Small Press newcomer, Paper Golem, debuts the first in a annual series of single author collections by brilliant new authors. EYES LIKE SKY AND COAL AND MOONLIGHT brings together twenty stories from the extraordinary talent of fantasy author Cat Rambo. Here are tales from seaport city of Tabat, both before and after the sorcerous wars that destroyed the Old Continent. Here are alchemical explanations for failed blind dates. Here you'll find a dryad, the last great elephant, and an uneasy blur of humanity. Cat Rambo doesn't simply amaze and delight, she restores wonder to her readers with every page. You won't simply believe that pigs can fly, you'll question why you ever doubted the premise at all.
Eyes Like Sky And Coal And Moonlight
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle. Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Browse the best books of summer including blockbusters, beach reads, and editors' picks in our Summer Reading Store. |
Book Description
Frequently Bought Together
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The first solo collection from Fantasy Magazine co-editor Rambo is a two-sided coin. Her stand-alone stories are crisp and compelling, but the longer ones set in imaginary seaport Tabat are filled with predictable genre tropes that fall flat. On the good side, Heart in a Box follows three present-day tourists in Thailand who encounter a real-life mermaid, while Eagle-haunted Lake Sammamish finds an ancient dryad threatened by human progress. Less satisfying, Narrative of a Beast's Life tells the long-winded story of a centaur without a trace of tension or intrigue, and A Key Decides Its Destiny brings nothing new to the tired wizard yarn. Diehard fans of traditional fantasy will at least find plenty of familiar arcs and archetypes, if not so much narrative tension. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
...stories are crisp and compelling...Heart in a Box follows three present-day tourists in Thailand who encounter a real-life mermaid, while Eagle-haunted Lake Sammamish finds an ancient dryad threatened by human progress. --Publisher's Weekly
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images? |
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Spirits attack a fort full of despair on the frontier of a mythic kingdom. A girl is cursed to carry flame sprites throughout the land, creating a magical massacre. Tourists on the dingy side of Bangkok meet a woman who may or may not be Andersen's Little Mermaid. An elemental sorceress gambles everything to save her nation and discovers that victory may be the key to her greatest loss.
Cat Rambo, hailed as one of the leading voices in fantastic fiction, collects twenty stories of the speculative, the bone-chilling, and the uncanny. The tales in this volume are so strange, so evocative, and so different from one another that it's hard to believe they were all written by the same person. Rambo has a remarkable talent for plunging readers into alien realities in only a few pages, a talent that's become lamentably rare in recent short fiction.
These stories refuse to be limited to one or a few genres. Rambo freely mixes heroic fantasy with psychological horror, or steampunk with westerns. Hers is an innovative mind that will stop at nothing to tell the best possible story, and she writes for eager, curious readers. Every character she creates has a distinctive voice, and every story she tells expands her world, and the reader's as well.
I applaud Rambo for choosing a small press. However, the wing-and-a-prayer budget of Paper Golem seems to leave Rambo without an editor, and there are places her stories could use a little clean-up. Several sentences drop important words, and some of her punctuation could be called quirky. Though these are distracting, they never diminished my enjoyment. Some of Rambo's story notes, on the other hand, contain spoilers; read her notes only after the stories.
Cat Rambo comes to the reading public with glowing recommendations from luminaries like Jeff VanderMeer and John Barth, and it's easy to see why. Her unconventional fantasy refuses to follow familiar paths, and her writing is a cut above most genre fiction coming pell-mell from the major publishing houses. This, her first short story collection, signals the arrival of a bold voice in fantasy literature, and promises nothing but glory in the future.
Cat Rambo, hailed as one of the leading voices in fantastic fiction, collects twenty stories of the speculative, the bone-chilling, and the uncanny. The tales in this volume are so strange, so evocative, and so different from one another that it's hard to believe they were all written by the same person. Rambo has a remarkable talent for plunging readers into alien realities in only a few pages, a talent that's become lamentably rare in recent short fiction.
