“Millions of versions of me”: Allison Renner’s review of Magic Can’t Save Us by Josh Denslow

Magic Can’t Save Us: 18 Tales of Likely Failure  
by Josh Denslow
University of New Orleans Press (May 6, 2025)
176 pages

In Magic Can’t Save Us: 18 Tales of Likely Failure, Josh Denslow delivers a sharp, genre-blurring short story collection that’s equal parts funny, heartbreaking, and weirdly tender. Through eighteen inventive tales, Denslow injects magical realism into the messy, intimate spaces of human relationships. He uses dragons, harpies, and zombie apocalypses not as escapes from emotional conflict, but as magnifying glasses that reveal what’s already broken or breaking.

Each story opens with a curated quote that sets a mood and signals the book’s central mission: to blur the line between magic and reality. That tension is present in every story, where fantasy creatures aren’t grand saviors or villains; they’re catalysts, mirrors, or metaphors. Whether it’s a banshee acting like a roommate with boundary issues, a poltergeist moonlighting as a couples counselor, or unicorn meat used as a last-ditch relationship Hail Mary, these stories use the surreal to explore deeply human feelings: loneliness, doubt, insecurity, and the desperate desire to connect.

Denslow’s narrators are a standout strength across the board. Their voices are distinct, wry, and often self-deprecating, with humor that leans more sardonic than slapstick. What’s most impressive is how that humor coexists with real emotional weight. Stories that make you laugh one moment quietly gut-punch you the next. Whether it’s the gnawing fear of not being “enough” in the presence of a perfect (centaur) rival or the slow ache of realizing your partner’s already checked out, Denslow writes relationships with painful precision and empathy.

The stories combine emotional vulnerability with genre play so seamlessly, it feels like they couldn’t have been told any other way. A new couple confronting zombies is really a story about choosing connection in a doomed world. A slowly accumulating trash can argument becomes a quiet portrait of the distance growing between two people. The monsters in these pages are sometimes literal, but more often, they’re personal: fear of failure, emotional inertia, and the quiet devastation of being misunderstood.

Denslow balances absurdity with depth, allowing for genuinely hilarious lines and ridiculous scenarios (a centaur seducing someone’s girlfriend over Zoom? Yes, please!) while still anchoring each story in emotional truth. The fantastical elements never overshadow the human stories—they enhance them.

If there’s a throughline to the entire collection, it’s this: magic, no matter how powerful or strange, can’t save us from ourselves. But it can help us see what’s really going on beneath the surface. That clarity, delivered through monsters, myths, and modern messiness, is where the real magic of this collection lies.

Allison Renner’s fiction and photography have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, Ellipsis Zine, Six Sentences, Rejection Letters, Atlas and Alice, Misery Tourism, Versification, FERAL, and vulnerary magazine. Her chapbook Won’t Be By Your Side is out from Alien Buddha Press. She can be found online at allisonrennerwrites.com and on Twitter @AllisonRWrites.