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What Fates Impose
Life is uncertain, and the chance to get a peek into the future is so tempting... but is it really a good idea to look?
Edited by Nayad Monroe, this anthology brings together stories from a diverse group of speculative fiction writers who provide insight into the possibilities.
Edited by Nayad Monroe, this anthology brings together stories from a diverse group of speculative fiction writers who provide insight into the possibilities.
384 pages, Paperback
First published August 15, 2013
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About the author
Nayad A. Monroe
11 books80 followersI make art, write speculative fiction, and edit anthologies. I'm trying to meet everyone in the world, but will settle for the English-speakers if I must be realistic.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 15, 2014
Let me tell ye, bucko, there are some doozies in these pages. Some are no surprise. Alasdair Stuart opens the tome with all of the grace, intellect and pure geeky joy that makes his podcast so damn much fun. Maurice Broaddus delivers a short, smooth concoction of merged cultures, generational curses and self-determinism with prose so slick and self-assured that I kinda want to hit him. Lucy Snyder’s “Abandonment Option” is bizarre, grotesque and brutally honest while throwing a little bit of social commentary in the mix. Damien Angelica Walters broke my heart a bit with “When the Lady Speaks.” You really should be expecting this type of work from them by now.
But there are some incredibly fun surprises here as well. “One Tiny Misstep (in Bed)”, by Beth Wodzinski not only has a hell of a title, but it is the equivalent of a Choose Your Own Adventure Story that, through the nature of its construction, bears its own commentary on fate. Besides, I know I am not the only one who used to try to find a good ending and work backwards from it, which can be looked at as a kind of attempt at telling the future. Genius. Keffy R.M. Kehrli blew the doors off of my face with “Gazing into the Carnauba Wax Eyes of the Future”, a tale of obsession and addiction with one of the most absurd methods of looking into the future I have ever come across. I’ve been hearing about the superbly named Ferret Steinmetz for a little bit and “Black Swan Oracle” makes it very clear why. Predicting the future via complex algorithm that reduces lives to numbers and probability equations seems dry, but he infuses it with a sense of desperation tied to the search for something that both cannot be, yet already has been, found.
The big thing about What Fates Impose that will be either a huge draw or a repellent, depending on your tastes, is how hard it is to ascribe a genre to most of the stories presented. Sarah Hans’ “Charms” provides a great example of this. It carries a largely noirish feel in a somewhat detective tale occurring amidst urban fantasy magic but it’s kind of a romance as well, while dealing with issues of identity and the physical expression thereof. I really liked that aspect of it, but I know it isn’t for everyone.
What now remains for you to do, since London is a bit out of reach for most of us?
But there are some incredibly fun surprises here as well. “One Tiny Misstep (in Bed)”, by Beth Wodzinski not only has a hell of a title, but it is the equivalent of a Choose Your Own Adventure Story that, through the nature of its construction, bears its own commentary on fate. Besides, I know I am not the only one who used to try to find a good ending and work backwards from it, which can be looked at as a kind of attempt at telling the future. Genius. Keffy R.M. Kehrli blew the doors off of my face with “Gazing into the Carnauba Wax Eyes of the Future”, a tale of obsession and addiction with one of the most absurd methods of looking into the future I have ever come across. I’ve been hearing about the superbly named Ferret Steinmetz for a little bit and “Black Swan Oracle” makes it very clear why. Predicting the future via complex algorithm that reduces lives to numbers and probability equations seems dry, but he infuses it with a sense of desperation tied to the search for something that both cannot be, yet already has been, found.
The big thing about What Fates Impose that will be either a huge draw or a repellent, depending on your tastes, is how hard it is to ascribe a genre to most of the stories presented. Sarah Hans’ “Charms” provides a great example of this. It carries a largely noirish feel in a somewhat detective tale occurring amidst urban fantasy magic but it’s kind of a romance as well, while dealing with issues of identity and the physical expression thereof. I really liked that aspect of it, but I know it isn’t for everyone.
What now remains for you to do, since London is a bit out of reach for most of us?
January 31, 2014
I'm one of the authors in this, so I'm quite biased, but wow, this was good. Really enjoyed many of the stories in it. Nayad's put together an awesome collection looking at fate and fortune-telling. Really had fun reading it.
November 26, 2014
Wow. Simply put - a very strong collection of short fiction works dealing with the theme of "reading the future" through various means.
Normally in an anthology I expect a consistent breakdown of 15-20% I simply don't care for and on the other side of the bell curve a similar number of standout works.
