Review: "The Overneath" by Peter S. Beagle

It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise in “The Overneath” ($15.95, Tachyon Publications), Peter S. Beagle writes about a few unicorns. But there are a few other nice surprises in this short story collection, as well.

We’ll get the familiar ground out of the way first. Of the 13 stories in the book, three deal with unicorns of various stripes, and two focus on his bumbling magician Schmendrick.

First up is “The Green-Eyed Boy,” which tells the tale of how Schmendrick came to be apprenticed to the wizard Nikos prior to Beagle’s most well-known tale, “The Last Unicorn.” It’s a fun and funny story that should please fans of that book. Though less funny, the same could be said of “Schmendrick Alone,” in which we learn about the first time that the wizard summoned a demon that he couldn’t control.

Review: "The Golem and the Jinni" by Helene Wecker

In some ways, Chava and Ahmad, the main characters in Helene Wecker’s “The Golem and the Jinni” ($15.99, Harper Perennial), are not all that different from the thousands of immigrants that surround them in turn-of-the-century New York. As the title tells us, though, they’re far from the average immigrant.

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay. She traveled to New York from Poland with her would-be husband, a ne’er-do-well merchant who, unable and unwilling to find a real-world woman, enlisted the help of a disgraced rabbi who doesn’t mind meddling in the dark arts for the right price. Unlike most golems, which are little more than mindless slaves, Chava’s master wanted her to have intelligence and curiosity. She was packed away on a ship to be awakened when they arrived in New York. Unable to wait, her master awakens her on the voyage, then dies, leaving her rudderless, a babe in a new world.