Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

This is our discussion of the story:

The Bone Swans of Amandale by C.S.E. Cooney

This novella is available to read on-line @MythicDelirium. (Originally published in Bone Swans.)

This story is part of the 2015 Nebula Award nominees short story discussion.

An interesting fairytale style fantasy about some shape-shifting swans being killed off by the local townsfolk. It has most of the elements of a fairytale: strange creatures (swans that can look human, wererats), good guys, bad guys, Princess, magic, the Pied Piper, and nobody is happy at the end. On the other side, it's narrated by one of the participants: Maurice, the shape shifting rat who narrates the story, has a crush on Dora, one of the shape-shifting swans, and in his own swaggering, self-serving style, decides to give her a hand. Maurice makes no pretense about his interest in Dora or the fact that he's helping strictly to win her favor, and doesn't care much about anybody else. Interesting narration style, and like all really good fairytales, it ends badly for almost everyone.

I liked it well enough, but not as much as many of the other novella among the nominees.

***1/2*

To the point and well said review, not my cup of tea though.

I will disagree with the two of you, I loved this one. It read like Valente at her best, and actually it had a much happier ending than i expected. Looks like she's written other short stories in this "world", I'll have to remember to check them out at some point.

Brendan wrote: "I will disagree with the two of you, I loved this one. It read like Valente at her best, ..."

Well, I'm not sure it's that much of a disagreement, since I did like it. The comparison with Catherynne M. Valente is probably apt, since I feel about her fairytales much the same way: a good read but not something I've fallen in love with.

I just finished this one, and I really liked it. It felt like a traditional fairytale, and I loved the ending. I think I'm going to have hunt down more by this author because I really want to know more about this world. In particular, I would love to see Nicolas and children's future adventures, but I'll settle for just about anything else in the world.