In "What Fates Impose" that curve is skewed WAY towards the left. In addition to the overall quality, I was impressed by the number of stories in the collection.
I get the sense there are several tales to please just about any kind of reader, based on their preferences.
My personal TOP FIVE included;
- To Read the Sea (Cat Rambo)
- Murder of Crows (Erika Holt)
- The Goggen (Tim Waggoner)
- There Are No Wrong Answers (LaShawn M. Wanak)
- Pick a Card (Remy Nakamura)
Very engrossing collection of speculative fiction around a common theme.
Normally in an anthology I expect a consistent breakdown of 15-20% I simply don't care for and on the other side of the bell curve a similar number of standout works.
In "What Fates Impose" that curve is skewed WAY towards the left. In addition to the overall quality, I was impressed by the number of stories in the collection.
I get the sense there are several tales to please just about any kind of reader, based on their preferences.
My personal TOP FIVE included;
- To Read the Sea (Cat Rambo)
- Murder of Crows (Erika Holt)
- The Goggen (Tim Waggoner)
- There Are No Wrong Answers (LaShawn M. Wanak)
- Pick a Card (Remy Nakamura)
Very engrossing collection of speculative fiction around a common theme.
February 10, 2016
What Fates Impose: Tales of Divination edited by Nayad Monroe held many enjoyable surprises for me. As suggested by title, fortune-telling is the over-arching theme that connects all the stories, many of which have a dark edge to them and share themes such as vengeance and gluttony. But there are also many stories of hope and new beginnings in the collection. I really wanted the book because of one particular story called "Charms" by Sarah Hans. The suspense and romance in that story charmed my imagination for two years after I heard the author read it at Origins 2013. I kept reading the rest of the book because the other stories continued to captivate me one after another.
Fortune-telling is used for a wide variety of reasons, but the most common reason is vengeance. "To Read the Sea," "A Great Destiny," "The Scry Mirror," "The Goggen," and "Murder of Crows" are several of the stories that deal with fortune telling as means for taking revenge. In "Scry Mirror" and "Murder of Crows" characters are given the chance to take revenge for crimes that haven't been committed yet, but they have to pay a horrific price.
As a rule I don't enjoy horror, so I was shocked when two of the most graphic stories actually made me want to re-read them after experiencing their twist endings. The monster in "Ain't Much Different 'N Rabbits" by Andrew Penn Romine has a unique method of killing and a mythos to back up his gluttonous method of fortune-telling. In "Abandonment Option" by Lucy Snyder the supernatural monster is replaced by a human glutton who wants immortality and does monstrous things to get it. Some of the other horror stories were more like psychological brain-benders. I had no idea horror could be so varied and, in some cases, so subtle.
In the more hopeful stories, characters are presented with moral dilemmas and life changing choices. Sometimes the choice is presented through fortune-telling. Sometimes the choice is to give up an addiction to fortune-telling. The result is always interesting and often unexpected.
As a collection, What Fates Impose feels a little like the Christmas advent calendars my parents gave me as a child: each title is like a tiny door in the calendar, and each story is like a surprise present.
Fortune-telling is used for a wide variety of reasons, but the most common reason is vengeance. "To Read the Sea," "A Great Destiny," "The Scry Mirror," "The Goggen," and "Murder of Crows" are several of the stories that deal with fortune telling as means for taking revenge. In "Scry Mirror" and "Murder of Crows" characters are given the chance to take revenge for crimes that haven't been committed yet, but they have to pay a horrific price.
As a rule I don't enjoy horror, so I was shocked when two of the most graphic stories actually made me want to re-read them after experiencing their twist endings. The monster in "Ain't Much Different 'N Rabbits" by Andrew Penn Romine has a unique method of killing and a mythos to back up his gluttonous method of fortune-telling. In "Abandonment Option" by Lucy Snyder the supernatural monster is replaced by a human glutton who wants immortality and does monstrous things to get it. Some of the other horror stories were more like psychological brain-benders. I had no idea horror could be so varied and, in some cases, so subtle.
In the more hopeful stories, characters are presented with moral dilemmas and life changing choices. Sometimes the choice is presented through fortune-telling. Sometimes the choice is to give up an addiction to fortune-telling. The result is always interesting and often unexpected.
As a collection, What Fates Impose feels a little like the Christmas advent calendars my parents gave me as a child: each title is like a tiny door in the calendar, and each story is like a surprise present.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews