Review by Kelly Jarvis: My Lady Witch And Other Wondrous Tales by R. Max Gibson

If you are looking for a collection of fairy tale themed short stories steeped in whimsy and magic, look no further than R. Max Gibson’s My Lady Witch and Other Wondrous Tales. In this collection of twenty tales readers will discover kings and queens, giants and trolls, castles overgrown by forests, and monster men who hunt for naughty children in the night and can only be distracted by gold. There are archery tournaments for the hand of a princess, pirates who earn a mermaid’s wish, and knights who battle witches and dragons. And, beyond the expertly-drawn stock characters expected in a collection of fairy tales is a contemplation of the roles we are forced to play in life and a meditation on the serendipitous moments that define our futures.

The opening tale, My Lady Witch, begins with a princess who has never left the castle she was born in and wishes to view the sea. This desire makes her prey for witches seeking to hex her, and eventually a woman far too beautiful to be a witch is mistaken for the princess herself. In Little Bertina, a motherless child with a cruel stepbrother uses trickery to save herself, and in The Hill of Golden Fleece, a story with an interactive variant readers can reach through an online address, a shepherd struggles with the choice between risk and reward. I loved how the theme of rivalry was explored in both The Rival Apprentices and A Kingdom for Each, but my favorite tales were The Majestic Forest, a romantic story about a beautiful princess from an isolated kingdom who finds her happily-ever-after and The Duck Who Could Not Fly, a vignette about a duck who finds happiness in his limits.

Gibson, an author and a video game designer, uses traditional storytelling techniques with close attention to plot and dialogue, but there are enough unexpected twists embedded in his narratives to keep readers turning pages. My expectations were often turned on their head as stories sometimes ended with acceptance rather than transformation. Gibson weaves just the right amount of absurdity into his fairy tale narratives, entertaining readers as he takes them on a journey of literary and personal discovery. If you like classic fairy tale characters and plots with innovative and imaginative twists, this collection of short stories is for you! You can find it here.

Kelly Jarvis teaches writing and literature at Central Connecticut State University and works as the Contributing Writer for The Fairy Tale Magazine and a Recurring Columnist for Eternal Haunted Summer. Her debut novella, Selkie Moon, was selected as a semi-finalist in the 2025-2026 Speculative Fiction Indie Novella Championship, and her first novel, Sea and Stars, a real-world reimagining of Beauty and the Beast set in the 19^th century, publishes in July 2026. Visit Kelly online at kellyjarviswriter.com.