Clarkesworld Magazine, #21, June 2008

In the June 2008 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine, “Clockwork Chickadee” by Mary Robinette Kowal is a morality lesson coached in a tale involving talking toys. In many ways it’s about greed and arrogance versus cleverness and cunning where the protagonist (a clockwork chickadee) wins the day by exploiting the pride and greed of her opponent. My personal favorite character is the mouse “middleman,” the only organic creature in the whole story. But the chickadee could just as easily be the antagonist instead of the protagonist since her cunning involves the ability to speak in half truths which Alfred Lord Tennyson correctly stated were “ever the blackest of lies.” So don’t let the surface innocence of the story fool you. Kowal delves into shades of gray and exposes the grayness in a fairy-tale style trapping often used (at least in modern times) to compare the usual black-and-white view of morality. All these reasons and more make this story well worth reading.

“The Secret in the House of Smiles” by Paul Jessup is classic surrealism, a subgenre of dark fantasy that sometimes has me baffled due to its tendencies to break the usual story mold and yet still maintain entertainment value while enlightening. In my experience, the majority of surrealistic tales tend to fall apart (often due to an author’s attempt to be “unique” by throwing in a Where’s Ishmael, which isn’t all that unique), but some do shine through. “The Secret in the House of Smiles” is one that shines through. While being bizarre, there is motive behind the characters’ actions, and the beginning and end connect in a…somewhat…logical way. It even takes a science-fiction approach to its magical nature by taking theories of quantum mechanics and stretching them to the extremes of believability. Overall, Jessup weaves an interesting tale that threatens to bake brain cells with its bizarreness—a literary carnival of otherworldly perceptions.