by A. G. Slatter
688pp (Trade Paperback)
My Rating: 9/10
LibraryThing Rating: 5/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.49/5
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If you’ve been reading this blog for some time, you’ve probably noticed I read and review novels far more than short fiction. In general, I prefer lengthier stories with plenty of space for delving into character and themes, and even if I start out enthusiastic about the concept of a book of short stories or its author(s), it’s rare for me to actually finish one. After reading the first few tales, I usually end up wishing for something I can really immerse myself in for some time and turn to a longer story with more room for development.
But every once in a while, I come across an author whose style and approach to short fiction just works for me, showing the beauty that can be found in brevity. The most notable example is Patricia A. McKillip, particularly her gorgeous book Wonders of the Invisible World (and her fantastic story “The Gorgon in the Cupboard,” which I discovered in Dreams of Distant Shores). I’d also cite The Best of Nancy Kress, Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson, The Oracle Lips by Storm Constantine, and The Tangleroot Palace by Marjorie Liu as collections that have worked for me—and now, I’m adding The Sourdough Compendium: Dark and Dangerous Fairy Tales by A. G. Slatter to that list.
Dark fairy tales have always been a favorite of mine, and I’d heard such wonderful things about A. G. Slatter’s Sourdough stories (particularly from Dina of SFF Book Reviews, who enthused about her subversive fairy tales and “way with words that will make anyone jealous” when sharing about some favorite underrated female authors for Women in SF&F Month 2016). Even though some novels set in the Sourdough universe have been published over the last few years, I found myself drawn more to the short stories as a starting point for some reason, but these collections all appeared to be out of print when I sought them out.
Fortunately, they were reprinted in The Sourdough Compendium earlier this year. Containing nearly 700 pages with a total of 41 short stories, it has the three previously published collections in chronological order: The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, Sourdough and Other Stories, and The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales. Given its massive size, I thought I’d probably read it in chunks, taking a break between stories or maybe between each individual collection, but instead, I read the entire volume from start to finish without pausing to read another book. I absolutely loved The Sourdough Compendium and am now trying to decide which related novel or novella to read next. (I currently have my eye on A Forest, Darkly; Of Sorrow and Such; or The Path of Thorns, as well as Our Lady of Battles, which is coming out in February 2027.)
These stories drew me in with their strong, intriguing openings and beautifully vivid prose embellished with rich vocabulary. The more I read, the more I appreciated the variety of different stories that were excellent on their own but also built on each other. There were characters and threads that ran through all three volumes, making them perfect to read together in chronological order. Each story was connected to at least one other in some way, and part of the fun was looking for these links between them, some of which were only briefly mentioned. This is a book that benefits from a careful reading to get the most out of it, and I read all of its stories without pause in part because I feared I’d forget some of these smaller details that pulled them more closely together if too much time had passed.
While there are some broad similarities that repeat themselves—like stories with witches and vengeance, stories that show the horrors of patriarchal societies, and stories with women practicing crafts and skills that are important to the tale and/or intertwined with magic, such as baking, sewing, building coffins, making candles, and copying manuscripts—they’re unique. Main characters range from villainous to heroic, and there’s variety in these tales that keeps them from feeling repetitive or like some are retreading the same ground. These also largely feel like original stories: though there are plenty of nods to other fairy tales, the majority of these ultimately seem familiar yet new rather than being obvious retellings. The wonderful “Little Radish” is a notable exception as a reworking of Rapunzel written to give the character more agency, but many of these tell a story that might not be the one you’d expect. For example, “Sister, Sister” glosses over the momentous events involving the main character having wed a lost prince she freed from a wolf trap, instead showing how the common fairytale ending of marrying royalty as a reward for good deeds is no basis for a lasting relationship—though that’s just a small part of what this tale is about.
It’s difficult to single out a few stories to discuss since I have about a dozen favorites and don’t want to ruin the fun of discovering how they unravel when so many had compelling openings that didn’t reveal all immediately. I particularly loved how this was handled in “The Night Stair,” which felt very familiar with the main character wanting to be chosen from an assembly of girls. Yet there was also a sense of foreboding as it soon became clear that this wasn’t an especially desirable fate despite her wishing to be selected, and it doesn’t immediately reveal the specifics about who Our Lady is, or why she wants a girl resembling herself. I enjoyed how A. G. Slatter wove this tale: from learning about the characters involved to observing their interactions to seeing how the protagonist cleverly went after her goals.
Most of my favorite stories that stand well on their own (including “The Night Stair”) are in the World Fantasy Award–winning The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings. (Both of the other collections were finalists for this award.) Even so, the first collection has a lot of cohesiveness with a character appearing in several stories and the recurrence of a society serving as a refuge for women of all ages, particularly known for its order of wandering scribes. Though not all of its stories are closely connected or in linear order, this singular volume has a satisfying ending that calls back to the beginning of the collection.
Sourdough and Other Stories seemed less cohesive throughout in comparison to the other two collections, perhaps due to being the first of the three to be published. It’s still a wonderful book with stories I loved (especially “Sourdough” and “Sister, Sister”), but it feels a bit more loosely connected until it brings together a bunch of different characters introduced earlier as it nears the end. Even then, the final story is more a sequel to one of the other stories than one that feels like a conclusion to the collection itself, but this also starts to feel like a bit of a family saga from the end of this book into the next. Some of these later stories include tales linked by mothers and daughters, and The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales includes characters related to those. The third book almost feels like a novel since most of its stories follow characters introduced in the title story, and the final story also comes around full circle with a resolution for a character and plot introduced in the second of these 41 stories who becomes prominent in this final volume.
As with any short story collection, there were some stories I liked more than others, but I enjoyed all of them to some extent. I found that I often appreciated the ones I didn’t find quite as engaging more later, once I had a better idea of how they fit into the overall picture. The biggest problem I had with this book was a technical issue that could be fixed in the future: I noticed an increasing number of typos and missing words the further I got into it, especially in the third volume, which also had a continuity error regarding the type of berries picked.
However, The Sourdough Compendium is an impressive collection, particularly due to its gorgeous prose and connections between stories that appeal to me as a reader. A. G. Slatter’s deep love for fairy tales and understanding of what makes them work is powerful when combined with her storytelling finesse and creativity, making this a book that lingers long after its completion.
My Rating: 9/10
Where I got my reading copy: Finished copy from the publisher.
Read “The Long and the Short of It” by A. G. Slatter (Women in SF&F Month 2025 guest post on her approach to writing stories of differing lengths)
