Runalong The Short Shelves - Fiyah 36
Price - $3.99 Via https://fiyahlitmag.com/shop/issues/2025-issues/fiyah-36-gods-monsters/
Still playing a little winter catchup Ona few things but this week I caught up on Fiyah’s Gods and Monsters themed issue and I really enjoyed it
Soul Food - by C M Harmon - this is a great opening story and plays with our expectations as to what may be going on but what is at stake in the story. There is a thrilling dark opening in nighttime Chicago as our main character summons a spirit known as as The Crossroads Man. This story though for all its supernatural elements is also beautifully human about loss, family and traditions that fuel the spirit. Really beautiful storytelling.
A Nameless Thing by PC Verrone - this is a sainting suitably shifting tale set in 1970s Burbank California. We meet Ike a would be scriptwriter creating strikebreaking scripts but we first find awakening in a truck stop thinking of the taste of flesh. Verrone mixes real history from oil shortages to the Black Panthers with a tale of curses and monsters. Impressively it’s unpredictable which way the story finally shifts but has a great message about ultimately deciding you can decide to change the world for yourself and your allies. The way all these elements are handled and come together is very satisfying.
The Dolphin House by Jaimie K Wilson - A Conjureman on an island is approached by a white man to curse a young black wins to love him. I enjoyed this story as it flips between the two characters but the ending felt just a little rushed.
Seen Thrice In Serpent’s Flesh by Lowry Poletti - it’s a story of gods, a strange oracle and its own epic nature. Lots of powerful beautiful imagery as magic transforms things for good and ill purposes. It has a strange dreamy nightmare quality but leaves us wit the impression this work we see is not an easy one.
A Spider Has A Thousand And One Lives by Oluwafikayomi Adeniyi - An Anansi story with a difference as this time the trickster god appears to be in a place where the people hunt gods. He meets other magical people and there is a sense of a place out of order. Do events actually change with gods? Ultimately this comes together in an interesting way and the way every thing keeps changing within the story is apt for this particular god.
Riding The River From Below The Bowels of A Broken Home by Nkome Chaka - I really liked this final story which takes a simple idea of someone going to a hair stylist and creates a huge contemporary fantasy story around it touching on themes of grief, depression and damaged friendship. Yanta who has been very much hanging on to life after a death close to her is persuaded by her Tess it’s time to finally get her hair cut and styled. She meets the enigmatic Kemolorile who manages to make Yanta feel a bit better but raises questions as to what this stylist is hiding in her home.
I really enjoyed how this story shifts around and what at times feel will be purely a story about someone healing suddenly turns a lot darker and yet also more fantastical. We are invested in the huma characters both sorting out their personal battles and interpersonal friendships but also their lives eventually appear at stake. The use of magic, potentially all powerful beings and how this all connects to the events creating Yanta’s grief is really handled well and yet never over-explained keeping some mysteries for the reader to think upon. A really interesting story.
The issue finishes with three suitably themed poems Fishing for Gods in a Dying River by Olumide Manuel, Hunter’s Song by Eniola Abdulroqeeb Arowolo and Manbo Lanmo by Lysz Flo all three very different in form and structure but well reading.
