
★★★★☆ Full of Surprises
(Horror) Aracely loves travelling with her mother’s carnival, but now that she’s a teenager, she chafes at the restriction that she can’t leave the fairgrounds. What could it hurt? (7,592 words; Time: 25m)
"Phantoms of the Midway," by Seanan McGuire [bio] (edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe), appeared in The Mythic Dream (RSR review), published on September 17, 2019 by Saga Press.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2019.543 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: The best part of this story is the twist. It’s the sort of thing you don’t see coming, and yet when it happens, you realize it makes total sense. It’s a surprise, yet it’s not surprising.
Beyond that, it does a wonderful job of showing us the carnival through Aracely’s eyes. Whatever it looks like to anyone else, to her it’s magical.
On a third level, this is Aracely’s coming-of-age story, in which she goes from dependent to independent.
This is supposedly a retelling of the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades, but, to be honest, I see very little connection between the two stories.
Con: The plot is very simple. There’s nothing to it beyond Aracely’s explorations, and there’s no real cost to her freedom; it just inconveniences her mom, who puts up no real fight.
Other Reviews: Search Web, GoodReads.com
Seanan McGuire Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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Pro: The best part of this story is the twist. It’s the sort of thing you don’t see coming, and yet when it happens, you realize it makes total sense. It’s a surprise, yet it’s not surprising.
Beyond that, it does a wonderful job of showing us the carnival through Aracely’s eyes. Whatever it looks like to anyone else, to her it’s magical.
On a third level, this is Aracely’s coming-of-age story, in which she goes from dependent to independent.
This is supposedly a retelling of the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades, but, to be honest, I see very little connection between the two stories.
Con: The plot is very simple. There’s nothing to it beyond Aracely’s explorations, and there’s no real cost to her freedom; it just inconveniences her mom, who puts up no real fight.
Other Reviews: Search Web, GoodReads.com
Seanan McGuire Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
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