy to see she published another, even if I was a little late to the party. Ms. Johnson isn't a prolific author, but I love the vast majority of her small oeuvre so far. Every time I find a book or story by her I haven't yet read, it's a cause for anticipatory joy. Most of her stories deal with deep and big issues underneath the fantastical surfaces.

As with any collection of short stories, there will be highs and lows for every reader. Which is which is a matter of personal taste. Here are my ratings and summaries:

Tool-Using Mimics (3 ✭)
This reads like an advanced writing exercise. It starts off describing a strange photo from the 1930s of a girl, which is also printed on the preceding page so you can see it for yourself. What follows after that is different examples of what this girl's story might be, or the story of how she came to be. Beautifully poetic prose, and a very loose structure.

Mantis Wives (2 ✭)
An exploration of the power dynamics within romantic relationships, using the mating behaviors of praying mantises as a metaphor. This one didn't grab me, no pun intended.

Butterflies of Eastern Texas (5 ✭)
A very short story, packed with optimism. It's written in second-person. "You have been on this train for a very long time. ... Your job stays the same. Make sure everyone has a ticket. Make sure everyone gets off the train at the right station. Rules are rules: no one rides this train without a ticket." Then you encounter a young woman without a ticket. She produces butterflies when she speaks. The ending is one of those that leaves a lot of what happens next to the reader's imagination.

Five Sphinxes and 56 Answers (4 ✭)
A retelling of the Oedipus tragedy that centers around the sphinx, carrying out her orders from Hera. It's interwoven with a more modern-day story of a young girl who likes riddles, her growing up, finding answers, and finding some questions are unanswerable. It's also an examination of complicated and often problematic relationships between mothers and daughters. There are indeed fifty-six answers in this story, although they're not always paired with a question. The last one is the best.

Ratatoskr (3 ✭)
A charming story of a girl, the squirrel from Norse mythology that runs up and down the world tree, Yggdrasil, and the mysteries of life and death. Ratatoskr himself is a very minor character, who may be imagined by the girl, but other squirrels make appearances.

Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead (4 ✭)
A trickster fable of Dee/Coyote looking for her dead lover, Jace, along with her three sisters. So, also a katabasis story. This one has a unusual voice, which can sometimes be more effort to read. "The others were behind a bit, and lookback Dee saw the outlines of her sisters black against the starbusy dayworld nightsky." You have to wait until the end to find out who the narrator is.

The Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall (5 ✭)
Published here for the first time, a heartwarming and humorous Christmas ghost story, as well as a continuation of Ms. Johnson's The River Bank, her sequel to the classic The Wind in the Willows. All the characters from Kenneth Grahame's original are here, as well as some added by Ms. Johnson from her novella. "Later, the members of the house party agreed that this was the third or possibly fourth strangest Christmas they ever had." This one had me smiling and laughing.

The Apartment Dwellers Bestiary (3 ✭)
This is the first of a triptych of tales (although they were written and published years apart) that share a common structure. They are part reference, part small scenarios. This one involves fictional animals, some that sound like pets and some that sound more like vermin, and most of them sound very strange. Beneath the surface, it's snapshots of our relationships with both animals and people.

The Apartment Dwellers Stavebook (3.5 ✭)
A listing of staves and seals that one can inscribe on various objects (a medallion of white oak, a broom handle, the back of your hand, the kitchen floor) with various materials (printer toner powder, salt, No. 2 graphite, bourbon, blood) to encourage or stave off various outcomes (the ill-will of others, saving a marriage, loneliness, not being listened to). "How many brooms did your mother have? What did her rituals look like? Did they succeed? No, or you would not still be here."

The Apartment Dwellers Alphabetical Dreambook (3 ✭)
The last of this trio is a fictional listing of symbols in dreams, often told with wry humor. "To suddenly realize in a dream that one is not wearing clothes is the human condition." Or, "To see a white moon signifies nothing at all. Why do we assume everything means something?" Or, "A radio turned on and chattering signifies bad news, but there is nothing dream-specific to this."

The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe (5 ✭)
Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath," expect our adventurer is a 55-year-old maths professor at the women's Ulthar College in the dream world from that story. She must go on a quest to retrieve a student who ran off with a man from the waking world, before the scandal of it can destroy the College. That motive soon is replaced with avoiding even more dire consequences from the Old Ones. Unlike the Earth dreamers who explore her homelands, Boe doesn't assume the rest of either world and everyone in it is there to serve her personal hero tale. Randolph Carter, Lovecraft's protagonist, makes an appearance.

Noah's Raven (3 ✭)
A reimagining of the story of Noah's ark, mainly from the point of view of one of the ravens. It's a very different story when it's no longer centered on humans.

Crows Attempt Human-Style Riddles, and One Joke (3.5 ✭)
You get exactly what is promised in the title: riddles as if told by crows to crows. Most are the older puzzle style, and not necessarily humorous. The closing joke has two punchlines. Crows apparently view jays as dim bulbs.

The Privilege of the Happy Ending (5 ✭)
A fairy tale about an orphan girl and her talking chicken companion, told in a voice that knows it's a fairy tale. From time to time, things are said about fairy tales in general, or explained to the reader, or observations made about the story. It starts off with one. "This is a story that ends as all stories do eventually, in deaths." You can't say you weren't warned. "All authors leave a path of destruction. We maim and move on. The privilege of the happy ending is accorded the few."

[José Pereira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some stories are a bit obscure and others too whimsical or fantastical. But the good ones are wondrous. They made everything I’ve read recently feel like tap water and stale bread.
The creativity, sophistication and control that Johnson shows in all that's writing-related are off the charts. Kij Johnson brings ideas on top of ideas hitting you from everywhere through inventive, magical prose.
What a talented, creative writer.

[gooba ｡.:*☆]

i actually can’t get through this yet

i’m not a fan of the animal human crossover kind of situation sorry i’m sure there’s lots of beautiful meaning and imagery my feeble mind isn’t ready for but i’ve just read “A wife may drill the tiniest hole into her lover’s head and insert a fine hair.”

[Julie Capell · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I liked best about this collection was the variety of structures the author used, sometimes bordering on experimental.

- Stories with multiple plotlines and endings: Tool-Using Mimics, Butterfies of Eastern Texas [excellent], Five Sphinxes and 56 Answers, The Privilege of the Happy Ending (excellent)
- Lists/encyclopedia-type entries: Mantis Wives, The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary (whimsical and funny), The Apartment Dweller's Stavebook (includes runes), The Apartment Dweller's Alphabetical Dreambook (the encyclopedia format was losing its charm for me by this point), Cows Attempt Human-Style Riddles and One Joke
- Myths that come to life: Five Sphinxes and 56 Answers, Ratatoskr, Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead, the Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, Noah's Ravens (wonderful)
- Different styles, such as Victorian: The Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall (which I loved])

Themes explored include the nature of art, feminism, the natural world, love, hope, mother-daughter relationships, death, ghosts, power, privilege, storytelling.

Running throughout are passages mashing up real life with the fantastic in either funny or creepy ways, or sometimes both:

Carve this rune using the boning knife from that set of five Henckels you bought during your gourmet cooking phase--this is the purpose of that knife; you never used it for anything else, did you?--and color it with the black powder from a toner cartridge. - The Apartment Dweller's Stavebook.

A mantis wife may walk with her husband across the trunks of pines, until they come to a trail of sap and ascend to an insect-clustered wound. Staying to the side, she presses him down until his legs stick fast. He may grow restless as the sap sheathes his body and wings. His eyes may not dim for some time. Smaller insects may cluster upon his honeyed body like ornaments.-- Mantis Wives

When you move into the apartment on Vermont Street, the lopi are already there, two or three of them fluttering in the corners of each room, just where the walls and ceilings meet. What exactly do they look like? Like bats, like insects, like tiny silent birds the color of smoke? They never seem to rest. And what do they eat? Do they chew on your soap, lick the residue from the bottles in the bathroom? Or late at night, when you are trying but unable to sleep, do they swoop down to eat whatever has fallen into the aluminum liners under the stove's burners? Wikipedia is of limited assistance here. -- The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary

There were also lots of wonderfully written descriptions like this one:

. . . the High widened and opened into a series of arcades and markets, and the smells changed to new-gathered greens, spices, hanging pheasants, and the pork and mutton that hung already in linen-wrapped pink slabs infront of the flescher's; for new morning was coming. --The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe

Overall, a very good collection for any reader who enjoys the fantastic.

