Shiny #2

Shiny is a PDF e-zine based in Australia of YA speculative fiction. When I was a teacher for a few years, I read a lot of YA speculative books as a way of keeping in touch with what my students might be reading, but I hadn’t read much short fiction that labeled itself as YA, so I was interested to see what the offerings here would be.

Issue #2 opens with “The Goats Are Going Places” by Tina Connolly. It’s a fun story, snappily told, of Renee, a junior high girl (probably around 14, for those unfamiliar with the U.S. system) who wants to be at the top of the best clique. She’s smart and rebellious and gets sent to her aunt’s sprawling house, at the auspicious address of 1313 Strega Place, when she gets in trouble. Even in the new school, she moves to the top, socially, with the girl who is nominally her best friend. Renee is self-centered as well, taking advantage of both her rich aunt and her new friend. But her aunt has a touch of magic and teaches Renee a lesson.

There’s nothing especially deep to “The Goats Are Going Places,” but its stylish language and fun storyline make it an enjoyable tale that should especially appeal to readers around the age of the protagonist.

“Cracks” by Trent Jamieson feels much less like a YA story. In it, the narrator has a heritage that includes dealing with the spirits of the dead, and a neighbor boy comes to ask for her help in easing his powerful mother into death. There are a few hints that the narrator might be young herself, but maybe because of her role as shunned wise one, she feels much older—which is part of why it didn’t seem YA. Stylistically also, it felt more like a story that could have been in any other small press magazine. It was murkier (especially the ending) and much more leisurely than I’d have expected from a YA work.

That certainly says nothing about how successful the story is in its own right, except that context does set up certain expectations. The backdrop—the influence the dead continue to have on the living—and the role the narrator plays are fascinating. And the narrator, with her old-sounding voice, is an enjoyable enough guide. But it didn’t quite lead up satisfactorily to its ending, and I found “Cracks” quickly fading from my memory.

My favorite in this issue is the science fictional “Blurred Horizons” by Bren MacDibble. It’s a straightforward story of a youth who has grown up early and finds she must accomplish something even she might not be able to do.

Young Tash—her age is never mentioned, but probably early teen—lives with her mother at a remote fueling station that won’t support them much longer. She’s proud of her ability to handle jobs the adults think someone her age, and especially a girl, shouldn’t be expected to do. Her greater pride, though, is in the forest that is her father’s legacy. In that forest, she finds a time traveler and agrees to help him save the world.

I tend to be leery of time-traveler stories, and especially save-the-world time-traveling stories, but that’s the adult reader in me. Ignoring that bias, I found a lot of fun in this story, definitely the type I would have loved when I was in my teens and even earlier. My only real complaint is that it was supposedly set only about 25 years from now, but the desolate fueling station and Mad-Max-type decay of the aging transports felt considerably farther into the future.

Based on this issue, Shiny is certainly a great ‘zine to point out to any teen and pre-teen reader you know if you want to get them interested in speculative short fiction.