These Deathless Bones by Cassandra Khaw
My rating: 5/5 cats
“Oh, you little prick.” I smile in the penumbra of the dusty, green light, all teeth and hate. “You will hurt terribly.”
and this—this is my reward for dutifully reading a free tor short each week. many of the shorties fall into that “good-not-great” category for me, which is partly down to length, as more words = better as far as i’m concerned, and also just down to personal taste—the freebies give me a risk-free chance to try out authors i might not read otherwise, and not every author is going to be my favorite ever.
for example, with this author, i had seen her books at the store, and been drawn to them by their very karen-targeting covers* with dollar bills clutched in my hands only to be just as forcefully propelled away by the promises of the lovecraftian horror within.
i do not like lovecraft nor anything related to lovecraft other than my hometown of rhode island.
and if i’d remembered her name when i came upon this one, who knows—maybe i wouldn’t have read it, but my dummy brain had my back this time, and this story is now in my “free tor short hall of fame,” along with Fabulous Beasts**, Red as Blood and White as Bone, and all of the bardugo ones.
everything about it is wonderful, from its “kids-are-gross-assholes” opening paragraph:
“You’re not supposed to say that,” the young prince whimpers, looking up from his dinner of sausages and truffle-infused mash, savaged and pearled with the bites he’d drooled out half-chewed. It’s hard to believe he’s eleven. There’s gravy everywhere; practically a gallon of flavorsome beef extract, seasoned with allspice and caramelized onions, a rub of thyme, a bay leaf cooked to gossamer. The new cook spent ages on it. I know. I was there.
to its “stepmothers get to say what needs to be said” situations:
“You’re uglier than my real mommy.”
“And you’re a piece of shit.”
all the way through to its high-five of an ending. it isn’t a pretty pink story of princesses and shaded forests, and those of you who can’t bear animal cruelty are maybe too gentle for it, but if you hang in there, i promise you it’ll be worth it, because every dog has its day, even dogs with shitty masters. besides, animal harm, while enraging, is one of the less-romanticized realities of the natural world, as the author reminds us while making a different, but equally true, point:
People are always so quick to coo over children. So innocent, they simper as they press the screaming babes to their breast. So helpless. So pure. They forget that wolves are innocent, too, that the wild dogs savaging the family kitten, itself once a thing inclined toward toying with broken-breasted mice, harbor no cruelty in their ribs.
this is a fantastic, dark, brutal fairytale-ish story that ranks among my favorite short stories ever, and it’s really quite short, disproving my earlier equation. also, zero lovecraftisms.
give it a shot, if you daaaaaaaare….
read it for yourself here:
http://www.tor.com/2017/07/26/these-d…
*
similarly-styled covers that have drawn me in and are also supergreat books:
** itself sporting a similar “cover”:
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