March is here and that means a new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction! There are stories both old and new this issue, and they offer a good mix of the genres. This issue is stuffed with everything from whispering boils and dragons composed of music to a hell-bound train and religious gargoyles.

Daniel Abraham’s “The Curandero and the Swede: A Tale from the 1001 American Nights” is, as the title implies, a story within a story within a story, and ends with another story yet to be told. Much like an intricate pattern, every thread leads somewhere new, yet is still connected to the whole. Told as a meandering lesson on the importance of stories in our history, both personal and cultural, it unfolds gently, with a homespun exaggeration that serves to coat things in a fairytale gloss. Abraham prevents this from drifting too far into the realm of fantasy with careful and repeated historical benchmarks—the Long Walk, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the Six Day War—that serve to anchor his multilayered story in time, if not in place. Despite this, the continued digression, in the hands of a lesser writer, would have been an unwieldy plot device. Luckily, Abraham seems to know his business, and “The Curandero and the Swede” is a strong, highly entertaining story of love, loss, redemption, and history.

“The Unstrung Zither” by Yoon Ha Lee is a slow-boil story of music and assassination. A game within a game decides the fate of an empire, with the careful application of music serving to illuminate the pieces and moves. A leisurely story, it moves along to a particularly gentle rhythm before rising to a sudden and crashing climax. It tends towards the too-leisurely in places, dragging considerably in the beginning, but it is nonetheless a well-crafted piece. There’s an ambiguity to both the plot and the characters that may put some readers off, but the effort Lee puts into “The Unstrung Zither” make it like a particularly creative piece of music…to the taste of some, but not others, but still recognizably superior to others of its kind.

Robert Bloch’s “That Hell-Bound Train” is an oldie but a goodie. It’s been reprinted numerous times and won a Hugo in 1959, and with good reason. This is one of Bloch’s better stories, employing both his wit and creativity in creating devilish traps for his characters to fall in, to full effect. A twist on the Faustian bargain, the story rumbles along much like the eponymous train, its end-station preordained, but with a sudden, last minute shift in tracks that takes it in an unexpected direction. The main character is an everyman, an average loser, and his plight is one even the most jaded reader can sympathize with. Bloch was the master of the twist ending, and it shows here, as he crafts a climax that lasts an eternity. As with other stories by Bloch, “That Hell-Bound Train” has been reprinted so many times that you either like it or not. It’s a classic of fantastic short fiction, and deservedly so.

“Quickstone” by Marc Laidlaw is the latest in a series of stories about the bard Gorlen and his singularly unpleasant hand. Laidlaw has an engaging, old-fashioned style that is reminiscent of the more literate fantasy of the pulps. “Quickstone” is a fast-paced story, moving quickly towards a climax that sets the stage for the next in the series. Indeed, it is a bit too quick, doing altogether too little to illuminate the reader as to Gorlen’s history, or to show the world he inhabitants in any detail, and too much to keep things moving double-time. However, what tidbits Laidlaw does drop are intriguing and serve to hint to the reader that maybe they really should track down Gorlen’s other appearances and see what there is to see. While the story only has a fleeting impact, it is nonetheless entertaining and well written.

“Shadow-Below” by Robert Reed deals with the effect of a future that advances ever quicker on a people who want no part of it, and what lengths some will go to in order to see that their wishes are respected. Reed deftly interweaves past and present in order to move the story forward, and he teases the reader with glimpses of a larger, more far-reaching canvas. The world this piece inhabits is big, much bigger than the reconstructed and repaired wilderness that is the backdrop of the story, and Reed never lets us forget that. In a very real sense, “Shadow-Below” has legs, and where it takes the reader isn’t where they expect. The characters, especially the titular individual, are all well developed, with a web of connected, yet conflicting motivations that only add to the sense of this being a piece of a much larger puzzle. Too, the science-fiction elements are subtle, and their application enhances the sense the reader gets of the characters being away from civilization and in the wilderness. If Reed’s story has a flaw, it is that the climax leaves the reader feeling slightly unfulfilled. A subplot or two is left dangling, and while this in no great sin considering this is Reed’s fifth tale set in this particular universe, it does make the ending feel awkward. Still, on the whole, “Shadow-Below” is a satisfying entry, and one that provides something for the reader to sink their teeth into.