★★★☆☆
(Fairy Tale Pastiche) Bab Yaga from the fairy tales turns up in modern-day San Francisco looking for help tracking down her house, which has run away. (6,162 words; Time: 20m)
"Baba Yaga and the Seven Hills," by Kristina Ten [bio] (edited by John Joseph Adams), appeared in Lightspeed Magazine issue 122, published on July 1, 2020.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
Review: 2020.368 (A Word for Authors)
Pro: This is the real Baba Yaga, complete with all her hard-to-believe attributes, like the three-foot-long nose, and she appears here in a slipstream piece, with plenty of humorous bits, such as the inventor telling her that small houses are an old idea—he needs something with legs. When she tell him her house has legs (real legs!), he shakes his head and tells her it does not (no marketing legs).
Con: Among her attributes is the fact that Baba Yaga eats children, something we’re shown up front in detail. This makes it impossible for me to root for her. The whole rest of the story I kept dreading she’d do it again and hoping someone would destroy her first. This makes it hard for me to find the humor in the rest of it. (As she says, barbequing children is “divisive” in our society.)
It’s also a problem that the story doesn’t really end properly. Neither does she find her house nor does she give up. She just changes locations and keeps looking.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Kristina Ten Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
Pro: This is the real Baba Yaga, complete with all her hard-to-believe attributes, like the three-foot-long nose, and she appears here in a slipstream piece, with plenty of humorous bits, such as the inventor telling her that small houses are an old idea—he needs something with legs. When she tell him her house has legs (real legs!), he shakes his head and tells her it does not (no marketing legs).
Con: Among her attributes is the fact that Baba Yaga eats children, something we’re shown up front in detail. This makes it impossible for me to root for her. The whole rest of the story I kept dreading she’d do it again and hoping someone would destroy her first. This makes it hard for me to find the humor in the rest of it. (As she says, barbequing children is “divisive” in our society.)
It’s also a problem that the story doesn’t really end properly. Neither does she find her house nor does she give up. She just changes locations and keeps looking.
Other Reviews: Search Web
Kristina Ten Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
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