Cherry Crow Children
Four novellas of coiling secrets and dread-filled landscapes
Tulliæn spans a fractured mountaintop, where the locals lie and the tourists come to die. Try the honey.
Briskwater crouches deep in the shadow of a dam wall. Ignore the weight of the water hanging overhead, and the little dead girl wandering the streets. Off with you, while you still can.
In Haverny Wood the birds drink blood, the dogs trade their coughings for corpses, the lost children carve up their bodies to run with the crows, and the townsfolk stitch silence into their spleens. You mustn’t talk so wild.
The desert-locked outpost of Boundary boasts the famed manufacturers of flawless timepieces; those who would learn the trade must offer up their eyes as starting materials. Look to your pride; it will eat you alive.
Sooner or later, in every community, fate demands its due — and the currency is blood.
Awarded:
Best Horror Novella (Aurealis Awards)
Best YA Short Story (Aurealis Awards)
Shortlisted:
– Shirley Jackson Award
– 6 Aurealis Awards
– 5 Ditmar Awards
– Australian Shadows Award
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Kalin’s ability to combine beauty and dread astonishes.
The writing in all of [the stories] is beautiful without weighing the story down with dense prose. When I read my first Deborah Kalin story, I knew this was a collection to look forward to. And I was right. Whether or not you’ve read any Kalin stories before, if you’re at all a fan of fantasy or horror, do yourself a favour and grab a copy of this book.
Kalin has a…talent for beautiful description that delivers tantalising hints of the sinister undercurrent. Although her monsters themselves are truly memorable, often it is the way humans react to their presence that is most horrifying.
All the stories in ‘Cherry Crow Children’ are very strong and well worth reading…However, in my opinion the final novella, ‘Cherry Crow Children of Haverny Wood’, was outstanding…probably one of the best new horror stories I have read for a long time.
All the stories in ‘Cherry Crow Children’ are very strong and well worth reading…However, in my opinion the final novella, ‘Cherry Crow Children of Haverny Wood’, was outstanding…probably one of the best new horror stories I have read for a long time.
Shadows of fairy tale horror lurk beneath this cohesively themed collection of fantasy stories, Deborah Kalin demonstrating her characteristic narrative poise in immersing readers within her Grimm but exquisitely built worlds, then leaving them and protagonists both prey to a dark undertow.
Beautifully written, this haunting collection of four stories is dark and more than a little mesmerising. It’s no surprise this book and its stories garnered so much award attention.
These stories are of endings, and of secrets, and of quests, each situated in isolated and harsh settings that encourage a certain bloodymindedness and limited vision. To go delving in these locales is to risk much….
The settings are engagingly, succinctly drawn, with customs and seasons and economies adding depth to the worlds as the characters navigate the social currents. …The stories draw longer, the worlds deeper and darker; the forest denizens of the eponymous final story are wild and amazing.
As each story unveils its mysteries, as each protagonist pushes the boundaries and pays the price for their investigation, the assured prose is the measured constant.
This twelfth of the Twelve is a high point in a consistently high field.
The settings are engagingly, succinctly drawn, with customs and seasons and economies adding depth to the worlds as the characters navigate the social currents. …The stories draw longer, the worlds deeper and darker; the forest denizens of the eponymous final story are wild and amazing.
As each story unveils its mysteries, as each protagonist pushes the boundaries and pays the price for their investigation, the assured prose is the measured constant.
This twelfth of the Twelve is a high point in a consistently high field.
Kalin is both a serious writer and a serious talent…[It’s] storytelling like a force of nature.
…The result can be alluring, foreboding, unexpected or gruesome, at times achingly tragic, but always faithfully enacted. Kalin’s fantasy settings carry a truth that most real-world fiction fails even to aspire to, let alone attain. This does not make her stories comfortable reads, necessarily, but however bleak at times the subject matter, the richness of Kalin’s prose provides constant succour. Readers may not end up where they’d been hoping, but they’ll be glad to have gone that way.
…Cherry Crow Children taps into a special darkness, Kalin guiding us with no promise of safety through woods fashioned at least in part from our own devisings. Invested, rapt, helpless, we fall prey to the grotesqueries within.
…The result can be alluring, foreboding, unexpected or gruesome, at times achingly tragic, but always faithfully enacted. Kalin’s fantasy settings carry a truth that most real-world fiction fails even to aspire to, let alone attain. This does not make her stories comfortable reads, necessarily, but however bleak at times the subject matter, the richness of Kalin’s prose provides constant succour. Readers may not end up where they’d been hoping, but they’ll be glad to have gone that way.
…Cherry Crow Children taps into a special darkness, Kalin guiding us with no promise of safety through woods fashioned at least in part from our own devisings. Invested, rapt, helpless, we fall prey to the grotesqueries within.
From the coiling stairs and malevolent causeways of Tulliæn to the stark and blood-hungry wilderness of Haverny Wood, Kalin imbues her worlds with such purpose, each tale rich with detail and filled with intent and life, that each setting is a character in itself.
Dark fantasy deeply rooted in landscape, full of secrets and dread. Some have aspects of the Australian landscape, which is always a delight. In each story, the plot arises from the nature of the society, which arises from the nature of the place it has grown up in. The protagonist swims against the tide of conformity but… well, spoilers.
