trackofwords's review against another edition
4.0
Across nine stories from eight different authors, Aconyte Books’ short story anthology Tales From the Crucible explores the vibrant KeyForge setting and the characters who populate the immense world of the Crucible. A wild melting pot of races and archetypes – from elves, goblins and giants to demons, robots, martians and more – battling it out for the valuable resource known as Aember, as a setting it’s equal parts fantasy and science fiction, where anything is possible and nothing seems out of place. Heists, dirty dealings, historical reenactment, field trips, dangerous experiments, family struggles – everything is fair game, and despite the variety of styles, characters and approaches these stories are all united by an overarching sense of bold, colourful, fun storytelling.
There’s plenty to please readers looking for frantic battles, thrills and danger, but these are character-focused stories first and foremost, and exploring the Crucible involves getting to know a varied mixture of diverse, relatable and largely memorable characters. For anyone interested in bright, fun, satisfying sci-fi and fantasy stories, this anthology – and KeyForge as a setting – is well worth checking out.
Read the full review at https://www.trackofwords.com/2020/06/10/tales-from-the-crucible-edited-by-charlotte-llewelyn-wells/
There’s plenty to please readers looking for frantic battles, thrills and danger, but these are character-focused stories first and foremost, and exploring the Crucible involves getting to know a varied mixture of diverse, relatable and largely memorable characters. For anyone interested in bright, fun, satisfying sci-fi and fantasy stories, this anthology – and KeyForge as a setting – is well worth checking out.
Read the full review at https://www.trackofwords.com/2020/06/10/tales-from-the-crucible-edited-by-charlotte-llewelyn-wells/
courland's review against another edition
4.0
Thank you to Aconyte Books for providing me with an advance review copy
Tales From the Crucible is an anthology based in the universe of the succesful collectible card game: Keyforge. The Crucible is an ever-growing patchwork of random planets, where uncountable cultures and species have (mostly) learned to live together without descending into anarchy. On top of that there are the Archons, powerful beings who duel each other to stake their claim over one of the many vaults scattered across the crucible.
Functionally, what this means for the setting is that you could see a barbarian in a loincloth line dancing with a slime blob, and it wouldn't be out of place. While it never goes that far, I can happily confirm that this potential has been put to excellent use in Tales From the Crucible. From a bug person and an elf doing a research project on martians, to a librarian hoarding books to save her daughter who is trapped in the walls of her library; every single story in this anthology is incredibly creative and has surprisingly compelling characters.
With the decidedly lighter tone of Keyforge, I was expecting this anthology to be a fun romp through the setting. While that's mostly true, there are still a couple of emotional moments that make this a much more fulfilling experience than I was initially expecting.
While all of the stories are excellent, I can't help but highlight a story that really stood out to me. Useful Parasites by MK Hutchins is a much darker and profound take on the world about a tree person learning to cope with grief, and took me on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster; which is a sentence I never expected to write to be honest.
The one thing that disappointed me about Tales From the Crucible is that we never get to see a story from the perspective of an Archon. Sure there are a couple of stories about Archons and we even get to meet a few, but it still feels like a missed opportunity.
Tales From the Crucible is overall a very enjoyable collection of stories and I'm certainly interested to see some of these stories contiue, be sure to pick this one up if the setting sounds interesting!
A solid 4.5/5
Tales From the Crucible is an anthology based in the universe of the succesful collectible card game: Keyforge. The Crucible is an ever-growing patchwork of random planets, where uncountable cultures and species have (mostly) learned to live together without descending into anarchy. On top of that there are the Archons, powerful beings who duel each other to stake their claim over one of the many vaults scattered across the crucible.
Functionally, what this means for the setting is that you could see a barbarian in a loincloth line dancing with a slime blob, and it wouldn't be out of place. While it never goes that far, I can happily confirm that this potential has been put to excellent use in Tales From the Crucible. From a bug person and an elf doing a research project on martians, to a librarian hoarding books to save her daughter who is trapped in the walls of her library; every single story in this anthology is incredibly creative and has surprisingly compelling characters.
With the decidedly lighter tone of Keyforge, I was expecting this anthology to be a fun romp through the setting. While that's mostly true, there are still a couple of emotional moments that make this a much more fulfilling experience than I was initially expecting.
While all of the stories are excellent, I can't help but highlight a story that really stood out to me. Useful Parasites by MK Hutchins is a much darker and profound take on the world about a tree person learning to cope with grief, and took me on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster; which is a sentence I never expected to write to be honest.
The one thing that disappointed me about Tales From the Crucible is that we never get to see a story from the perspective of an Archon. Sure there are a couple of stories about Archons and we even get to meet a few, but it still feels like a missed opportunity.
Tales From the Crucible is overall a very enjoyable collection of stories and I'm certainly interested to see some of these stories contiue, be sure to pick this one up if the setting sounds interesting!
A solid 4.5/5
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