vaderbird's review
3.0
5 star - Perfect
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish
4 star - i would recommend
3 star - good
2 star - struggled to complete
1 star - could not finish
lpcoolgirl's review against another edition
5.0
I only read Jury Duty from this, but it was a great story, loved seeing Harry deal with this mundane situation!
philantrop's review
4.0
This is another short story by Michael which he published separately as part of one of his Kickstarter campaigns.
It’s about Troth, a previously minor Non-Player Character (NPC), who “lives” in a Massively Multi-player Role Playing Game (MMORPG) and suddenly develops sentience.
The premise is interesting and the story well-told (how could it not be, it’s a Sullivan!). It’s just that it’s a bit... short. Given that this is a short story, well, I guess I’ll let it slide... ;-)
Recommended to anyone with 30 minutes to spare.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
It’s about Troth, a previously minor Non-Player Character (NPC), who “lives” in a Massively Multi-player Role Playing Game (MMORPG) and suddenly develops sentience.
The premise is interesting and the story well-told (how could it not be, it’s a Sullivan!). It’s just that it’s a bit... short. Given that this is a short story, well, I guess I’ll let it slide... ;-)
Recommended to anyone with 30 minutes to spare.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
evp's review
3.0
I struggle to see how a compendium can be given 5 stars, as there is always going to be variability in quality of short stories. I found this a long read, because it is hard to motivate to finish the crappier stories and sometimes hard to motivate beginning a new story in case it isn't very good. And then I'd find a good story and finish it in no time at all.
I'll review the 5-star stories; the whose authors I now want to read:
Stories are Gods, Peter Orullian - 5 stars - The main story focused on a debate between philosophers. The world was really interesting, with a mysterious magic affecting it. Very easy short story to get into, and a really interesting concept.
River and Echo - John Marco - 5 stars - A really sweet story about a child and his robot (yet based in a seeminly medieval world), who were sole survivors of a plague.
An unfortunate influx of Filipians - Terry Brooks - 5 stars - Hilarious characters, especially the gnomes, and a cute story. Reminded me a lot of Pratchett.
Uncharming - Delilah S. Dawson - 5 stars - A really interesting perspective from a dark, rapist, wizard. Interesting world, as well.
Fiber - Sean McGuire - 5 stars - Really enjoyable zombie cheerleader story. Like many of the stories I didn't like, much of the story consisted of a (very Buffy-esque) fight scene, but there was a lot more preamble and the fight wasn't overdrawn. Very good.
The ethical heresy - Sam Sykes - 5 stars - Finally, a good story emerges from the wilderness (the previous 4-5 stories were not good). Followed a small quest rather than a fight scene. Interesting world with politics that I want to delve further into. Main character was funny in his ineptitude. Enjoyed a lot.
Small kindness - Joe Abercrombie - 5 stars - A story of an ex-thief who had to steal once again. I enjoyed the characters, as expected from Abercrombie. The only story to have an LGBTQ character, which I appreciated.
The siege of Tilpur - Brian McClellan - 5 stars - Another battle scene, though somewhat different. The writing style was very easy though and the little I saw of the powder magic makes me want to read more from this world.
Jury duty - Jim Butcher - 5 stars - Whilst I'm not a fan of werewolf/vampire stuff, this kept my attention and the addition of wizards helped. A (presumably quite powerful) wizard is on a mortal jury for a murder, and he decides to investigate for himself. Kept me interested from early on.
Less interesting stories
Madwalls - Rachel Caine - 3 stars
A dichotomy of paradigms - Mary Robinette Kowal - 4 stars - Quirky (sci-fi space pirate painting), and I liked it, but too short for 5 stars.
