SciFi/Fantasy Anthology Review: Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck

Karin Tidbeck's Amatka was one of my favorite books of last year - and one of the few books over the past 3 years for me to give a perfect score.  Tidbeck is a Swedish author who has recently begun to self-translate her own works into English (Amatka was published in Swedish a few years ago) and writes in a SciFi/Fantasy style that is best described as "Weird."  But after reading Amatka, I was really looking forward to reading more of her work.  And that took me to Jagannath.



Jagannath is a collection of her short story work translated into English.  It's actually not new, it was brought over here in 2012, but a new edition came out recently and as such, I grabbed it when I saw immediately it was available from the library.  It's definitely something - also it's very definitely Nordic in inspiration - but it was well worth reading.

The stories tend to all be somewhat strange, but vary quite a bit in tone - some seem kind of sweet/wistful/sad, while others are a lot harsher.  They're mostly all as strange as you'd expect - the very first story "Beatrice" begins with a man falling in love with a literal airship and also features a woman falling in love (and I mean romantic love both times) with a literal steam engine, for example.  But they can also be pretty interesting and kind of impactful.

Standouts for me were the aforementioned "Beatrice" which uses its strange literal/metaphorical (yeah, kinda both) story to make kind of a dark point and  "Rebecka" which features a world in which God has returned to make a real presence in the world but won't let a woman formerly tortured by her husband commit suicide.

Other solid/good stories included "Who is Arivd Pekon" - a strange story where a man's job to playact as anyone who callers to the government want to speak to suddenly takes him to weird places and "Augusta Prima" where a Fae woman begins to wonder about what it means for there to be a passing of time.

And even the stories which didn't hit it off for me were interesting and different from nearly anything I've read before.  The closest US comparable author nowadays is probably Jeff Vandermeer, so if you enjoy his works, you'll enjoy this.

Is this the best anthology I've ever read?  No.  Is it constantly interesting and fascinating?  Absolutely.  Recommended.