The Fox's Tower and Other Tales: A Collection of Magical Short Stories

by Yoon Ha Lee

Overview

“Locus Award winner Lee (Phoenix Extravagant) takes on the folktale form in a collection of 25 gorgeous, magical stories, tiny jewels of worldbuilding that tap into mythic themes to feel somehow both ancient and delightfully fresh… The result is breathtaking in its playful grace." —Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review

Enter a world of magic and myth, where foxes fall in love and robots build their own dragons. In The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales, New York Times bestselling author Yoon Ha Lee crafts together short and moving stories of love, adventure, magic, and nature. With poetic language and intricate world building, readers will be whisked away to a different adventure with every new story. Full of fascinating creatures and LGBT+ romances, this flash fiction collection combines the classic with the contemporary in Yoon’s captivating style.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524868130
Publisher:	Andrews McMeel Publishing
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	516,507
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

A Korean-American sf/f writer who received a B.A. in math from Cornell University and an M.A. in math education from Stanford University, Yoon finds it a source of continual delight that math can be mined for story ideas. Yoon’s novel Ninefox Gambit won the Locus Award for best first novel, and was a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and Clarke awards; its sequels, Raven Stratagem and Revenant Gun, were also Hugo finalists. His middle grade space opera Dragon Pearl won the Locus Award for best YA novel and was a New York Times bestseller. Yoon’s short fiction has appeared in publications such as F&SF, Tor.com, and Clarkesworld Magazine, as well as several year’s best anthologies.

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/23/2021

Locus Award winner Lee (Phoenix Extravagant) takes on the folktale form in a collection of 25 gorgeous, magical stories, tiny jewels of worldbuilding that tap into mythic themes to feel somehow both ancient and delightfully fresh. Each story stands complete on its own, though a few characterizations recur, among them foxes who play tricks on humans and the powerful figure known as the Queen of the Birds. Several pieces point toward gentle lessons: a princess learns her true treasure is that which she’s had all along in “A Single Pebble,” while “The Pale Queen’s Sister” imparts that friendship cannot be bought, but must be asked for. Others, like “Moonwander,” evoke the genre of explanatory myth. Yet others are pure whimsy: robots build a dragon in “The Dragon Festival,” a piano traps the magic of unicorns in “The Cursed Piano,” and a siren lures a sailor to death to steal his teeth in “The Mermaid’s Teeth.” Lee’s gently inclusive worlds often feature LGBTQ characters, as in “Tiger Wives,” about a general hoping to catch herself a tiger wife, and “The Virtues of Magpies,” about a nonbinary questing youth. Throughout, Lee conjures universal expressions of forest, sea, and kingdom that let the reader imagine that all the tales are of one fairy tale world outside of time and space. The result is breathtaking in its playful grace. Agent: Seth Fishman, the Gernert Company. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly