primeideal

Anthology of retellings of mythic stories from across the world, looks like they were newly commissioned for this volume. Impressive mix of cultures, new settings, and closeness to/farness from the original myth. For some of them, I'm not sure how long it would have taken me to recognize the source if it hadn't been in the table of contents, and for others, I would never have recognized the source. :p

I enjoyed the humorous tones of "Fisher-Bird," T. Kingfisher's take on the Labors of Hercules:

"I got my cousin's girdle."

Fisher-Bird had been looking for more crawfish, but she stopped and turned her head real slow to look at him. "...You got that kinda family, do you?"

"No!" And when Fisher-Bird gave him a steady look, "Well...all right. My mother-in-law's married to her brother and they say her daddy was a cannibal."

"Take an old bird's advice, son, and get the hell away from those people. Marrying kin ain't good, but you start eating each other and all bets are off."

And while "Across the River," Leah Cypess' version of The Legend of Akdamot/The Legend of Rabbi Meir and the Sambatyon got bleak at times, the way the narrator used his skills to defeat a bigoted sorcerer was fantastic:

Training as a cantor does not build muscles, but it builds a very precise sense of time. I need to know just when the sun appears over the horizon, which is when the recitation of the morning prayer is permitted. I need to know the moment the gates of Heaven close on Yom Kippur, which is when my pleas should reach their greatest intensity. I need to be able to judge precisely when the Sabbath begins.

There were two pairs of stories that I found to coincidentally parallel each other. Seanan McGuire's "Phantoms of the Midway" is based on Hades and Persephone, and JY Yang's Bridge of Crows is based on the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl. Both of the retellings explicitly engage with the fact that the same story might be "running away to find freedom with your lover" from one perspective and "unwanted kidnapping" from another. And both stories have the romantic aspect genderswapped to f/f.

Meanwhile, Indrapramit Das' "Kali Na," based on Durga and Kali, and Alyssa Wong's "Live Stream," based on Artemis and Acteon, both draw on the misogyny and cruelty of internet trolls and reimagine ways of bringing them to justice. (They appeared consecutively, which heightens the parallels.) "Live Stream" is present-day, but not speculative--existing technology already has everything a modern-day Diana might need to turn the tables. And "Kali Na" is near-futuristic, but based on chatbot technology that is getting more powerful every day.

Bingo: Grabbed it from the library because it fits perfectly for "Myths and Retellings." Also fits perfectly for "5+ Short Stories," but I'll surely fill that square with something else. Maybe soon ;)