Tor.com, November 2023

“The Canadian Miracle” by Cory Doctorow

“Some Ways to Retell a Fairy Tale” by Kathleen Jennings (reprint, not reviewed)

“A Heart Between Teeth” by Kerstin Hall

Reviewed by Victoria Silverwolf

This month’s stories take readers from the near future to lands that never existed.

The narrator of “The Canadian Miracle” by Cory Doctorow is one of the Canadian workers who come to Mississippi to help locals deal with a devastating flood. The setting is a future time when Canada has dealt effectively with environmental disaster, but the United States has not. Inadvertently, her presence leads to controversy and a crisis.

This is a highly political story. The author makes his opinions very clear. Readers’ views will determine, to some extent, how they react to the piece. With that in mind, I found it to be a convincing portrait of a possible future. The author does not minimize the threat of climate change, but offers hope that future societies will be able to meet the challenge.

In “A Heart Between Teeth” by Kerstin Hall, the protagonist’s demon lover is killed when an enemy god invades her realm. Taken prisoner, she is forced to undergo three increasingly gruesome tests before she will be allowed to return to her conquered land. Her only possible ally is an openly defiant slave of the god, whose actions are magically controlled by the malevolent deity.

This grimdark fantasy creates an effectively somber mood throughout. Even the ending, which some might consider to be a triumph for the protagonist, is full of gloom. The protagonist’s horrible experiences are vividly portrayed; perhaps too much so, for some sensitive readers. The god is a caricature of pure evil, who seems to have no motive except to cause as much suffering as possible.

Victoria Silverwolf has been to Canada.