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this is a rewriting of a book from 1912 in a more modern language and format. i've never read the original, but this was very well written. the character voice came through strongly. the world was fascinating, strange and unholy and melancholy. the plot was bare bones, a man goes to rescue a woman and bring her back home with him, more of a travelogue through a bizarre hell than anything else. it reminded me of a hieronymus bosch painting. the main issue i had was the characters and their relationship. the core of the book is a romance, a time-spanning universe-breaking one, and yet i was really never clear on whether the characters actually liked each other. they said they did. they proclaimed their undying love every 500 words or so. but there was no intimacy or closeness that felt genuine and not like a projection of some other ideal. i mostly read this because i want to read several other things set in the same universe, and i'm glad i read it. i wouldn't read it again, but i did enjoy it, and i look forward to exploring more of this world in other stories.

4.5 stars rounded up i liked this a lot! themes of melancholy and surrealism, seeking and lacking human connection, a lot of it felt like murakami if murakami wasn't a misogynist and i actually liked him. the focus on surreal and lonely natural wonder made me want to read more finnish literature. this anthology was published by Cheeky Frawg, the publishing house of Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, and i can see why.

Hairball by Carita Forsgren - 4/5 weird gross and poignant, a hairball from the drain comes to life

The Horseshoe Nail by Mari Saario- 2/5 trite and kinda boring, a girl and a magic forge

Not Before Sundown by Johanna Sinisalo- 5/5 delightful, a lovesick artist discovers a baby troll. an excerpt of the novel Troll: A Love Story, which i added to my to-read list

Elegy for a Young Elk by Hannu Rajaniemi - 5/5 a virus has corrupted technology, and a survivalist hunter in the taiga deals with the quantum avatar of his ex-wife. beautiful, evocative, melancholy. made me excited to read anything else by Hannu Rajaniemi

White Threads by Anne Leinonen- 4/5 a woman wakes up with no memory but the ability to manipulate chance, cute and it had a cute cat in it so that automatically bumps it up a star

The Laughing Doll by Marko Hautala - 1/5 could not tell you what this was about, did not finish. it read like some creepypasta redditor's attempt at Serious Writing. something about an affair and a haunted doll.

Delina by Maarit Verronen - 4/5 a man returns to a country he once visited and reconnects with several versions of a woman he once knew, melancholy and strange

Chronicles of a State by Olli Jalonen - 1/5 a politician chronicles the downfall of a state following a Chernobyl-like event. did not finish, could not follow what was going on, the prose is hard to parse- sentences didn't make clear sense to me. maybe an issue with translation? or maybe just the writing, idk.

Watcher by Leena Likitalo - 3/5 hard to summarize, there are rodents and there are butterflies stuck in a cycle on a hellish plane of existence. reminded me of a Bosch painting or something, odd and dark but pretty

The Border Incident by Tuomas Kilpi - 3/5 a world where everything is aggressively conformist, but in a funny way. there's the least understandable scene break i have ever encountered in this story. 90% of the story is bizarre and funny and absurd, and then there is a break and a completely unrelated scene of about 400 words that does not connect at all, and then the story ends. i am baffled. in the author's blurb it notes the author has a phd in theoretical philosophy. that sounds about right.

Ospreys by Tiina Raevaara - 5/5 an older man returns year after year to watch a pair of ospreys come make their nest in a swamp. really beautiful, read more like a prose poem than a story.

The Garden by Jyrki Vainonen - 3/5 a strange plant causes havoc and transformation in a family's life, creepy and fun, can definitely see the vandermeer here

The Gift Boy by Sari Peltoniemi - 4/5 a jealous and posessive witch receives the gift of a young boy sent to be her lover. not a nice story but an interesting one.

A Heart Clothed in Black by Keena Krohn - 4/5 a man working in a publishing house contemplates the material he is assigned to read. this was not speculative fiction in any way that i could see? this was just literary fiction. but i liked it, even if it was dreary. it's an excerpt from a longer novel so maybe the novel gets more spec fic later on.

Those Were The Days by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen - 3/5 amidst the fragmentation of time, a man and his wife realize they are living 7 distinct separate timelines together. deeply unlikable people being deeply in love- can see why Wuthering Heights got namechecked.