This was my first Alyssa Wong story, and it certainly won't be my last. Not a perfect story for me..I felt like this would have worked better as part of a longer story, but the writing was great! I'd definitely like to read more from Wong in the future. Hopefully she will write a novel!

This was an unexpected read. Absolutely fantastic and interesting. Beautiful prose, beautiful imagery, and thoroughly engrossing and enjoyable. Definitely on the desert gothic side, which I adore.

It is a mining town in some Wild West desert, where Ellis lives in a brothel. He was orphaned three months ago in a catastrophic mining event. Now, he slowly learns about his necromantic powers. A love story mixed with phantastic elements, mother desert, a preacher.Somehow, the setting remembered me of Jackalope Wives. It is a story about doomed love, loyality, finding a place to fit in.Beautiful prose in second person, nice gothic desert setting, believable characters. I feared that the story w...

A satisfactory short story found at: Uncanny Magazine. Quick and well written!

When the desert finally lets you go, naked and stumbling, your body humming with raw power and the song of dead things coiled under your tongue, you find Marisol waiting for you at the edge of the bluffs.There's something about the desert that seems unknowable and enchanting, so in a novelette that uses the desert as its setting, I was expecting elements of magic and myths. I wasn't disappointed. Following Ellis and Marisol, as they try to understand Ellis's powers and survive in the rundown tow...

Imaginative, haunting short story set in a desert in the Old West. I loved the imagery, the characters and the strange desert magic. This is definitely my favorite of Wong’s stories so far. When the desert finally lets you go, naked and stumbling, your body humming with raw power and the song of dead things coiled under your tongue... http://uncannymagazine.com/article/yo...

Another great story from one of my very favorite authors...In Ye Highlands and Ye Lowlands we learn that the world as we know it it’s ending and that the present situation is the direct consequence of a precise chain of events – indeed the words “things have consequences” keep resonating throughout the story, much like an ominous warning. Or a funeral dirge…The main character, a mother with two teenaged kids, seeks some respite from what we understand is a long journey with little or no hope, an...

To say that Alyssa Wong can write is to say that the desert has dry bones.What I really mean to say is that she can turn a whole town of the old-west dead into dancing corpses and then make you wonder if it is all in your very imaginative head... or whether you're really one of them, too.Impossible, you say? Well, Wong has a knack for writing absolutely stunning fantasy that's both flashy (or in this case necromantic) and immense with importance while also writing on an entirely different level

“Marisol.” He says her name the way the desert says yours, like the heat crackling across the rocks. Marisol Heat crackles across your face, too, at the sound of it in his mouth. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance. Has Lettie told you why I’m here?”Beautiful, complicated, a bit disturbing. Reminds me of Ursula Vernon's 'Jackalope Wives' and 'The Tomato Thief.' Self-discovery, too-old young people who have to become independent.Read it at http://uncannymagazine.com/article/yo...

5 stars. I'll read anything this woman writes. Someone give her a book deal!

Dark and intriguing read about the desert, the dead, and things we ken not what they be. Read for free at You'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay

Review solely for “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay”, by Alyssa Wong:2017 Hugos nominee for Best Novelette, and it pairs oddly well with The Tomato Thief in terms of being a Weird Western, all hot scorching desert and magic mingled together, with a side order of necromancy. It doesn't quite leave an impact on me, though, so my vote will go elsewhere, though this is still a very solid story. 3.5 stars rounded up for now.

Alyssa Wong is the one to watch. She has a unique style in her storytelling. She knows how to hook readers from the first page and throw them headlong into a whirlwind of crazy movements of magic and fascinating characters. This tale of desert magic in the Wild West just won the Locus Award for Best Novelette. Go check it out.

I shouldn't have read this one just after "The Tomato Thief". The two novelettes have nothing in common save for the setting - but comparisons are still inevitable. I believe, however, I'd be slightly disappointed nonetheless; Wong's writing is fabulous and confident as always, but the story didn't deliver the punch-to-the-gut I was hoping for after reading and rereading "The Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers".

I must have read this wrong. I don't get it at all. Two, I'm an idiot, stars.

For the last year I've noticed an increase in horror--particularly in the form of body horror (or perhaps flesh horror?)--in short stories, and this issue's short fiction delves into the many ways the body can be diseased, malformed, twisted, dying and dead, etc. While I am not a horror fan, these stories are less about creeping the reader out and more about exploring the horrific where it intersects with the human. They work great as a collection, for they explore the many other genres horror c...

“Shake, shake, yucca tree,Rain and silver over me—” I never imagined I’d enjoy this genre. I never knew this genre existed. What genre is it anyway? Weird-western-fantasy-horror-mythology? Sounds about right. And now going through the Hugo finalists has made me read works and genres I would have never discovered otherwise, and I couldn’t be happier! “Stormclouds, gather in the sky,Mockingbird and quail, fly; ” The novelette I finished right before this one, The Tomato Thi

You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay by Alyssa WongA boy of the desert, necromancers, a sweet love story in the wild west - the 2nd person narration is magically enthralling.

Not one of McGuire's best, unfortunately. She tells the tale of an alien encounter gone wrong, and while the twist as to why there was a miscommunication is interesting, the rest of it treads pretty common ground. Also, if the robots were equipped with all the languages of the world, did no one think to try a word OTHER than hello?Merged review:"You'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay" is a story that will take your breath away. Set in the strange, dry desert, Ellis is an odd boy. He can call dead

Overall I really liked this issue. I thought the interview with Alyssa Wong was great and the poetry was better than other issues. A lot of these stories had a horror or unsettling vibe which I loved. Here are my ratings for the stories:4 StarsYou'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay by Alyssa Wong - I really enjoyed the relationship between Marisol and Ellis in this short story. Their relationship was complicated in a good way that allowed them to be extremely close friends. I thought the magic in...