PUBLISHERS WEEKLY *Starred Review*: "Alexa's impressive debut collection covers a wide variety of subgenres, among which she switches with ease. The highlight is the slightly absurdist "Shades of White and Road," which develops the whimsy of a magic kingdom and talking objects into something touching and beautiful. Other standouts include the melancholy, postapocalyptic "A Taste of Snow," the fun space frontier tale "The Clone Wrangler's Bride" and the clockwork-and-alchemy fantasy "The Butterfly Assassins," which deftly mixes a murder mystery, court intrigue and a stutterer's plight in a world where magic requires verbal incantations. "Paperheart," focusing on the last dragon, and "They Shall Be as They Know," an eschatological zombie story, nicely revisit familiar themes. The poems are not as strong as the fiction but they show decent range. Alexa's voice is a welcome new addition to genre fiction." A girl and her mandroid wander the Twelve Domed Cities of Mars, looking for a place to call home... A young man in the age of practical alchemy eschews incantations he can't utter for fantastic creatures built of cogs and springs... A prehistoric inventor living at the cusp of change finds an ancient winged carcass at the edge of a melting glacier, and has the inspiration of a lifetime... Over two dozen short speculative works from the pages of Fantasy Magazine, ChiZine, Abyss & Apex, Space & Time Magazine and more, including SpaceWesterns.com's most-read story of all time, "The Clone Wrangler's Bride" and its sequel, "Droidtown Blues." PLUS new stories never before published, collected here for the first time.