Son of Crimea - Jason m. HOUGH - 3 stars
The way into oblivion - Harry Connolly - 2 stars
A good name - Mark Lawrence - 3 stars
All in a night's work - David Anthony Durham - 4 stars
Seven times - Tim Marquitz - 2 stars
The hall of the diamond queen - Anthony Ryan - 1 star
The farmboy Prince - Brian Staveley - 3 stars
Heart's desire - Kat Richardson - 0 stars
The game - Michael J. Sullivan - 1 star
The rat - Mazarkis Williams - 3 stars
Mr Island - Kristen Britain - 4 stars
The dead's revenant - Shawn Speakman - 3 stars
I'll review the 5-star stories; the whose authors I now want to read:
Stories are Gods, Peter Orullian - 5 stars - The main story focused on a debate between philosophers. The world was really interesting, with a mysterious magic affecting it. Very easy short story to get into, and a really interesting concept.
River and Echo - John Marco - 5 stars - A really sweet story about a child and his robot (yet based in a seeminly medieval world), who were sole survivors of a plague.
An unfortunate influx of Filipians - Terry Brooks - 5 stars - Hilarious characters, especially the gnomes, and a cute story. Reminded me a lot of Pratchett.
Uncharming - Delilah S. Dawson - 5 stars - A really interesting perspective from a dark, rapist, wizard. Interesting world, as well.
Fiber - Sean McGuire - 5 stars - Really enjoyable zombie cheerleader story. Like many of the stories I didn't like, much of the story consisted of a (very Buffy-esque) fight scene, but there was a lot more preamble and the fight wasn't overdrawn. Very good.
The ethical heresy - Sam Sykes - 5 stars - Finally, a good story emerges from the wilderness (the previous 4-5 stories were not good). Followed a small quest rather than a fight scene. Interesting world with politics that I want to delve further into. Main character was funny in his ineptitude. Enjoyed a lot.
Small kindness - Joe Abercrombie - 5 stars - A story of an ex-thief who had to steal once again. I enjoyed the characters, as expected from Abercrombie. The only story to have an LGBTQ character, which I appreciated.
The siege of Tilpur - Brian McClellan - 5 stars - Another battle scene, though somewhat different. The writing style was very easy though and the little I saw of the powder magic makes me want to read more from this world.
Jury duty - Jim Butcher - 5 stars - Whilst I'm not a fan of werewolf/vampire stuff, this kept my attention and the addition of wizards helped. A (presumably quite powerful) wizard is on a mortal jury for a murder, and he decides to investigate for himself. Kept me interested from early on.
Less interesting stories
Madwalls - Rachel Caine - 3 stars
A dichotomy of paradigms - Mary Robinette Kowal - 4 stars - Quirky (sci-fi space pirate painting), and I liked it, but too short for 5 stars.
Son of Crimea - Jason m. HOUGH - 3 stars
The way into oblivion - Harry Connolly - 2 stars
A good name - Mark Lawrence - 3 stars
All in a night's work - David Anthony Durham - 4 stars
Seven times - Tim Marquitz - 2 stars
The hall of the diamond queen - Anthony Ryan - 1 star
The farmboy Prince - Brian Staveley - 3 stars
Heart's desire - Kat Richardson - 0 stars
The game - Michael J. Sullivan - 1 star
The rat - Mazarkis Williams - 3 stars
Mr Island - Kristen Britain - 4 stars
The dead's revenant - Shawn Speakman - 3 stars
philantrop's review against another edition
4.0
This is another short story by Michael which he published separately as part of one of his Kickstarter campaigns.
It’s about Troth, a previously minor Non-Player Character (NPC), who “lives” in a Massively Multi-player Role Playing Game (MMORPG) and suddenly develops sentience.
The premise is interesting and the story well-told (how could it not be, it’s a Sullivan!). It’s just that it’s a bit... short. Given that this is a short story, well, I guess I’ll let it slide... ;-)
Recommended to anyone with 30 minutes to spare.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
It’s about Troth, a previously minor Non-Player Character (NPC), who “lives” in a Massively Multi-player Role Playing Game (MMORPG) and suddenly develops sentience.
