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Jack o' the Hills:
Jack Yap once had his mouth sewn shut for talking too much. His brother Pudding is forced to wear stone shoes lest he wander away from home. Will little obstacles like these keep the boys out of trouble? Not for the twinkling of an eye. There is magic in the hills, shapechangers and monsters, and Jack Yap has a hankering to meet them all and maybe kill a few. What he and Pudding find in the hills, however, changes both their lives, taking them out of the country and into the cruel and wonderful world, where witches and princesses await. Sometimes they are even the same person.
"Stunningly delicious! Cruel, beautiful and irresistible are C.S.E. Cooney's characters and prose. Just when you thought fantasy had devolved into endless repetition, 'Jack o' the Hills' blows us all over the next hill and into the kingdom beyond. C.S.E. Cooney is a rare and exciting new talent. Whatever she offers us next, I'll waiting in line to read." -- Ellen Kushner, author of Thomas the Rhymer
"Cooney spins tales of Grimm horror with elvish gold gleaming in their darkness. They have the vivid colors of an extremely good nightmare, a fertile and vernal radiance all their own: funny and horrifying and moving by turns - and sometimes out of turn. If you've forgotten why you love fantasy, these stories of Jack Yap and Shapechanger Tam will remind you." -- James Enge, author of Blood of Ambrose, nominated for the 2009 World Fantasy Award.
"Stunningly delicious! Cruel, beautiful and irresistible are C.S.E. Cooney's characters and prose. Just when you thought fantasy had devolved into endless repetition, 'Jack o' the Hills' blows us all over the next hill and into the kingdom beyond. C.S.E. Cooney is a rare and exciting new talent. Whatever she offers us next, I'll waiting in line to read." -- Ellen Kushner, author of Thomas the Rhymer
"Cooney spins tales of Grimm horror with elvish gold gleaming in their darkness. They have the vivid colors of an extremely good nightmare, a fertile and vernal radiance all their own: funny and horrifying and moving by turns - and sometimes out of turn. If you've forgotten why you love fantasy, these stories of Jack Yap and Shapechanger Tam will remind you." -- James Enge, author of Blood of Ambrose, nominated for the 2009 World Fantasy Award.
- GenresFantasyFairy Tales
64 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 1, 2011
About the author
C.S.E. Cooney
176 books297 followersC.S.E. Cooney lives and writes in Queens, whose borders are water. She is an audiobook narrator, the singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine, and author of World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories (Mythic Delirium 2015).
Her work includes the novella Desdemona and the Deep (Tor.com 2019), three albums: Alecto! Alecto!, The Headless Bride, and Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir, and a poetry collection: How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes. The latter features her 2011 Rhysling Award-winning “The Sea King’s Second Bride.”
Her short fiction can be found in Ellen Datlow’s Mad Hatters and March Hares: All-New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the Sword and Sonnet anthology, edited by Aidan Doyle, Rachael K Jones, E. Catherine Tobler, Mike Allen’s Clockwork Phoenix 3 and 5, Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018), Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 12, Lightspeed Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, Apex, Uncanny Magazine, Black Gate, Papaveria Press, GigaNotoSaurus, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and elsewhere.
Her work includes the novella Desdemona and the Deep (Tor.com 2019), three albums: Alecto! Alecto!, The Headless Bride, and Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir, and a poetry collection: How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes. The latter features her 2011 Rhysling Award-winning “The Sea King’s Second Bride.”
Her short fiction can be found in Ellen Datlow’s Mad Hatters and March Hares: All-New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the Sword and Sonnet anthology, edited by Aidan Doyle, Rachael K Jones, E. Catherine Tobler, Mike Allen’s Clockwork Phoenix 3 and 5, Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018), Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 12, Lightspeed Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, Apex, Uncanny Magazine, Black Gate, Papaveria Press, GigaNotoSaurus, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and elsewhere.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 14, 2023
I'd never even heard of this author when I picked this up randomly but holy shit it is probably one of the best things I've read all year? A horribly dark, achingly funny, questionably wholesome little novella full of weird eggs and fairy-tale logic and utterly gorgeous sentences. Ugh. I guess I'm adding C.S.E Cooney's entire oeuvre to my tbr pile.
November 27, 2019
Y'all! I am by no means new to C.S.E. Cooney, having read The Witch in the Almond Tree, The Breaker Queen, and The Two Paupers, so I knew what she was capable of, but I wasn't expecting this. Jack O' the Hills is a dark fantasy with an antihero and I couldn't love it more.
Jack Yap, who earned his last name through talking all the time to everything, lives with his marm and older brother Pudding, who has to wear stone shoes (the title of the first story involving these characters). Pudding is humongous, and only really obeys Jack. Marm is... awful. She had sewn Jack's mouth shut years ago, very crudely, and three days later cut his mouth open again, giving him terrible scars.
