Second Starred Review

Mon 28 Aug 2023 - Filed under: Not a Journal., , | Posted by: Gavin

The Privilege of the Happy Ending cover - click to view full sizeKij Johnson just put a line through an item on her bucket list: The Privilege of the Happy Ending has received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews — great news, especially following the first starred review the book received from Publishers Weekly.

After the great popularity of At the Mouth of the River of Bees, we’re changing things up a bit and splitting the run on this book so that we will have some hardcovers available.

Here’s an excerpt from the review or read the whole thing on Kirkus’s site.

★ “While the entries are uniformly excellent in pacing and prose, the standouts may be the collection’s opener and closer. ‘Tool-Using Mimics’ spins out a half-dozen explanations for a vintage photo of a young girl with tentacles that lead to piercing questions about how much we can know about the past, other species, and each other. The titular novella, which also won a World Fantasy Award, is a compelling fairy tale about a little orphan girl and her talking hen that poignantly interrogates the ways we determine which stories take center stage. A strange and glimmering jewel for any genre fiction collection.”