SciFi/Fantasy Anthology Review: A Universe of Wishes, edited by Dhonielle Clayton

 

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on December 8, 2020 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

A Universe of Wishes is an anthology from "We Need Diverse Books", an organization that is exactly what it says on the tin, featuring a variety of short stories from prominent "diverse" (usually meaning non White Male here) authors in SciFi/Fantasy writing today and edited by author Dhonielle Clayton.  I've enjoyed a few of the authors listed on its manifest - Tochi Onyebuchi, Mark Oshiro, Zoraida Córdova - among others, so I was excited to give this one a try when I saw it pop up on NetGalley.  

The result is however, even more uneven than I'm used to from short fiction anthologies, with some pretty great stories spread out alongside some pretty big whiffs.  Some of the whiffs mind you are because at least two of the stories take place in their authors' preexisting worlds (only one of which I've read), and thus don't feel complete outside the context of those worlds.  The anthology also doesn't, oddly to my view, provide an explanation for the background of each author to demonstrate to the reader where their voice comes from (and what makes it "diverse,"), leaving me a bit confused about a few of the authors who were selected for this collection.*  Still there's enough good stuff here from really great writers to be worth your time, especially for YA-age readers, even if it's not my favorite anthology of the year.

*It is usually not an author's obligation to explain their background to the reader - it's their private business whether they may in fact be mixed race or queer despite their appearances on the surface for example, and questions to them about these things are kind of icky.  But when the anthology is based upon voices being from not the dominant group - a diverse group - it's weird to me when there's not even an attempt at this, especially given at least a few of the authors included seem to be white women, who I don't count myself as "diverse" in the space of genre anymore.*  

As always, reviewing anthologies is tricky, because well this one contains 15 separate stories, all independent of each other and by different authors, and all of the stories are short enough that giving summaries of each would lose some of the wonder of what they contain.  This one is even trickier, because aside from the 15 authors within containing no white cis men, there really isn't a common theme to the stories other than being (mainly) YA-appropriate genre fiction.  Some stories speak about preserving ones own heritage, or their sexuality, or just who they are (a combination of a lot of things) in the face of others who would try to eradicate it or just adversity in general - but not all.  Some stories here deal with love, some deal with loss.  It's a hard group to grasp as a single collection with a single message, because there really isn't one.  

Again, this is not to take away from some of the high quality of some of these stories.  The anthology opens with a strong story of love (M-M) and getting over loss, combined with magic in Tara Sim's "A Universe of Wishes" and continues with a cute F-F story by Natalie C. Parker in "The Silk Blade" - in general its queer-love stories are done incredibly well and really strong - Cristal y Ceniza, a riff on Cinderella/The Spanish Inquisition/Fighting for the rights of queerness in a Latinx world by Anna Marie McLemore is another winner, with Dream and Dare by Nic Stone being another lovely story on similar themes. 

Real highlights for me include the aforementioned Cristal y Ceniza, along with: 
Liberia by Kwame Mbalia (A young man among a group of young people, trained to be experts and carrying supplies from Earth to another colony having left behind the older adults, fights to preserve what's left of his/their heritage);
Unmoor by Mark Oshiro, (about a young man hiring someone to use magic to unmoor his memories of his now ex-boyfriend from the places he might go, only to find the process more traumatic than anticipated for everyone);
Also working well is Samira Ahmed's bittersweet The Coldest Spot in the Universe, (featuring a young woman at the end of a dying world and a future visitor from afar rediscovering her life and discoveries and how much she meant)

I could go on - there's at least 2-3 other stories here that are up there with those 3, including Zoraida Córdova's spin on a modern day Rapunzel, Longer than the Threads of Time, and Tochi Onyebuchi's devastating epistolary tale of two oppressed men in different prisons, Habibi.  There's a lot of great quality here, well worth your time.  

That said, there's a couple of stories that just feel incomplete and thus miss the mark.  Libba Bray's "The Scarlet Woman" and "A Royal Affair" by VE Schwab for example are both part of pre-existing universes by the author - the Gemma Doyle trilogy (which I haven't read) by Bray and the Shades of Magic trilogy (which I have read) by Schwab and neither really feels like a complete story without prior knowledge and justifies its inclusion.  Rebecca Roanhorse's "The Takeback Tango" by contrast is an original story (afaict) and a clever take on Indigenous people stealing back their works of their heritage from the Empire that took it - but in space - but just ends at a weird point, leaving me wanting.  None of these are bad, but they just left me feeling more, which made them stand out among the truly strong stories in the anthology I mentioned above.  

So yeah, this is an anthology worth your time, especially if you're in the YA age group, and its best stories are absolutely worth anyone's time and hit hard.  I do however wish it was more tightly focused as to what it was aiming to be, so that its weakest points were shored up, despite all that.