Stone Shoes opens with Jack unchaining Pudding from his bed, and Marm sending them out to the garden while she goes into town. Of course our heroes disobey their mom and wonder off. Jack hates eggs and destroys every one he comes across, but today he and Pudding encounter a shapeshifter egg, at turns fiery and opalescent, with a beautiful girl inside. Jack is entranced, and when the shapeshifter's mother comes for the egg, he has Pudding stomp her to death.
They return home where their mother is waiting for them, she beats Jack and takes Pudding upstairs to be chained. As Jack is putting up Pudding's stone shoes, Marm catches him trying to hide the egg, knocks him unconscious, and takes it into town to sell. Jack and Pudding set out to retrieve the egg.
The second story, Oubliette's Egg, sees the newly orphaned Jack and Pudding, along with their shapeshifter hatchling, Tam, going to the realm of Leech. We get a glimpse at the titular Oubliette, a witch and a princess, who was cursed to die the night of her wedding. She has managed to kill all her suitors before this happens and has them in a, pardon the pun, hanging garden.
On the way to Leech, Tam begins laying solid gold shapeshifter eggs and then collapses in pain. Jack and Pudding attempt to hide her while they fetch her medical help, but unknown to them, Oubliette and her twin brother, Garotte, are riding out because Oubliette has seen that something powerful is waiting for her out here. Thus it is that she captures Tam, and our antiheroes devise a plan to get her back.
I was heartbroken at the end, only because I thought, "that's the end of my time with these characters!" Both stories were gory and the characters did terrible things , but they were so likable. I even liked Oubliette and Garotte because they were well written.
I own Cooney's Bone Swans and now I cannot wait to dive into it.
Jack Yap, who earned his last name through talking all the time to everything, lives with his marm and older brother Pudding, who has to wear stone shoes (the title of the first story involving these characters). Pudding is humongous, and only really obeys Jack. Marm is... awful. She had sewn Jack's mouth shut years ago, very crudely, and three days later cut his mouth open again, giving him terrible scars.
Stone Shoes opens with Jack unchaining Pudding from his bed, and Marm sending them out to the garden while she goes into town. Of course our heroes disobey their mom and wonder off. Jack hates eggs and destroys every one he comes across, but today he and Pudding encounter a shapeshifter egg, at turns fiery and opalescent, with a beautiful girl inside. Jack is entranced, and when the shapeshifter's mother comes for the egg, he has Pudding stomp her to death.
They return home where their mother is waiting for them, she beats Jack and takes Pudding upstairs to be chained. As Jack is putting up Pudding's stone shoes, Marm catches him trying to hide the egg, knocks him unconscious, and takes it into town to sell. Jack and Pudding set out to retrieve the egg.
The second story, Oubliette's Egg, sees the newly orphaned Jack and Pudding, along with their shapeshifter hatchling, Tam, going to the realm of Leech. We get a glimpse at the titular Oubliette, a witch and a princess, who was cursed to die the night of her wedding. She has managed to kill all her suitors before this happens and has them in a, pardon the pun, hanging garden.
On the way to Leech, Tam begins laying solid gold shapeshifter eggs and then collapses in pain. Jack and Pudding attempt to hide her while they fetch her medical help, but unknown to them, Oubliette and her twin brother, Garotte, are riding out because Oubliette has seen that something powerful is waiting for her out here. Thus it is that she captures Tam, and our antiheroes devise a plan to get her back.
I was heartbroken at the end, only because I thought, "that's the end of my time with these characters!" Both stories were gory and the characters did terrible things , but they were so likable. I even liked Oubliette and Garotte because they were well written.
I own Cooney's Bone Swans and now I cannot wait to dive into it.
January 30, 2019
Beautifully written, but very dark fantasy novella. I look forward to reading more by this author.
April 14, 2011
(Review is from LJ, so if you've read it on LJ, my apologies!)
I adored this novella. How it twisted and turned--like an embryonic skinchanger in its egg. Speaking of, there's one in this story:
He saw inside the skinchanger's egg.
A shadow, a flame, a dark heart beating.
It shifted, it melted, it took a new shape.
A fish, a snake, a bird, a child.
A child. A human child. A girl child, sleeping in a pool of her own black hair, her skin of bright red gold ... One eye of ebony, one of fire. Black lips sucking on a flaming thumb, round limbs bundled to her belly, although a restless foot or fist sometimes jabbed out, distending the oval egg, making it jump and pulse.
Like holding a thunderstorm, thought Jack Yap. Like holding lightning before it is born.