These stories refuse to be limited to one or a few genres. Rambo freely mixes heroic fantasy with psychological horror, or steampunk with westerns. Hers is an innovative mind that will stop at nothing to tell the best possible story, and she writes for eager, curious readers. Every character she creates has a distinctive voice, and every story she tells expands her world, and the reader's as well.
I applaud Rambo for choosing a small press. However, the wing-and-a-prayer budget of Paper Golem seems to leave Rambo without an editor, and there are places her stories could use a little clean-up. Several sentences drop important words, and some of her punctuation could be called quirky. Though these are distracting, they never diminished my enjoyment. Some of Rambo's story notes, on the other hand, contain spoilers; read her notes only after the stories.
Cat Rambo comes to the reading public with glowing recommendations from luminaries like Jeff VanderMeer and John Barth, and it's easy to see why. Her unconventional fantasy refuses to follow familiar paths, and her writing is a cut above most genre fiction coming pell-mell from the major publishing houses. This, her first short story collection, signals the arrival of a bold voice in fantasy literature, and promises nothing but glory in the future.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a wonderful collection in the truest sense of the word. It is full of wonders that will -- without ever pandering to predictability -- appeal to a wide range of fantasy readers. The standalone stories display Rambo's deft touch in several fantastic subgenres. The stories set in her seaport city of Tabat are like black truffle mac n cheese for genre geeks: comfort food gloriously reinvented for a grown-up palate. In respectful disagreement with the Publishers Weekly review above, the Tabat stories are anything *but* flat or predictable! "Narrative of a Beast's Life," in particular, is just plain brilliant -- a sort of splicing of the 19th c. American slave narrative with the old school Monster Manual. Do yourself a favor and buy this book!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
One of the most satisfying things about these twenty stories is their compactness. Rambo offers up richly complete worlds--ours and others--in small but vivid tales. All that we need to know is implied, oblique; there are no infodumps here, and no elaborate world-building. The solidity of Rambo's creations lies rather in the telling detail, keenly observed. Characters in some stories, such as "The Dead Girl's Wedding March" and "Dew Drop Coffee Lounge," make radical choices and accept the consequences. In other tales, such as "Events at Fort Plenitude" and the title story, characters who live in interesting times endure events both wondrous and terrible. Rambo's prose is supple throughout, whether she is writing fantasy, science fiction, fable, horror, or humor, all of which are represented here. Brief notes on the genesis of each piece will be of interest to writers and genre buffs. Highly recommended.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delicious
As usual, Cat Rambo delivers a feast for the heart and soul. Her magical proficiency with description reminds me of sweet black cherries. Read more
Published 7 days ago by Kim Offenburger
5.0 out of 5 stars
Astoundingly lush and beautiful!
This book is incredible. The stories run a wide gamut.. from straight up fantasy to legends/fairy tales... to light horror. Read more
Published 19 days ago by Annie B. Nilsen
5.0 out of 5 stars
Whoa
Gorgeous. The first story is my stand-out favourite, but all of the tales in this collection will draw you in to a fascinating magical world.
Published 4 months ago by Meryl A. Ferguson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Glitters like sandcastles in the sun
I bought this collection because Cat is a friend. I read the collection because I could not put it down. Every piece in the collection is worth reading. Read more
Published on March 7, 2011 by J. Meaders
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Collection of Short Stories for every taste
I discovered Cat Rambo storytelling when [...] published Clockwork Fairies ([...]). I enjoyed it and when I saw this anthology of her work, I was immediately interested. Read more
Published on January 13, 2011 by Sylvia Wrigley
5.0 out of 5 stars
Stories from one of Today's Best Fantasists
In my blurb for Cat Rambo's new collection, Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight (Paper Golem Press, 2009), I wrote that reading her stories is like "reading the literature from... Read more
Published on December 8, 2009 by Rachel Swirsky