The premise is interesting and the story well-told (how could it not be, it’s a Sullivan!). It’s just that it’s a bit... short. Given that this is a short story, well, I guess I’ll let it slide... ;-)
Recommended to anyone with 30 minutes to spare.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
leighsnerdlife's review
4.0
I won this in a Goodreads Giveaway, and my unbiased review is now up on my blog. Spoilers - I loved it. http://the-bookish-life.com/review-unbound-shawn-speakman/
tomunro's review against another edition
5.0
An assemblage of short stories liberated from the imaginations of great story tellers
Perhaps it s a product of the busy age we live in that short story anthologies have become more appealing to my taste than before. Bite sized fiction for a world driven by sound-bites, and there are plenty of bites of different kinds in this riveting collection which Shawn Speakman has edited.
Some of the authors I already knew and had read, others are names glimpsed on social media. Some of the stories have roots in the authors' main works though still read well as stand alone stories, others are tales told in isolation, their backstory fashioned at the convergence of each reader's and author's maginations. The anthology is inevitably an eclectic mix, but still entertaining in its own right and a powerful taster of different authors' styles and approaches.
In some ways it is like those trios of deserts offered in the best restaurants these days, a mix of different but complementary taste sensations that leave you hugering for more. Just as a festive season taster can lead to bigger things and a damaging expansion in the waisline, so too this anthology might cause an explosion in my already daunting TBR pile.
But - to the stories themselves - and a story by story sequence of mini-reviews
Madwalls - by Rachel Caine.
Beautifully written, the transition from the normal world of a teenager into some dark secret, an accident of birth landing her in the midst of an ancient covenant handed down from generation to generation on which the fate of the world rests, the world and one captive. Surreal, hypnotic, like its central theme, the reader like the protagonist is drawn into a world that lingers in the mind, or is it the mind that lingers in the world?
Stories are Gods - by Peter Orullian.
A story that believes in the power of argument, or perhaps an argument that believes in the power of stories. A hero who is physically weak, but mentally strong fuelled by a powerful love and a tragic schism to take to a debating floor in a world where academic philosopy has suddenly become dangerous. Themes from a wider well-built world (The Vault of Heaven I infer) bleed into this story though, like its protagonist, the story stands well enough on its own two feet.
River and Echo - by John Marco.
If you have seen Will Smith's "I am Legend" or the film "Silent Running" you may see the same similes that I did. A lone survivor and his unusual companion, living ghosts in the detritus of a plague ridden city. There is a traditional fantasy feel to it - rather than sci-fi, a city with walls, lit and heated by fires, defended with arrows. Though with a slight steampunk feel. The story is sustained by the wonderfully well-drawn poignant relationship between River and Echo.
A dichotomy of Paradigms - by Mary Robinette Kowal
With this story the anthology lurches into a far future of interstellar piracy and technological innovation that enables artists to pursue their craft with the same vibrant immediacy of a war photographer. Patrick the brush wielding protagonist reminded me of a pen scribbling character W.W.Beauchamp in the Clint Eastwood film "Unforgiven" - the journalist hack turned biographer chasing after a gunslinger to document his life. Only Patrick finds that painting the pirate queen poses more of a challenge to his conscience and his craft than he expected.
Son of Crimea - by Jason M Hough
John Crimson is a policeman perched on the cusp of the age of science and reason - a time when method replaced madness, when passionate crime would yield to patient investigative technique. And into his world steps the disturbing Malena Penar, intoxicating and bewitching. In a journey that spans half the world she challenges his faith in the rational, his dismissal of superstition but in the end I found it hard to tell who won!
An Unfortunate Influx of Filipians by Terry Brooks
The story is a bridge into the magical world of Landover where lawyer turned King Ben Holiday finds himself presiding like a cross between Judge Judy and Solomon over a gnomish dispute. Problems beget problems in a progeny of biblical proportions and in the end it is management, rather than leadership which must resolve the crises that competing incompetencies have created.
The Way into Oblivion by Harry Connolly.
