I’ve reviewed many books for this blog, some from the early days, when I had fewer readers. This year (2024), we’ll be running some that you may have missed. This urban fantasy/magic short story review was first published on January 28, 2021.
Roam the urban landscape of your dreams—and nightmares—with this diverse and inclusive story collection.
Broken Metropolis: Queer Tales of a City That Never Was. An urban fantasy short-story anthology edited by dave ring. Published by Mason Jar Press. (Note: This book appears to be out of print. Check your library or favorite used book sites.)
Broken Metropolis presents ten first-rate speculative-fiction short stories, all with LGBTQ+ protagonists and at least of soupçon of an urban-fantasy vibe. Each story is grounded in its own “city that never was,” and settings range from urban-glitz to urban-grit. These tales will please any reader who enjoys well-wrought, three-dimensional characters, intriguing plot lines, and language mastery.
Magical City
Some say the fantasy genre is at its core about magic, and this collection doesn’t disappoint. For example, “Under Her White Stars” by Jacob Budenz features convincing descriptions of magical workings. “The door was booby-trapped with a very sophisticated portal, a transparent silver sheen over the doorway which I could see shimmering in the air with my second sight . . . Subtle, but brilliant–it was all in the fake doorbell, which, when triggered, was wired to open the portal only for non-practitioners like Lionel. I focused on the selective element of the portal magic (which showed up as a gossamer red sigil above the door) and pulled it out.” The magic ranges from the subtle astrology of “Venus Conjunct Saturn” by Claire Rudy Foster to the Technicolor razzle-dazzle of “Neon” by M. Raoulee, but it always grows organically from the worldbuilding.
Although varying in length—“Familiar” by kx carys is a little gem of microfiction as love and magic intertwine in a playful debate over ravens, most of the stories are of a conventional narrative style. However, “Dissonance, Part I” by D.M. Rice is a de-constructed marvel, a weird prose-poem about a rather eventful date night at a garage opera.
Magical Folks
Broken Metropolis’s protagonists are often mundane folks affected by the magic afoot in their city, be it protective, like “The City of Cats,” by Victoria Zelvin, or something more sinister, like “The Strange Places in The City,” by Meghan Cunningham or “Your Heart in My Teeth” by V. Medina. I most enjoyed the stories told from the point of view of the badass magic users themselves, like “Perseus on Two Wheels,” by H. Pueyo and Budenz’s “Under Her White Stars.”
The Magic of Words
As much as these are fantasy stories about magic, they are also literary stories about the human condition told through the life experiences of genuine, believable people. “The Plague-Eater,” by Caspian Gray, is by all rights a horror tale, but the fine portrayal of love found and lost is deeply affective.
All the stories in Broken Metropolis excel at effective use of language and imagery. For example, Foster’s “Venus Conjunction Saturn” effectively weaves worldbuilding, character development, and the joy of wordplay in this line about the transgender protagonist’s sun sign, “Also, being Pisces, Angie struggled to see problems until they were right on top of her, rising over her head like a wave that was so big she’d never be able to out-swim it. This time, the wave’s name was Kate.”
Queer people are used to reading themselves into subtext and sidelong glances, both in writing and in lived experience. . . Fiction, as with all art, has the power to bear witness. To make the reader feel seen, acknowledged, and validated.
dave ring, editor
For all reader, the fact that the protagonists and most of the characters are LGBTQ+ people adds layers of verisimilitude and intricacy to the universal struggles they experiences in these tales: knowing their own truth and living it, finding love in sometimes hostile environments, and, of course and above all, getting the very tricky magic right.
If you found this review of Broken Metropolis interesting, you might enjoy reading about the podcast, Dash.
Click here to order The Big Cinch, new supernatural noir novel from Kathy L. Brown.
And Now a Word from Our Sponsor
Like the blog? Subscribe (form at the bottom of my website) to never miss an issue. Want more? Join the email list to be the first to learn about new releases and personal appearance. And, of course, I’m selling books. Check out all my stories at Amazon.com.
If you prefer Barnes and Noble, you can order my young adult novella, Wolfhearted, here. It is also available as an audiobook, here.
Bookshop.com, a good alternative to Amazon that partners with local bookshops, carries The Big Cinch and The Resurrectionist.
If you’ve enjoyed one of my books, tell the world! Consider leaving a short review at Audible, Amazon, or Goodreads. The direct link to review Wolfhearted on Amazon is here, The Resurrectionist, here , and Water of Life, here, or visit my Shop off the landing page menu to review at Barnes and Noble. Thanks in advance. Twenty-five reviews will put a book in a more prominent position on Amazon.
The St. Louis Writers Guild’s Love Letters to St. Louis contains my first science fiction story, “Welcome to Earthport Prime: A Self-Guided Tour.”This adorable letter-shaped volume of short stories, poems, essays, and illustrations. Profits benefit the guild’s young writers’ program.