My Husband Steinn

Novelette by Eleanor Arnason

Signy bought a house in rural Iceland so she could have peace and quiet to work on her novel. But various dead animals show up on her doorstep, courtship gifts from a troll, and she realizes peace is hard to come by. Signy ends up befriending the wife of the unfaithful troll, and is drawn into a meeting with the troll queen regarding Iceland's public works projects driving trolls and elves from their homes.

The best thing about this story is the wry, fairy tale writing style. Especially in a story about women laughing off their men to deal with the very modern problem of habitat conservation. The second best thing is the original bit of Norse mythology Arnason invents about Loki inventing the apple corer.

Although the style had nothing to do with Dunsany, he's the writer I couldn't stop thinking of at the end of the story, with the procession of trolls and other mythological creatures fleeing their homes. Something about the past fleeing from human encroachment and mystery leaving the world. Any comparison to Dunsany is a good thing from me.

3.5 trolls out of 5 enjoy cookies.

The Man Who Bridged the Mist

Novella by Kij Johnson

Construction story turned love story. Kit is the architect sent by the empire to build the first bridge across a corrosive river of some sort of mist dense enough to sail a boat across. Rasali operates the ferry which Kit's bridge will put out of business, if she doesn't die an early death to one of the giant "fish" living in the river first.

More than just romance against an intriguing fantasyish SF background with 19th century-level technology, Johnson makes a mega-construction project interesting without any of the predictable disasters, terrorist plots, or over-the-top human drama. She makes a better story by focusing on just the normal difficulties of large-scale construction, and a quiet character-study of the architect himself.

Lots of obvious thought about how the bridge changes the town and the townspeople illustrates the deeper theme: how the bridge changes Kit himself. By the end of construction, I think he's more capable of happiness than he was before, but he's certainly not on the path he originally imagined for his life.

The story is aptly titled, it's all about Kit, but the rest of the novella: the world around him, the townsfolk, the details of construction, the mystery of the mist and the Big Ones living in it all provide a fun background for a character-study of a mildly-unhappy man who builds big things.

4 Medium-Large Ones out of 5.