When the centre of an empire has suddenly fallen to an unknown power, that is not so much an opportunity as a threat to those previously subjugated peoples who might be tempted to flex the muscles of their newfound independence. Song, sister to the leader of the Holvos people, finds more dangers lurk beside a crocodile infested river than within it. When all choices are difficult and all options are unpalatable, she must decide what motherhood means to her.
Uncharming by Delilah S Dawson
The writing is delicious, a tasty heady morsel as the daimon Monsieur Charmant frequents the darkest corners of an alternate Paris and London in an obsession to utterly possess a poor desparate soul who had already sold him the best part of herself. The story draws on a well built world of Dawson's other works but gives what I assume to be a smalller character his moment to preen his awful nature in technicolour limelight. I liked this line especially Money had been important to him once. Now it was power and possession, the tang of owing that hit the air everytime a client gave more than they really had.
A Good Name by Mark Lawrence.
This is another work where a supporting player from Prince of Thorns (and the short story Select Mode) has an opportunity to be fleshed out in more detail. Jorg had his band of brothers and "the Nuban" - never given an identifier beyond that - was one of my favourites. In this short story we find what brought him from the village of his birth to a place at Jorg's side in Ancrath. It begins with pride, the pride in a name won through hardship, a name that should not bow when it was not merited. But sometimes it is not enough to be right, and the consequences of pride cast long shadows.
All in a Night's Work by David Anthony.
In an action packed adventure Ash - a prince's faithful bodyguard finds a night off is anything but quiet. Deadly demons stalk the palace of an alternative Egypt and our young hero sets off in a pursuit of the assassin as single minded as it is foolish. The only assistance to be had comes from a beetle with a broken antenna and as Ash realises partway through the chase "..you can't think of everything when you're dangling a hundred feet in the air, holding on to the scrawny legs of a faulty beetle." The action is as relentless as the opening sequence of a James Bond movie, and the hero scarcely less resourceful than 007 himself.
Seven Tongues by Tim Marquitz
A grim tale with a grim hero illuminated by some startling pose from the very first line onwards- The clouds gnawed at the moon, devouring it in slow steady bites. Gryl is an unusual killer - a Prodigy - who escaped enslavement and sells his formidable powers, though still constrained by some sense of a just cause, of a distinction between the guilty and the innocent. When such a man goes in pursuit of a slaver who has been trading in and abusing children the outcome is unlikely to be pretty. However, it is the jobs that seem easiest at first, that are likely to end most messily and by the end of this gripping piece Gryl has certainly painted the desert red.
Fiber by Seanan McGuire.
This was outrageously entertaining. My eldest daughter has resolutely resisted the lure of the fantasy genre but also enjoys cheerleading as a base with the Cambridge Cougars, so a story that throws a carload of squabbling cheerleaders into a dark fantasy/horrow blend should be the kind that would fire her interest. It's a bit like the way "Dawn of the Dead" combined zombie apocalypse with fantasy shopping to become one of my wife's favourite films. Speaking of which, this riveting short story also features a reformed zombie amongst its kick-ass, kick-head, kick everything leading females. "...thus proving the old adage that you should never forget to wear a cup to a cheerleader fight. No matter what kind of junk you're packing in your pants, a good boot to the groin is going to put you down if you don't have protection."
The Diamond Queen - by Anthony Ryan
This is story that reaches skywards with its epic scope. The opening battle of tens of thousands, is a bloody victory won that would make Nirnaeth Arnoediad look like a minor skirmish (allow me a little hyperbole here). The warrior general Sharrow-met flies into combat astride her blackwing like a Nazgul Lord and none dare come between her and her prey. But the spoils of victory prove elusive and Sharrow-met's past stubbornly intrudes on the present. The Voice that is is her master, commands, controls and rewards but Sharrow-met finds mysteries it cannot answer as she strives to complete her subjugation of the last city on the continent.
And when the dust has settled and silence has fallen, I am left feeling I have finished a novel, rather than a short story.
