Bone Swans

by C. S. E. Cooney, Gene Wolfe (Introduction)

Overview

Winner of the 2016 World Fantasy Award for Best Collection



Contains "The Bone Swans of Amandale," 2015 Nebula Award finalist for Best Novella



2015 Locus Recommended Reading List, Best Collection and Best Novella



"C. S. E. Cooney is one of the most moving, daring, and plainly beautiful voices to come out of recent fantasy. She's a powerhouse with a wink in her eye and a song in each pocket."

—Catherynne M. Valente, New York Times-bestselling author of the Fairyland novels



"These stories are a pure joy. C. S. E. Cooney's imagination is wild and varied, her stories bawdy, horrific, comic, and moving-frequently all at the same time. Her characters are wickedly appealing, and her language—O! her language. Lush, playful, poetic, but never obscure or stilted, it makes her magic more magic, her comedy more comic, and her tragic moments almost unbearable."

—Delia Sherman, author of Young Woman in a Garden: Stories



"Bone Swans is a joy of feathery bones & ghoulish clowns. I adored every word. Like an eyas cries for meat, I cry for more. C.S.E. Cooney's a major talent and these are major talent stories. Who can resist hero rats, pouting swans, feral children, flying carpets and the Flabberghast? So tongue-tied am I with delight I fall back on the usual cliches: gripping, delightful, insightful, rollicking & lyrical—and yet not one cliche is to be found in Bone Swans, only stories of surpassing delicacy and wit, told by a lady of rare talent. Please, ma'am, might I have some more?"

—Ysabeau S. Wilce, Andre Norton Award wining author of Flora's Dare



A swan princess hunted for her bones, a broken musician and his silver pipe, and a rat named Maurice bring justice to a town under fell enchantment. A gang of courageous kids confronts both a plague-destroyed world and an afterlife infested with clowns but robbed of laughter. In an island city, the murder of a child unites two lovers, but vengeance will part them. Only human sacrifice will save a city trapped in ice and darkness. Gold spun out of straw has a price, but not the one you expect.



World Fantasy Award winner Ellen Kushner has called Cooney's writing "stunningly delicious! Cruel, beautiful and irresistible." Bone Swans, the infernally whimsical debut collection from C. S. E. Cooney, gathers five novellas that in the words of Andre Norton Award winner Delia Sherman are "bawdy, horrific, comic, and moving-frequently all at the same time." Cooney's mentor, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Gene Wolfe, proclaims in his introduction that her style is so original it can only be described as "pure Cooney," and he offers readers a challenge: "Try to define that when you've finished the stories in this book."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780988912441
Publisher:	Mythic Delirium Books
Publication date:	07/07/2015
Pages:	226
Sales rank:	1,013,135
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

C. S. E. Cooney is the author of How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes and Jack o' the Hills. She won the 2011 Rhysling Award for her story-poem "The Sea King's Second Bride." She is a Rhode Island writer who lives across the street from a Victorian Strolling Park.

C. S. E. Cooney launched her voice-acting career narrating short fiction for Podcastle, the world's first audio fantasy magazine. She is a performance poet, singer-songwriter, and fantasy author whose collection Bone Swans has garnered starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Locus Magazine.

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/25/2015
Cooney’s brilliantly executed collection of five stories is a delicious stew of science fiction, horror, and fantasy, marked by unforgettable characters who plumb the depths of pathos and triumph. In “Life on the Sun,” sacrifice and rebirth are explored in a fantastical desert where future tech and wizardry mingle, as a mystical pharaoh-like figure forces a young rebel fighter to stoically embrace her fate. Children bravely battle to survive an adult-free, post-apocalyptic Earth in “The Big Ba-Ha,” even though they know their demise—hungrily anticipated by the ghoulish creatures that now share their world—is inevitable. In the title story, a macabre fairy tale told by a wisecracking lovesick rat, the Pied Piper exacts revenge on an ogre-enthralled village that’s guilty of the grisly extermination of shape-shifting swans. Cooney’s magical prose elicits laughter even as gruesome scenes induce shudders, and her expert pacing breathlessly buoys the reader to each story’s conclusion. All of these stories could easily serve as the foundation for novels while also working beautifully at their current length. These well-crafted narratives defiantly refuse to fade from memory long after the last word has been read. (July)

Publishers Weekly

07/01/2015
In five beautifully crafted stories, Cooney (Jack O' the Hills) builds imaginary worlds full of flying carpets, fairy-tale characters, and children confronted with a postapocalyptic Earth. In addition, each tale packs in enough plot for a novel, with adventurous characters who brim with wit. In "Life on the Sun" a young woman's fate catches up to her. In the title story, Maurice the rat hires the Pied Piper to help out a swan princess. The marvelous "Martyr's Gem" begins with a marriage and ends with true love. "How the Milkmaid Struck a Bargain" is another fairy tale, this time a play on the Rumpelstiltskin story. Cooney's final piece, "The Big Bah-Ha," shows her virtuosity with language, as she tells of doomed children striking a bargain with the monster who would eat their bones. VERDICT Short stories, especially in the speculative fiction arena, often feature a clever idea and a punchy delivery. It's usually not where you find vivid worldbuilding or immersive storytelling, but this gorgeous new collection reveals that both are possible in the short form.—MM

Library Journal

"Writing without ostentation and featuring characters who may be flippant, terse, or even tongue-tied, Cooney produces memorable prose propelled by extraordinary ideas . . . Faced with such twisted genius, I'll say no more!" ---Locus Magazine Starred Review

From the Publisher

Cooney delivers her award-winning collection of science fiction stories with enthusiasm and engagement. She approaches the stories with little subtlety or nuance, more like a storyteller to a large group than an intimate gathering of friends. Her narration is clear and her characters are well distinguished. Generally, the stories are bold and innovative, and Cooney’s narration reflects those qualities. But for the story “Martyrs Gem,” she adopts a quieter tone that provides a nice contrast. Cooney brings out the rhythm in passages that are more poetry than prose, and her presentation of children’s rhymes is reminiscent of play. Overall, her energy is sustained for the duration of each novella-length story. J.E.M. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2017 - AudioFile