Through the Bronze Mirror

While continuing the tradition of Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler, Carma Lynn Park’s debut collection of speculative fiction is a category of its own. In both short story and free verse forms, Park builds worlds in which petticoats co-exist with gene splicing, a space-traveling robot is transformed by a visit to a pre-industrial town festival, and a Medieval-like battle on a spaceship is fueled by caffeine. Dying is never far away in the realms Park creates, but neither is the afterlife; both are equally melancholy and magical, often darkly humorous. Park is in a conversation with her New Weird and slipstream fiction contemporaries, but her rich imagery and deft syntax distinguish her as a unique storyteller with a poet’s voice.