This Jack Yap. He's been abused since he was little, and now he's the picture of a cheerful hoodlum. But he's much more likable (to my mind) than, say, movie!Alex from A Clockwork Orange (have to specify movie having never read the book). Jack Yap is devoted to and protective of his huge and dimwitted brother Pudding, and also of this skinchanger child, once she's born. Admittedly, there's mayhem and murder involved in being devoted to that pair, and, well, the skinchanger's nature, like the scorpion's, is one that might make your average person give her wide berth but--oh, I just loved this trio.
And the humor! The humor. How about the royal twins, wicked Princess Oubliette and her loathsome brother Prince Garotte? Princess Oubliette received fairy blessings at her birth:
"Princess Oubliette," Ginny Rum asserted, "You have been blessed today with Wit, Beauty, a Knack with Dumb Animals, the Voice of a Seraph, Healthy Bowels, Hair Thick as Honey, Self-Flossing Teeth, a Willowy Frame, the Grace of a Harem Dancer, a Laugh Like a Silver Bell, a Smile as Sweet as Crème Brûlée, Cunning Ways, Cosmic Sorceries, Upwards Ambition, and Dominance over the Males of Your Species. But all this will avail you naught. For here I stand to bless you with the hour of your death."
She's got a lot going for her, right?
Now, I haven't quoted you the bludgeoning or the cannibalism, and they are in the story too. But the really bad guys get theirs, and when it's your friends you tend to forgive minor bad habits like soul sucking and a taste for human flesh, no?
I adored this novella. How it twisted and turned--like an embryonic skinchanger in its egg. Speaking of, there's one in this story:
He saw inside the skinchanger's egg.
A shadow, a flame, a dark heart beating.
It shifted, it melted, it took a new shape.
A fish, a snake, a bird, a child.
A child. A human child. A girl child, sleeping in a pool of her own black hair, her skin of bright red gold ... One eye of ebony, one of fire. Black lips sucking on a flaming thumb, round limbs bundled to her belly, although a restless foot or fist sometimes jabbed out, distending the oval egg, making it jump and pulse.
Like holding a thunderstorm, thought Jack Yap. Like holding lightning before it is born.
This Jack Yap. He's been abused since he was little, and now he's the picture of a cheerful hoodlum. But he's much more likable (to my mind) than, say, movie!Alex from A Clockwork Orange (have to specify movie having never read the book). Jack Yap is devoted to and protective of his huge and dimwitted brother Pudding, and also of this skinchanger child, once she's born. Admittedly, there's mayhem and murder involved in being devoted to that pair, and, well, the skinchanger's nature, like the scorpion's, is one that might make your average person give her wide berth but--oh, I just loved this trio.
And the humor! The humor. How about the royal twins, wicked Princess Oubliette and her loathsome brother Prince Garotte? Princess Oubliette received fairy blessings at her birth:
"Princess Oubliette," Ginny Rum asserted, "You have been blessed today with Wit, Beauty, a Knack with Dumb Animals, the Voice of a Seraph, Healthy Bowels, Hair Thick as Honey, Self-Flossing Teeth, a Willowy Frame, the Grace of a Harem Dancer, a Laugh Like a Silver Bell, a Smile as Sweet as Crème Brûlée, Cunning Ways, Cosmic Sorceries, Upwards Ambition, and Dominance over the Males of Your Species. But all this will avail you naught. For here I stand to bless you with the hour of your death."
She's got a lot going for her, right?
Now, I haven't quoted you the bludgeoning or the cannibalism, and they are in the story too. But the really bad guys get theirs, and when it's your friends you tend to forgive minor bad habits like soul sucking and a taste for human flesh, no?
July 22, 2012
A master story teller! At first, I was entranced by her descriptions. Then, I was sickened by the violence and gruesomeness of the tale. Last of all, I was absolutely awed by her use of so very many fairy tales, all wound and twisted into one great yarn! Though I could have done with a little less goriness, it was one of the most amazing stories I've read in a long time.
January 4, 2017
C.S.E. Cooney, on the basis of several short stories, has become my currently favourite fantasy author. In this short tale, her sparkling language and wild inventiveness are on display; as usual, märchen and folk-legend motifs are tangled throughout. Deliciously cruel and only perhaps a slight smidgen too whimsical in places for me-but still recommended.
June 6, 2012
This book is exquisite. Cooney's writing is hungry, fierce, and sharp-toothed. This is a writer who does not re-tell fairytales so much as create them from whole cloth, shaping worlds brimming with unique magic and compelling -- in the most literal sense -- characters.
April 25, 2012
This is more like a 4.5...such a well-done fairytale/fable feel, and the writing really gets under your skin (or it got under mine).
May 30, 2012
You can check out my review of C.S.E. Cooney's excellent Jack o' the Hills at my website.
July 19, 2016
Wonderful tale! Dark, gory and beautiful.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews