Twice Cursed

February 27, 2023
Dark magic runs rampant through this star-studded sequel to O’Regan and Kane’s Cursed anthology. “The Bell” by Joanne Harris makes a fitting opener, warning readers to be careful of acting without knowing what the consequences will be. Some of these 16 tales are direct spins on familiar stories—among them “Snow, Glass, Apples,” Neil Gaman’s take on “Snow White”—while others are entirely new: one of the more surprising is “A Curse Is a Curse” by Helen Grant, which reveals a shocking truth about the Wall that encloses the heroine’s village. Another standout, “Shoes as Red as Blood” by A.C. Wise, examines the brutal fates that often befall women and girls in fairy tales. The members of the support group in M.R. Carey’s “Mr Thirteen” suffer from physical curses, while the characters of Joe Hill’s “Dark Carousel” are haunted by a cycle of violence. A handful of stories take a lighter approach: the circus provides refuge for the cursed in Angela Slatter’s “The Tissot Family Circus,” while the heroine of “St. Diabolo’s Traveling Music Hall” by A.K. Benedict uses curses to aid abused women. The anthology ends on a strong note with L.L. McKinney’s incredibly unsettling “The Music Box.” Fans of eerie fairy tales and dark fantasy won’t want to miss this.

March 1, 2023
This follow-up to O'Regan and Kane's Cursed (2020) shares the same basic premise as the first anthology: it contains a wide array of genre stories dealing with some person or group of people who are, in a word, cursed. The anthology is made up mostly of relatively recent stories, with a few exceptions, such as Neil Gaiman's almost 30-year-old ""Snow White"" retelling, ""Snow, Glass, Apples,"" and Sarah Pinborough's 2009 ""The Confessor's Tale,"" a story previously featured in a Hellraiser-themed anthology by the same editors, explaining the surprising and, to an unknowing reader, jarring appearance of the Cenobites. Overall this is a solid anthology, varying widely in tone and theme from other fairy-tale retellings (including another ""Snow White"") to the fairly humorous, like M.R. Carey's curse-afflicted support group in ""Mr Thirteen,"" to bleaker entries like Adam LG Nevill's grim cycle of bloodthirsty, occult landlordship in ""The Angels of London."" This anthology should more than satisfy established genre fans and general readers alike.

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March 1, 2023

This is a great collection for readers who want to dip their fantasy toes into stories filled with as much dread as wonder. It is a follow-up to Cursed, filled with 16 stories that explore what happens after curses have been flung. Memorable pieces include Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples," telling the Snow White fairy tale from the perspective of the wicked witch, with a reminder that history is written by the victors. "Dark Carousel" by Joe Hill takes youthful hijinks and a haunted merry-go-round and spins them into a curse that follows a man around the world, while "The Tissot Family Circus" by Angela Slatter takes the idea of a haunted circus and transforms it into a story about being saved rather than damned. A wanderer discovers that some sleeping dogs should definitely be left to lie in Joanna Harris's "The Bell." VERDICT Some of the stories merely sidle up to the line between dark fantasy and horror, and some stake their oozing, bleeding hearts with it, but all bring a shiver of fear, dread, or understanding.--Marlene Harris

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