The Year’s Best Fantasy Volume Three

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

—SIR TERRY PRATCHETT (1948–2015)

There’s always considerable diversity in any good assemblage of short fantasy. After all, fantasy authors are limited only by their vast imaginations. So, you’ll find a wide array of magic, revelations, adventure, emotional explorations, and more in The Year’s Best Fantasy, Volume Three. There’s also a variety of writing styles with inspiration found in both Western and non-Western traditions. Anything can happen in fantasy and just about anything happens in these stories.

Last year I didn’t realize until compiling the choices for The Year’s Best Fantasy, Volume Two, that five stories featured dragons and two more mentioned dragons. (There were also two stories about soup and a third that included soup.) It’s not that I am unaware that there might be several tales with related elements, it’s just that when I consider a story for inclusion, I’m looking at its entirety. Thus: surprises.

Let’s take a quick look at the seventeen stories of this volume (all originally published in 2023):

“Mr. Catt” by Eleanor Arnason features a six-foot-tall talking cat who wants to own a dragon, but I wouldn’t say it is about either. A witch’s relationship to a community and its denizens are explored in P. Djèlí Clark’s “What I Remember of Oresha Moon Dragon Devshrata.” Set on a fictional Caribbean island, it is one of two stories chosen from The Book of Witches, a themed anthology edited by Jonathan Strahan.

“How to Stay Married to Baba Yaga” by S. M. Hallow is “listicle” fiction (quite common these days) that pivots on a complex Slavic folkloric character usually considered to be a witch. Fran Wilde based “The Rain Remembers What the Sky Forgets” in historical fact but the author has described it as being about “birds, morality, hats, more birds, and rebellions of various sorts.”

“Mid-Earth Removals Limited” by R. S. A. Garcia is an amusing, somewhat genre-referential fantasy with, again, a Caribbean lilt (and a dragon). Set during the Great Depression, Nghi Vo’s “On the Fox Roads” finds the young protagonist on a journey of self-discovery after teaming up with a pair of Chinese-American bank robbers.

“Always Be Returning” by Eugenia Triantafyllou retells the Greek myth of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, another goddess. Even goddesses have to deal with mother-daughter relationships. “The Passing of the Dragon” by Ken Liu concerns an artist who sees a dragon (!) and attempts to tell the world, but it’s about many things, including art and creators.

The short “Remembered Salt” by E. Catherine Tobler also references Baba Yaga or, rather, her house. It’s an abode that has yearnings. E. Lily Yu’s “The Cat’s Tale” features another cat as well as reshaping several fairy tales into a very original whole. Megan Chee’s xianxia fantasy “The God of Minor Troubles” deals with a lazy god who would prefer to nap rather than respond to mortal prayers.

Although the premise of “The Big Glass Box and the Boys Inside” involves corporations run with magic by fae-like folk, Isabel J. Kim’s tale truly turns on very human emotion. “A Princess with a Nose Three Ells Long” by Malda Marlys is a new fairy tale with a princess protagonist, but she’s the scion of a troll kingdom and has long determined to be completely herself.

We journey back to the Caribbean in Karyn Díaz’s “The Spirit of Bois” and visit J’ouvert, the start of Carnival: a time when even the spirits—though many are dimmed by a lack of belief and the human desecration of nature—are drawn to human revelry. “Can You Hear Me Now?” by Catherynne M. Valente is something completely different. The author has termed it an “unsettling fable about identity and capitalism and the history of television advertisements.”

Margaret Ronald’s “Spinning Shadow” has—along with humor and heart—a teensy touch of epic fantasy. But the days of kings and warriors are long past, and the pragmatic heroine must cope with one of the Undying who is looking for his dark essence.

We end with “John Hollowback and the Witch” by Amal El-Mohtar. It was also the finale to the aforementioned The Book of Witches, in which it was first published. I think you’ll agree that’s the proper place for it. There’s a witch, of course, but it’s more about the need for redemption than magic.

The Caribbean vein was interesting as was the fact (discovered when I gathered author biographies) that three authors lived in or had connections to the relatively small Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Fairy-tale inspiration is to be expected. (One could probably do an annual The Year’s Best New Fairy Tales.) Witchery was a strong element with Baba Yaga as part of that. Two cats. And, for (as suggested last year) anyone composing that “Soup in Literature” dissertation: although not featured, three stories include soup.

Relationships (not always between humans) are involved in all our stories. There’s whimsy, gravity, and everything between. All are entertaining; some may be inspiring. I think you’ll find far more themes of finding or being true to oneself, resilience, resourcefulness, and positivity than darkness. (Don’t miss the volumes of sister anthology series, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, to delve into those tenebrous depths.) What all the stories have in common is that they take the reader from the ordinary into the extraordinary and make the impossible seem quite possible.

Once again, it has been a privilege and honor to be allowed to compile this book. I am grateful for the opportunity.