The Farmboy Prince - by Brian Staveley
There is a distinctive voice in this first person point of view tale, the unnamed narrrator coarsely dismissive of both noble and ignoble visitors to his home town which aspires - at its best - to be a shit-hole. The noble are reviled as they sit "holding one of Nick's filthy tankards as though he'd filled it up with some pox-victim's phlegm instead of ale, which, considering Nick's ale, was about right." while the ignoble are warned "if you go for your sword in Two Streams, you'd better be ready to drop some motherfuckers"
In short, in this short story, the lives of the people in Two Streams - like the people themselves are short and ugly. Throw into the mix a traditional tale of hidden parentage, dodgy fake names, and a looming national crisis, and it becomes clear that something needs to be done. What is less clear, is exactly what that something is, and who's going to do it but Staveley manages to raise a smile and surprise in the process.
Heart's Desire - by Kat Richardson
The style is hauntingly strange, like a letter to an absent lover. The narrator sits entwined in the twisted ghosts of fairy stories of old, atop a tower tall enough to have held Rapunzel. There is a wall of thorns such as entombed sleeping beauty. There are helpful talking animals though their purpose and manner is a long way from the timely home helps that assisted Snow White.
Something is awry in this fairy tale world, a story too full of desparation and shadow to lift the reader's sense of forebdoing, but the twist when it comes, still cuts to the heart.
The Game - by Michael J. Sullivan
Those of us brought up on the SIMS and World of Warcraft will love the inventiveness of this tale. My second daughter, not the most skilled SIIMS player, used to get genuinely upset when - by some accident in playing the first versiion of SIMS - she managed to set her SIMS on fire and watched them reduced to a pile of ash and then an urn. My eldest, slightly more clinically observant, used to experiment with different ways of killing them off - for example putting them in a pool and then removing the ladder so they could not get out and would eventuallly die of exhaustion.
In the Game Sullivan plays with the idea of games and the characters that populate them as well as the poeple that play them. It is cleverly done, so I cannot - in all spoiler-free safety - say much more than that Jeri Blainey, Project Lead for the Realms of Rah - MMPORG is about to have a very bad day.
The Ethical Heresy - by Sam Sykes
Dreadaeleon is an apprentice wizard with more to worry about than his mouthful of a name. Even as they hunt down heretic mages, wielding ice, fire and lightning, Dreadaeleon - in the grip of adolescence - is obssessed with his cooler, taller, more gifted fellow apprentice Cresta. In the midst of death and destruction and the disdain of their grim tutor Vemire, Dread vainly tries to draw some approval from his crush. The prose captures his failures well as Dread tells himself Well done, old man. She dressed you down like a six-copper prostitute, and you simply stood there and took it.
But even apprentices can find danger in this well crafted piece, the backstory of politics and magic system injected seamlessly into the writing - like the fine marbelling of fat within the lean of a high quality steak that gives the whole its flavour. Humour and pathos mix perfectly as Dread finds himself thinking
At that moment what he was going to do seemed to fall along the lines of "die horribly, possibly while crying"
Small Kindnesses - by Joe Abercromie
The story spins around three women and the men who underestimate them. There is Shev the young but retired thief turned smoke house hostess, Carcolf the alluring blond siren from Shev's past still flinging temptation in her way, and there is the unconscious redhead. Though - as facebook told me only this morning - "It takes a special kind of stupid to piss of a redhead and expect calm"
Shev is the central sympathetic character, given to small kindnesses, to protecting others from their own foolishness, from striving to escape the trap of being the best thief in Westport. Maybe there was some stubborn stone in her, like the stone in a date, that refused to let all the shit that had been done to her make her into shit.
Shev, has her share of earthy passions but tries not to let these cloud her thinking too much.
She tore her eyes away as her mind came knocking like an unwelcome visitor. When you live in life's gutter, a cerain caution has to be your watchword.
But in a grippingly related day that grows increasingly turbulent, our charming but diminutive heroine discovers that fate neither forgets, nor forgives a small kindness.
