I confess, I didn't get much further than Yoon Ha Lee's name when I decided to purchase this, so I didn't realize these stories would be quite SO short. There were so many lovely ideas and glimmers and moments here, but mostly this made me thirsty for longer works from Lee.

Despite the small size of this book, I found this most rewarding when I only dipped in to read a handful of stories at a time. ( )

I didn't know I was a fan of flash fiction until I read this book. Turns out I am a fan if it's done right. These tiny little stories were absolutely lovely. I read a few in a row but then realized I enjoyed them much more one at a time. I would read one before bed each night. It also turned me into a Yoon Ha Lee fan that has exploded my TBR in a wonderful way! I also think I will return to this often for little bite sized pieces of happiness. ( )

Lee has penned in this tiny tome a collection of fantastical, evocative and extremely short stories. All tales are at maximum 3 or 4 pages long, so it's a great little book for picking up while waiting for your bread to toast or for the bus. With so little context and substance to work with I'm not sure I understood the meaning or message of every tale, but the writing is indeed lovely. I originally ordered this for my pre-teen daughter, who has previously enjoyed other works by Lee. I didn't notice that the target audience was adults until it arrived, and I decided to read it myself. It could still be read and enjoyed by older children and teens, but with minimal story-building and abrupt and frequent transitions, the appeal factors may not be as strong. ( )

The Fox’s Tower & Other Tales is a collection of beautifully elegant flash fiction stories. Each of these stories can be read in less than five minutes, and the majority have the feel of a fairy tale, even if they are not straight forward retellings.

While the formats are very different, the quality of the stories reminds me of Valente’s In the Night Garden for the gorgeous prose and the female characters who reside outside of their normal fairy tale positions. There were also a number of stories with queer characters, which even include some with nonbinary characters.

If you want to get a feel for the sort of stories offered in this collection, the vast majority of these forty tales are available for free on the author’s website. I would particularly recommend “The Virtues of Magpies,” about a community with some trickster magpies who prove helpful in the end, and “The Youngest Fox,” the story of an nontraditional shape shifting fox who prefers science to seduction.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page. ( )

Honestly, I'm not big on flash fiction - I'm only just learning to love short stories, and I still complain that I want every novella to be a novel. But Yoon Ha Lee won me over with sheer beauty of prose and wealth of imagery, ideas coming thick and fast in a torrent of wild imagination.

Absolutely delectable for those days when you really do only have 5 minutes to read, and need something that can whisk you off to another world in that time.

Full review. ( )