I found [New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Fiction from the Caribbean] edited by Karen Lord kinda meh. This is a slim volume, featuring 11 stories by authors distributed between Barbados (3 authors), Bermuda (2), and Trinidad & Tobago (6). I liked most of the stories fine (as is usually the case with anthologies), and felt that Tammi Browne-Bannister's "Once in a Blood Moon" was a great start to the collection. In the end, I guess they didn't really resonate with me, even though I was predisposed to like them. Not sure why. Maybe it was because 9 of the stories featured female protagonists, of those, 5 were +written by men and featuring the darkest stories involving sexual abuse ("Water Under the Bridge"), infidelity leading to murder ("Maiden of the Mud"), female body image issues ("Quaka-Hadja"), and "daddy issues" ("Daddy," of course). It's fraught territory for someone of the dominant group to explore an aspect of the oppression of the oppressed group, and those tales were definitely written to address gendered violence and patriarchal dynamics in relationships. Not quite successfully for me, as I hit the cluster of stories I didn't enjoy featuring girls/women suffering in different ways and realizing the authors of most of those were men. Gah. To be fair, "The Ceremony" by a female author also was a dark story exploring female gender roles in families and was placed in the center of the aforementioned cluster of stories in the center of the collection. And the fifth story written by a man and featuring a female narrator ("Past Imperfect") did not raise any red flags because it didn't grapple with anything gender specific and was a rewarding little dystopic tale. I think the story I enjoyed most was "fallenangel.dll," which featured a gay male protagonist in a dystopian unspecified country with a Prime Minister. So this book was really a peach, with pleasant stories encasing a bitter pit. Or maybe I should say mango with a large pith, given these are Caribbean authors, and the ratio of hard to digest stories was larger than I like. ( )

Cool, weird tales. ( )

This short anthology brings together speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy) short stories from several Caribbean authors. All of the authors were new-to-me, and I did find a few who I may seek out more work by. However, on the whole I didn’t think the collection was very strong.

In “Once in a Blood Moon” the protagonist is an orphaned girl drawn towards sea turtles. This magical realism story touches on environmental issues. Unfortunately, it was also fairly forgettable. At least I liked it more than the following story, “The Passing Over of Zephora,” a strange story that I couldn’t make heads or tails of.

Of the remaining fantastical stories, “Maiden of the Mud” by Kevin Jared Hosein might be my favorite. In it, a wedding singer ends up dead and haunting the man who murdered her, becoming an inspiration for local folklore. I found it a delicious ghost story, although her quest for vengeance could perhaps have been more developed. “Water Under the Bridge” is another vengeance story, this time about a girl who’s being molested by her mother’s boyfriend and finds supernatural aid. Finally, “The Ceremony” is a story of one family and their dark legacy. While well written and engaging, I wasn’t sure what the point of the ceremony itself was.

The science fiction stories slant towards dystopian and post-apocalyptic, although there are a few exceptions. In “Daddy,” the protagonist’s dementia-ridden father suddenly begins to teleport. It’s an intriguing idea, but like many of the other stories in the collection, could have used more development. “A New Life in a New Time” is the story of a man who works for a company that freezes people trying to get away from their problems, bringing them a few years into the future. It involves a trope I really hate — a man obsessing about a woman in cryo-sleep.

The most professional story in the collection is probably “Quaka-Hadja,” where the protagonist goes about her daily tasks, ignorant of the dire situation she’s in. I don’t want to say much more, but there’s a sort of creeping horror and understanding to the story!

“Past Imperfect” is a post-apocalyptic story involving a man with photographic memory. Honestly, I started skimming this one. It was not very interesting. The next story, “Cascadura,” about a woman who is famed for being strangely immortal, worked better for me. The protagonist is the last woman from Trinidad and Tobago, and she’s seen all the people she knows die. She isn’t happy with her immortality, but death is beyond her reach.

“Fallenangel.dll” by Brandon O’Brien is a more dystopic approach, about a man who is roped into going out past curfew and ends up in his co-worker’s scheme to uncover a conspiracy with government police robots. It perhaps could have used better development, but I liked it well enough. It’s also always nice to see queer characters get a happy ending.

Old Worlds, New Ways might not have been the best short story collection I’ve read, but there’s still a few gems to be had.

Review from The Illustrated Page. ( )