Ada Hoffmann is probably best known for their space opera trilogy that started with The Outside in 2019, but they have been publishing short fiction and poetry in various venues for well more than a decade. In December 2023, Apex Books published Resurrections, a collection of their work. It shows a wide range of subject matter, themes and topics; nearly all of the pieces are interesting and engaging, and some of them are breathtakingly gorgeous and moving.
Fans of The Outside trilogy will be glad to see two pieces from that setting in Resurrections. “Melting Like Metal” is told from the point of view of Enga, one of the angels who hunt heretics to enforce the will of the Gods (artificial intelligences who have taken control over humanity); other angels view Enga as somewhat defective herself, and she’s frustrated by how she’s treated. In “Minor Heresies” we hear from Mimoru, a modified human who is also seen as defective because of going into accounting instead of the intended/designed spy profession; we also get some input from aliens who exist in this universe and try to coexist on the fringes of the human/angel/AI theocracy. Both of these stories expand the Outside setting in interesting ways, and I really enjoyed the happy ending in one of these stories.
Along with the science fiction stories I expected here, and the fun steampunk fossil-hunt excursion of “The Scrape of Tooth and Bone”, the collection also contains some really satisfying fantasy stories. The first in the collection is “Variations on a Theme from Turandot”, a dreamy telling, retelling, and more retellings of the opera, mostly from the viewpoint of slave-girl Liù, who realizes she is trapped in a tragedy and keeps trying to change the ending. I loved this.
“A Spell to Retrieve Your Lover from the Bottom of the Sea” is also about alternative endings, exploring how a woman can try to save someone who may not think rescue is possible or even desirable, or she can choose another path. “The Herdsman of the Dead” rolls this in another direction, with a woman making dangerous choices to help someone else along their way.
“Five Songs and a River” concerns a stream-dweller who finds the courage to swim to the sea, trying along the way to figure out who she is and what she wants. “Fairest of All” starts out as a seemingly traditional sort of fairy tale, with people who think they’re changelings having unhappy adventures in fairy kingdoms, with the increasingly vital help of an adorable otter with their own problems.
One of the biggest themes explored in Resurrections is people who are viewed as deficient or “other” in some way by society who are finding their own ways to survive and thrive, either working within communities or striking out in new directions. That’s no surprise, given that The Outside trilogy also addressed this topic in major ways, but it’s very interesting to see this approached from different angles and in different styles and genres. For the most part, it’s a very hopeful collection.
I didn’t love all the poetry scattered throughout this collection, but some of it was really amazing. I think all but one of the poems are free verse, but they are not any less effective for not obeying any constraints of meter or rhyme. “The Giantess’ Dream”, “Rabbit Pulls a Magician Out of Her Hat”, and “Prayer: A Cautionary Tale” were all disturbing, but certainly evocative.
One of the loveliest poems is “Snowflake” – describing how something tiny can matter and lead to great changes.
…But you are holding out your hand,
and I am here, for now.
And if you hold me I will hold you,
for as long as we can bear the weight of
hope,
of fearful tenderness, of snow.
Many of the poems act as responses or reflections to the preceding stories. “Bluebells” is the one metered and rhyming poem that I spotted, a villanelle following the story “As Hollow As A Heart,” which is a sort of Bluebeard riff in which a lover stays although he knows he’ll be killed someday.
“Dream Logic” is a response, not to one of Hoffmann’s stories, but to Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven. Each of the four sections focuses on a dream-symbology element, as the effective dreamer (unnamed in the poem) resists the manipulations of psychiatrist Haber. This is impressively well executed.
The last piece in Resurrections is a novelette co-authored with Merc Fenn Wolfmoor and is part of MFW’s Sun Lords of the Principality series, but it has a lot of resonance with elements from The Outside setting. “I Sing Against the Silent Sun” is one of the best works in this collection; I remembered thinking it was great when I heard it on Lightspeed‘s podcast in 2018, but it really rewards a slow, careful rereading in text, too. It’s about a poet resisting the Gray Sun, a god of silence, with the help of a warlord who loves the poet, and a smart ship who is the poet’s best friend. The prose is punctuated by beautiful, stirring poetry, and this is one of the cases where the poems included in the story help the reader believe that a wordsmith could really change the path of history.
Content warnings: Violence, references to torture and deaths, discrimination (portrayed negatively) against non-neurotypical and nonbinary people.
Disclaimers: I received a free review copy of the ebook.
