The Blood Year Daughter

Silverman’s striking debut brings together 12 fairy tale–inflected horror stories that center women and girls who survive, transform, and protect themselves in worlds shaped by violence and desire. In the title story, a frail young woman born during a devastating plague struggles to define herself beside her radiant older sister, whose life seems untouched by suffering. “All Hail the Boy King” also deals with plague; after all adults are wiped out by illness, children replicate the cruelties of the old world. The narrator of “Four Husbands” attempts to fashion ideal husbands for herself from feathers, stone, air, and silk, only to find each creation lacking in ways both intimate and uncanny. “Justisss” traces the aftermath of a brutal assault as the tale’s traumatized heroine finds refuge with an ancient crone whose closest companions are snakes. Throughout, Silverman’s prose is spare yet ferocious, favoring sharp imagery, slippery folktale logic, and emotional precision over explanation, and allowing horror and tenderness to coexist in the same breath. It’s a dark delight. (Apr.)