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(Disclaimer: I translated two of the stories in this anthology ("Snowfall" by Tiina Raevaara and "The Challenges of Waste Disposal" by Jenny Kangasvuo), so I'm not exactly impartial.)An excellent collection of Finnish weird! I enjoyed pretty much all the stories - my favourites (aside from the ones I translated) were Emmi Itäranta's "The Bearer of the Bone Harp" and Anni Nupponen's "The River God" (which I'd previously read in Finnish). I also really enjoyed the excerpt from Hannu Rajaniemi's up...
Anthology review time! Every time I do one of these, I'm surprised at how long it's been since I last did one. I really do like doing these, though - it's just that not a lot of anthologies find their way to my bookshelf.I have a special way to review these; I rate and review every short story individually below, and then I take the average of the whole thing, rounded up or down, as the total rating. You can see that total rating already, but it's a mystery to me right now. (Though it's usually
This "showcase of Finnish Weird"--like most Weird--wasn't my cup of tea. Still, I appreciated the idea, the quality of the translations, and the addendum listing Finnish speculative fiction available in other languages. We need more initiatives of this kind.Here're my impressions as I read: https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...
This series of stories had some hits and misses, but I liked most of them better than average.
Great showcase of Finnish short stories. The pieces are short and evocative. Overall tone is melancholy and weird.
I enjoyed Emmi Itäranta's story "The Bearer of the Bone Harp", but the rest did little for me.
Review soonish IY"H. THANK YOU SO MUCH for Sara Norja for sending me this book!
I still have a hard time reading short story collections--as always, some were better than others. I enjoyed: Maria Turtschaninoff's "Undine," Jenny Kangasvuo's "The Challenges of Waste Disposal," and Anni Nupponen's "The River God."
This was a fortuitous find at the library. Some of these short stories really had me thinking that the cultural difference could have lead to some different ideas, as they felt quite different from anything else I recall. I loved the concept of The Haunted House of Rocketworks Street. My mouth dropped open near the end. Undine was cool. I liked how it's never explained, which let me come to my own conclusions. Bearer of the Bone Harp was another with a great concept. I thought it was terrific. I...
A strong start to this collection slows down midway, as we get a number of tales that tread well-worn paths, with trolls as symbols of grief and similar tropes. But there are some real gems here, like Jenny Kangasvuo's hauting low-fantasy "The challenges of waste disposal", and Emmi Itäranta's Holmesian "The bearer of the bone harp" about a spellsinger with a kantele and his female companion. Definitely a world I would like to return to! Anna Leinonen's story intrigued me, but ultimately I prefe...
An interesting mix of stories here. Some I loved, others I didn't really care for but that's always the case with an anthology. The translations were all excellent. Definitely going to keep my eye on some of these authors and absolutely want to read their novels now!
This was a really good read. I especially enjoyed "Snowfall" by Tiina Raevaara (an intense and well-written story about grief) and "The Bearer of the Bone Harp" by Emmi Itäranta (a slighty Carnacki/Sherlockian tale about banishing demons with an interesting point of view). I had real problems with Anni Nupponen's "The River God" - because, similar to White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi, it is a story about mental health as well as Weird phenomena, and in a way they are both depictions of slow...
The Worldcon freebie collection offers a look into Finnish Weird in a fairly varied way, even if it seems to lean a bit on the emotionally heavy and dark side of it (that is, in honesty, quite a significant genre feature).The collection features eleven stories by different authors, short introduction to each author, and a fairly comprehensive list into Finnish speculative fiction available in non-Finnish. The short stories are of course the main deal, but the other features increase the importan...
Undine by Maria Turtschaninoff saved this collection for me. I'll write my opinions on each story here later.
All these stories are pretty good, but nothing stood out or really grabbed hold of me. Lots of ideas and atmosphere, not much compelling development.
In the lead-up to Worldcon 75 I made an effort to seek out Finnish speculative fiction and decided I liked it. Helpfully, this free collection passed out to all Worldcon attendees points me in the direction of more authors to explore. I was already familiar with several names--Jaaskelainen, Sinisalo, and Itaranta--but I now want to dig up more works by Turtschaninoff, Kangasvuo, and Rajaniemi. And a helpful bibliography of works in translation at the back tells me where to start.Story-by-story r...
This was given to every member of Worldcon attending the 2017 con held in Finland. I'm really glad to think that people around the world might be reading these stories. I found them interesting and well written, and they are by the most famous Finnish weird writers of the moment.I especially liked Anne Leinonen's "The Skinner". It didn't (as to my knowledge) directly reference Finnish mythology but it still had a very Finnish feel to it - which I appreciated in this context. The story was whole
Really weak, apart from the titular story.
This was an interesting collection, and definitely weird. I can only say I actually enjoyed about three or four of these stories, my favorite being The Bearer of the Bone Harp. At least for me, too often the "weird" descended into melancholy and depressive, rather than otherworldly and inventive.