[William Leight · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Dream Quest of Vellit Boe”: I had already read this by itself, it’s quite good.
“The Privilege of a Happy Ending”: Johnson intersperses a decent fairy-tale-esque story with commentary on it, and in particular on the usually unstated assumptions that went into it. It’s not uninteresting, but I wonder if it would have been possible to challenge those assumptions more directly, by writing a story that’s not reliant on them. Perhaps that would be too experimental to be salable, but I think I would’ve preferred it.
“Five Sphinxes and 56 Answers” is arguably a move in this direction: I’m not sure if it entirely works, but it was quite interesting nonetheless.
“The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary, Stavebook, and Alphabetical Dream Book”: the combination of gentle satire of modern life, an air of melancholy, and illustrations by the author who is not an artist is always going to make me think of Thurber. While it’s not really a fair comparison, Johnson holds up ok under it.
“The Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall” is utterly charming and completely delightful, and I say this as someone who liked “The Wind in the Willows” fine but wasn’t a huge fan (I don’t think that I’ve read it as an adult). This and the “The Dream Quest of Vellit Boe” are the two stories that I would love to see heralding larger works.
“Ratatoskr” reads like a memoir, only the protagonist, a child living in a small town, can see the ghosts of dead squirrels. “Tool-Using Mimics” riffs off of a rather disturbing picture. Both really only have the one central image to power them, but it’s good enough for a short story.
The rest of the collection is fine but none of the stories were especially memorable. Johnson, who hasn't written a novel in over twenty years, clearly prefers the short form, and she's good at it: unlike some writers, her stories can stand by themselves, rather than appearing to be excerpts from longer works. On the other hand, it's inevitable in a highly varied book of stories like this, lacking an overarching theme or setting, that some will have more interesting ideas than others, and I would enjoy the chance to see Johnson explore the more interesting ones at length. It probably won't happen, but I'll keep my fingers crossed.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The Privilege of the Happy Ending: Small, Medium, and Large Stories” is a 2023 collection of shorter fiction by Kij Johnson. It mainly is short stores, but contains at least one novella length work. It is composed of various flavors of fantasy, from contemporary to Lovecraftian.

These stories were mainly published previously in other places, magazines or on the web. These stories range from the three contemporary “Apartment Dweller’s…” shorts to medium and larger stories. The largest is the novella “The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe” which is set in the Dreamlands of H. P. Lovecraft. In this amazing work, Professor Vellitt Boe must go and try to rescue one of her students who has run away with a dreamer from our world. It is a substantial work of Cthulhu Mythos fiction, and one that almost completely subverts expectations. The other longer work is the titular “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” which is probably the “medium” work. It’s a story of a little girl, her bold hen, and hordes of ravening monsters.

Overall, I enjoyed the collection. Of course, in this type of work the reader will find some stories resonate more with them than others. However, these stories certainly show the depth and breadth of Ms. Johnson’s writing. It’s a substantial body of work, and I absolutely recommend it.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty enchanting feminist rethinkings and rewritings, sometimes with theory attached, of the classics--why is the sphinx always relegated to this one narrative function? Why do boys get to do all the discovering the dark realms in classic cosmic horror? (The Vellit Boe novella rewrites, and as noted above, rethinks HPL's "Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath" so it's entirely female-centric in ways that also highlight the relational possibilities in cosmic horror as well as Vellit's own forced awareness to make sure of her own safety, even as she's watching ghouls eat people. Fantastic tale, and excellent cat.) My other favorite is the title story, featuring a heroic, or possibly monstrous, talking hen named Blanche, that manages to point out its own narrative contrivances at the same time that the story pulls you along. Oh, and the Christmas story wherein Toad is haunted is droll and hilarious. And the opener with the tentacle girl imagines a host of potential lives. And the one that namechecks Ray Bradbury turns it into a how-I-became-a-writer tale, again from the kind of female perspective that I don't remember seeing voiced very often, if at all, in Bradbury.

Sure, a couple that I found twee and forgettable. But several of these are keepers, particularly impressive for her ability to do the thing and problematize the thing at the same time.

