Abstract Tales is a three-in-one, telling three nearly completely unconnected stories in one slot, with a framing device inside a framing device to boot. I quite liked the framing device, and its use of the Abstracts, your classical figures who represent a concept. My favorite of the three is the Auteur one, though considering my favorite of generally everything is usually the Auteur one, this is not surprising. Still, I think it’s definitely the most fully formed and excellent of the three, and could probably have been an entire story in of itself. I’m always a sucker for dream related stories, and I’m always a sucker for properly done Multiverse stories, and this one did quite well with both. As for The first story (which is the second I’m writing about because I got distracted by Auteur), it involved a land of toys, and its legally distinct Toymaker. This was good and characterized the toys well as individuals. Usually when you get sentient toys they sort of homogenize and become gleeful Island of Misfit Toys squeaky angels. The third story was about Jenny Everywhere, a snowball fight, and the attempted banning of Snow. This was again, good, although it’s probably my least favorite of the three due to sheer competition.

Although Book of the Snowstorm is exceptionally odd for having longer and more meandering short stories, Abstract Tales running with it in the opposite direction and telling a bunch of tiny ones in a row makes it an oddity in a book of oddities. A lot of the stories in Book of the Snowstorm feel as if they’re books in of themselves, and Abstract Tales is at the forefront of that category, feeling like an outsider in the book and almost like it’d be better off as it’s own standalone release. But that isn’t an insult to the material in of itself, which is uniformly stellar, more how easily it slides into the wider frame of the book.