Customer Reviews

Winter Shadows & Other Tales

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In collections of an author's short stories, usually you like some, and some look boring and you skip them. Not so with Mary Soon Lee's Winter Shadows -- each story draws you in and you read through the book from first page to last.

If there's a unifying theme to the collection, it lies in the word transformation. Not just humans turned into animals, but people in general being transformed by their experiences. A lot of fantasy and science fiction is weak on characterization; but not the stories of Mary Soon Lee. In short, I can't recommend this book enough. I understand this is Ms. Lee's first book, though she has been appearing in the pages of magazines like Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Interzone, for some time now. If her later books are as good as this one, she will be a formidable presence in the spec-fic world indeed.

I thought I might try to get through all of the Mary Soon Lee anthology WINTER SHADOWS AND OTHER TALES in one go, but really could not. Lee is a masterfully efficient storyteller, and packs great impact in a mere few pages. Her theme may frequently be the angst of the need and the search for true love, but there isn't much sentimentality here, and a very small margin for mere flattery and superficiality. For those who prefer that love be proven, genuine, and hard-earned, these are small but memorable gems, making strong use of easily accessible fantasy settings but always relevant to reality. It is tempting to wonder what Lee could do at greater length, but I personally have no idea how, or why, I would dilute such potent content.