Fiction River: Chances

edited by

Denise Little & Kristine Kathryn Rusch

(WMG Publishing, February 8, 2021, tpb, 290 pp.)

“Baked With Love” by Annie Reed

“An Ocean of Secrets In Her Eyes” by Dayle A. Dermatis

“Twice Told Tales” by Loren L. Coleman

“Sprinters” by Michael D. Britton

Reviewed by C.D. Lewis

Fiction River: Chances contains ten stories, but Tangent reviews only new works that are Fantasy or Science Fiction. Chances is about taking risks for love – and since the Foreword reports some readers believe True Love belongs solely to Fantasy, this reviewer wishes to clarify that Tangent requires a speculative element other than True Love. One of the best stories in the anthology is about mercenaries who find themselves on opposite sides of a job – but isn’t SF/F. The four SF/F genre shorts in this anthology are reviewed here.

Annie Reed’s “Baked With Love” is a UF romance short set in a world in which eating out becomes dangerous after magic began imbuing food with effects driven by the emotions of its cooks and bakers. Unfamiliar eateries or new cooks represent a terrifying risk to customers, and personal upheaval represents a business threat to restauranteurs. Reed uses close third person and frequent switches between the protagonist and love interest to show each side’s thoughts as the couple interact. Selene must decide whether to risk a new bakery, then whether to risk the baker. It’s a sweet story about trust and confidence with a mood comparable to a Hallmark-channel romance.

Dayle A. Dermatis’ short “An Ocean of Secrets In Her Eyes” is technically fantasy: nothing in the story turns on fantasy elements, except that the romantic reunion occurs once their reconciliation ripens when they’ve become ghosts. A pre-WWII Hollywood vibe complete with the social stratification at work near the movie industry serve as a backdrop to a doomed romance between a private eye and the starlet whose secret her studio has hired him to find. Since it’s a romance, he naturally decides to keep the secret, but since it’s a doomed romance this does little to save them. Why the leading lady died (should we assume it’s suicide?) and what became of those involved in her secret remain, unfortunately, unexplained and therefore disconnected from the reconciliation; readers who want to feel everything wrapped into a neat package might be warned we see little more after the relationship’s collapse than how the ghosts meet again for their second chance.

Loren L. Coleman’s short “Twice Told Tales” presents as a secondary-world fantasy about a princess doomed to die sacrificed to a dragon, but it subverts most of the relevant tropes to the extent one could easily believe it’s not fantasy at all but a grim tale about crooks scamming royalty with the threat of a dragon worthy of a Scooby Doo villain (in a good way: the marks always believe the fantasy in Scooby Doo, until the unmasking). Thankfully the princess is sharp and an accomplished actress and capable of steering the scammers as she pleases. Might not be fantasy (we don’t know the world has a real dragon, or real magic), but the entertaining reversals offer fun.

Michael D. Britton’s “Sprinters” is a first-person SF short set in a life-or-death racing series operated to entertain a faceless elite. The characters show who they are through the choices they make when their freedom and their survival is at stake. While SF tropes like mining outpost slave planets and distant social elites betting on death matches don’t feel particularly new or gripping, “Sprinters” succeeds in depicting human interactions while showing characters’ choices – from fear, greed, or love – when their lives and hearts are on the line.

C.D. Lewis lives and writes in Faerie.