Real Sugar Is Hard to Find

by Sim Kern

Overview

Real Sugar is Hard to Find is a collection of stories for reluctant witches, sugar smugglers, and soil thieves⁠-exploring the intersections of deep-rooted and timely issues such as climate change, reproductive justice, queer identities, and family trauma. Whether fantasy, science fiction, or terrifyingly close-to-home, the worlds of these stories are inhabited by flawed characters whose lives are profoundly impacted by climate change and environmental degradation. Arranged in a progression from dystopian to utopian worlds, the stories chart a path from climate despair towards resilience and revolutionary optimism. Even in the bleakest of futures, however, Kern offers reasons to hope, connect, and keep fighting for a better world. Like Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners or Karen Russell's Vampires in the Lemon Grove, Kern's stories are unflinching, intimate explorations of trauma and our deepest fears, rendered irresistible through the infusion of fantastic speculative elements and a dark sense of humor.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781958121054
Publisher:	Android Press
Publication date:	08/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	188
File size:	4 MB

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/13/2022

Climate change, reproductive freedom, parenthood, and queer love resonate throughout these 11 powerhouse stories from Kern (Depart, Depart!). A woman forced to carry a doomed pregnancy to term in a near-future dystopia where plants are scarce and “reproductive crimes” are harshly punished risks arrest to cultivate abortifacient plants in the furious, gorgeous “The Propagator.” The bittersweet title story sees a quest for rare cake ingredients sending the privileged 17-year-old protagonist and his mother far from the domed community that protects them from Earth’s ravaged atmosphere and into the heart of a crime syndicate. The pregnant protagonist of the sweet, thoughtful “The New Nomad,” set on a colonized planet spinning out of orbit, struggles with the ethics of bringing life into a doomed world. Kern plays with genre in “Unwhole,” which delivers visceral postpartum body horror, and “Sister, Fly or Die,” a madcap urban fantasy about a pair of magical best friends who join a group of ecoterrorists to save their enchanted forest home. The lovely, optimistic “The Lost Roads” sends things out on a hopeful note, imagining what it would take to abolish roads and turn pavement back into paradise. Kern is a master at creating worlds that feel vast and lived-in with very few words, as well as balancing pathos with wry humor. The result is a searing, urgent, but still achingly tender work that will wow any reader of speculative fiction. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly