The most affecting of the stories is “Salissay’s Laundries”, a journalistic expose written by reporter Salissay Dimaguiba. The stories in Dark Breakers take place in the same setting: a human world reminiscent of the Gilded Age that overlaps with magical underworlds ruled by fairies and goblins… The first and longest tale, “The Breaker Queen,” is set before Desdemona, and chronicles the romance of artist Elliot Howell – one of Desdemona’s glittering array of friends – and Nyx the Nightwalker, a gentry queen… The story centers around the growing passion between the two, and here the reader sees Cooney’s characteristic masterful blending of emotional resonance and puckish humor, wrapped together with a subplot concerning the deadly political machinations that drench the Valwode… Should the mortal world ever establish diplomatic relations with the fae, Cooney, whose warm writing beautifully merges the otherworldliness and sheer strangeness of fairykind with the rich and familiar emotions of humanity, would make an excellent ambassador… for either side of the line… There are few authors that merrily dance so close to the borders of Fairyland as C.S.E. But let’s quote from one of my favorites: Jeremy Brett at Ancillary Review of Books, who calls it “Strange, beautiful, and dangerous.” Cover by Alyssa Winansĭark Breakers has barely been out a week, and there’s already a bevy of enthusiastic reviews to cherry pick from.

ZZ Claybourne calls it “an art deco mural under the guidance of Galadriel, Zora Neale Hurston and the Brothers Grimm,” and Publishers Weekly proclaims it “Extravagant and gorgeous.”ĭesdemona and the Deep (Tor.com, July 2019). Last week Mythic Delirium Books published her newest book Dark Breakers, a collection of five linked stories - including three never before published - all set in the same world as Desdemona and the Deep. Somewhere in there she also found the time to release 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, containing her 2011 Rhysling Award-winning “The Sea King’s Second Bride.” More recently she published a Tor.com novella ( Desdemona and the Deep, 2019), and in April of this year Solaris releases her long-awaited first novel, Saint Death’s Daughter. Her short fiction has been reprinted in Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year and Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (five times) her novella “The Bone Swans of Amandale” was nominated for a Nebula Award in 2015, and in 2016 she won a World Fantasy Award for her collection Bone Swans. Cooney, Black Gate‘s first Website Editor. It’s been a delight watching the meteoric career of C.S.E. Dark Breakers by CSE Cooney (Mythic Delirium, February 15, 2022).

Desdemona and the Deep by C.S.E. Cooney