#ShortStoryMonth Day Two — Lava Falls, by Lucy Jane Bledsoe
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Collections You’ve Loved
Okay, confession time: it took me a really, really long time to remember the difference between a collection and an anthology. Collections are single-author volumes of short fiction, and anthologies are multi-author volumes of short fiction. This means my “Single author short story collections” above there is redundant, but whatever, I have a hard enough time remembering my keys in the morning, let alone what to call which kind of short story book.
[image error]Let’s talk Lava Falls. The most recent collection I’ve read that stayed with me for days after I finished it, Lava Falls is a journey. My favourite collections do this: begin with the first tale that sets the stage for the collection on a thematic or narrative sense (in this case, that’s Girl with Boat, which I talked about way back in January as one of the best opening tales in a collection I’ve ever read) and then take you on a journey throughout all the other stories in the collection, ending with another tale that caps everything off in a whole greater than the sum of its already wonderful parts.
I always have favourites, but beyond the first and final stories, there was also “Wildcat,” “The Found Child,” “The Antarctic,” “My Beautiful Awakening,” and “The End of Jesus,” and that’s a lot of stories to really have enjoyed in a single collection. Lava Falls (the collection) and “Lava Falls” (the novella) accomplish that “whole greater than the sum of its parts” thing. I sat back and inhaled after reading Lava Falls, and my spec-fic heart was really, really happy. Such a fantastic book.
If you’re at all a lover of short fiction, do yourself a favour and pick this up.
Other collections I’ve really enjoyed (with links to reviews)? Desire & Devour by Jeff Mann (gay viking vampire through the ages); Bobcat and other Short Stories by Rebecca Lee (a literary mix with a brilliant voice); Eros & Dust by Trebor Healey, (queer, a dash of magic, desire, and aging); and That Door is a Mischief by Alex Jeffers (gah! linked short stories about a fairy named Liam and just trust me go get it).