[Lizzy B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let’s get the good stuff out of the way: I liked the toad story and the rustic cottagecore descriptions in the stories like the titular one and Vellitt Boe.

Anyway. This authors loooves not doing her job and speculating on what goes on in her own plots. “Did this happen or this happen?” Buddy, that’s YOUR call. Too much “hello, dear reader” and “oh, what is writing, what is life?” Way too much second person. This is not a medium of conversation and don’t act like you know me.

For subject matter, it always bothers me when spec fic writers who are creating new worlds nevertheless decide to include a climate of misogyny. And wow, these stories ooze with obsession over women’s physical bodies and their danger or inferiorty in a world of Men. Trite, gross, and sometimes lascivious. Especially in this genre, do better.

[BookBrowse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book's settings feel like something out of a Studio Ghibli film (or in the case of the darker stories, a Guillermo del Toro film). It's immersive and supernatural enough to appeal to diehard fantasy fans, but also addresses universal themes like family relationships and loss. The literary prose and character-driven stories (you won't find hard magic systems here) mean it might make a good introduction to the fantasy genre for those who usually read more grounded contemporary works. It's simultaneously creepy and cozy, making it perfect to curl up with on a crisp autumn day.
-Jillian Bell

Read the full review at: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/review...

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars for The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe and Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead, 4 stars for most of the rest. Overall enjoyable and interesting; I look forward to reading more of Johnson.

Note: the copy referenced reflections on gender, which was not the codeword for radical queer stories that I thought it might be. That said, still very pleasingly weird.

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had previously read "The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe" and adored it, so 5 stars for that novella alone. "Privilege of the Happy Ending" and "Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall" were my other favorites in this collection, though I enjoyed all of it.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The dream-quest of velitt boe is perhaps the best piece of fiction I’ve read this year. Gorgeous, evocative dream landscape still charged with emotional power.

The privilege of a happy ending is ok (3.5 stars). The other stories range from forgettable to self-indulgent.

[Nico · Rating 4 out of 5]

some amazing stories (the dream-quest of vellit boe, the opening story whose name escapes me), and some KILLER lines throughout. but didn’t find it as consistently brilliant as AT THE MOUTH OF THE RIVER OF BEES.

[Shannon (That's So Poe) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johnson does some really amazing work with literary SFF in this collection, with a range of styles and topics covered. Some of the stories didn't quite hit for me, but it was such a great experience to try them.

[Lindi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Varied collection of short stories from a skilled and imaginative writer.

[Nighteye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, a mix of short and longer stories. Fashinating and some wierd ones but overall good.

[Kevin James · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars, Johnson delivers some truly stunning stories though there are admittedly a few misfires in between

[Seth Dickinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you could write like Kij you could write anything. You can't, but you can try to get a little closer.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the final, title story in the collection was especially good, but there was a mix of fun and interesting stories throughout, and they were quite varied from one another. I got snagged for a bit on The Dreamquest of Vellitt Boe, probably because it was a novella I had read before, but it was nice to revisit it, especially having read some more Lovecraft related works recently.

[Roby · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last story, The Privilege of the Happy Ending, was my favorite. Somehow brave chicken Blanche has really stuck with me, and I keep thinking about her and Ada and the wastoures.

[Lindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ghastly Spectre of Toad Hall" has maybe the best ending line I've ever read.

[Kendall (reads more&) Moore · Rating 2 out of 5]

#readingchallenge2024 (my book of a hybrid genre)

Very fantastical stories, attempting to present deep story-telling with themes of relationships through imaginative oddities- however I didn't connect with the depth-

The only one I found myself enjoying was the praying mantis story, the rest I felt myself skimming-

The longest chapter, towards the end, kept me entertained in the beginning, but I wish it stayed as short as the rest, because as it dragged on...it dragged on

[Gabi · Rating 4 out of 5]

the writing style is beautiful, but i don't know why it's classified under science fiction. some stories are amazingly written and i will definitely come back to them, some are not of my favourite themes, but they are still captivating, while others... are also there.

my favourites: "tool-using mimics", "butterflies of eastern texas", "five sphinxes and 56 answers", and "the dream-quest of vellitt boe"