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language: Spanish
country: Spain
year: 2021
form: short fiction
genre(s): fantasy, science fiction
dates read: 21.9.22-25.9.22
(cw: suicide mention)
Inés Arias de Reyna’s Deja que el viento se lleve mis cenizas is a collection of unsettling short stories, all fantasy except for the last, which is sci-fi. many of the stories draw on elements of Spanish folklore or of generic ~fairy~ stories: breoganes, the Santa Compaña, but also dryads and water nymphs. I liked it, but to be honest I found some of the fairy stories a bit cutesy — or, for example, I didn’t think the tonal contrast between the extremely cutesy beginning of “El bosque más antiguo del mundo” and its dark climax quite worked. that was kind of how I felt about the whole collection — it was good, but it didn’t quite hit its mark to be great.
the highlight stories for me were “Galletas de chocolate” — about a girl whose father died at sea, trying to figure out how to manage her mother’s emotional collapse while also mourning her father’s loss herself; after she spends a while yelling at the ocean, some breoganes decide to intervene to help her process her emotions — and “Escarcha”, about a woman who’s now married to a man is haunted at the ballet by memories of the girl she was in love with when she was a teenager. also by her literal ghost.
I should also note that while I didn’t personally love them, “El silencio de las hayas” and “Querido verde irisado” were both incredibly unsettling, as I think they were intended to be. the former is about a woman who turns into a beech tree instead of committing suicide, the latter about a teenage chameleon-person whose mother imprisons her in her bedroom after she joins a new religious movement that may or may not be a cult. both of them were good, just not for me personally.
“Trenzas en la niebla” and “Arderás conmigo, canalla” were both conceptually interesting but felt rushed. the end of “El bosque más antiguo del mundo” (about a dryad whose home forest is burning down) was excellent but I thought the shift from beginning to end, both in plot and in characterization, was rough. I liked the idea of “Me llamo Tormes” (a nymph meets Just A Guy, he tells her he’s in love with her, she nopes out of there, he’s left eternally bereft) but the execution didn’t quite land right for me.
what did I miss…oh, “Arrorró” I think just needed a little more clarity for its conclusion to hit the way I think it’s meant to.
moods: dark, hopeful