A Universe of Wishes: A We Need Diverse Books Fantasy Anthology ed. by Dhonielle Clayton (review)

Fifteen YA authors contribute to this collection of short stories featuring diverse sets of characters and centered on the theme of wishes. Most stories fall into fantasy fare, with a few sci-fi tales and a touch of magical realism to round out the collection, and there’s a nice balance between stories with a sweet, resilient yearning for a better world and tales with a more hardened, weary longing for a world that could maybe stop being so damned brutal. The former is most apparent in Anne-Marie McLemore’s “Cristal y Ceniza,” a revisioning of Cinderella wherein the heroine is determined to see gender and love of all kinds recognized and valued in her kingdom, and in “Liberia,” Kwame Mbalia’s space fiction story exploring how the literal roots of family bring life to a new world. Meanwhile, Samira Ahmed leans into the bleakness of dystopian cli-fi before just pulling back from fatalism in her story of near future disaster and its echoes through time and space. It’s Tochi Onyebuchi’s final entry in the collection, however, that truly represents the idea that it’s not wishes but hope that’s driving many of these characters in an ending that could be interpreted several ways, all of which point to the significance of both heartbreak and faith in making the world anew.