Shoggoths in bloom

Many novelists translate badly to short form, but Hugo award-winner Bear (Range of Ghosts) loses none of her depth or emotional power in this anthology of fierce, lonely tales about sacrifice, bravery, and loss. Missteps-her use of real historical figures in "Sonny Liston Takes the Fall" seems to imply that Muhammad Ali owed his career to another boxer's mystical sacrifice-are rare. Bear at her best is magical, as in "The Girl Who Sang Rose Madder," in which a former rock star has to choose between death as an artist and immortality as an undead hack musician. Other standouts include the title story, about a black professor in the 1930s who finds kinship with the Lovecraftian monsters he studies, and "The Cold Blacksmith," a bittersweet fairy tale about what it takes to mend a heart. As in her novels, Bear's world-building is absorbingly rich and strange, full of blue parrot cats, ruthless Mongol-ish princesses, and modern alleyways haunted by cockatrices and harpies, and adventurous readers will find her storytelling absolutely irresistible. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.