The Rat - by Mazarkis Williams
A boy, Emil, awaits his great-grandpa coming to stay, hoping for an insight into the past. In this well written tale a backstory of epic grandeur is distilled down to a child's eye view of a simple hut and four people sharing an evening warmed, inflamed even, by fires of history. The title at first seems misleading, the eponymous rodent and its feline huntress little more than shadows on the fringes of the lyrical prose. But by the end the story had put me in mind of the sad fate of the crew of USS Indianapolis, torpedoed in 1945 and left for days floating in shark infested waters, their numbers steadily and inevitably diminished until they were spotted and rescued by chance. A horror like that would etch deep into an old man's memory and so it is with great-grandpa curmudgeonly and distrustful when awake, restless and fearful asleep.
And for Emil the excitement of the new, not just great grandpa but his road companion the musician "young enough to hold his shoulders straight, but he carried snow in his hair." quickly gives way to questions he dare not ask, answers he does not want.
The Siege of Tilpur - by Brian McClellan
I had heard of the powdermage series, but this was my first excursion into the world of magic and musketry that McClellan has created. It is a tale of warfare, of a desert seige, of prejdice, class and incompetence. Sergeant Tamas and his squad, serving the artistocratic General Seske are in the classic mold of the infantry lions led by officer donkeys as they bid to take the fortress that has never fallen. It also has shades of the Sharpe novels of Bernard Cornwell, the period feel (if not the generalship) more suited to the Napoleonic era than the first world war.
It is visceral action, but with very human heroes. For a moment I saw a hint of Blackadder goes Forth as Tamas explains his cunning plan to a disbelieving general clad in a silk dressing gown (perhaps one of General Melchett's cast offs?). As with most cunning plans, things do not run exactly smoothly, but then that is what makes the story so entertaining.
Mr Island - by Kristen Britain
A charmingly atmospheric tale of what happens when a strange traveller is welcomed to a small east coast community, all told with a true 19th century period feel by a narrator known only as Mrs Grindle. If Jane Austen and Jules Verne had been inspired by the story of Grace Darling to collaborate this might be the tale they came up with. Of propriety and love, science and shipwreck, mystery and loss.
As the layers of the story are peeled back, and truths are raised - in some cases from the sea bed - several themes enjoy a brief flash of illumination, as though from the sweep of a lighthouse beam. Women's emancipation, commercial advantage, luddite impulses, all flare in this skilful depiction of small town life exposed to new influences. But Mr Island and the woman whose kindness captures his heart form the spine to the story and prove that - no matter how small the space in which you stand - there is no limit to the direction in which you can look.
Jury Duty - by Jim Butcher
There have been many great courtroom dramas since Henry Fonda first swung a jury in "Twelve Angry Men" but when Harrry Dresden - Chicago's wizardly private investigator gets involved in an open and shut case the debate will be won with spells and claws more than words and points of law.
This fresh fast paced story was my first introduction to Harry Dresden and the cynical wit that permeates the writing as Harry first questions "What does justice have to do with the legal system?" and then observes of the judge "This was a woman who had seen a great deal, had been amused by very little of it, and who would not easily be made a fool."
Strings pulled beyond the courtroom threaten to make a mockery of justice, but for a hardboiled kind of guy, Harry has an unusually soft centre; when the lives or happiness of children are at stake... well let's just say you wouldn't want to be at the sharp end of any stake Dresden might be holding.
The Dead's Revenant - by Shawn Speakman
A bit like Delilah Dawson's tale of Monsieur Charmant, Shawn Speakman gives us the point of view of a main story antagonist. For 9000 words we walk with Tathal Ennis as he prepares to bring death and disaster to a sleepy English village. He has a certain amoral charm, an indifference to right or wrong as he draws people in with the spell of his words, or the words of his spell.
There is young Tim Becket "tossing in his sleep, his nightmares darker than the purpling new bruises that mingled with old yellow and green, all delivered by a grandfather who abhorred weakness." Tathal offers him an escape of sorts, not caring whether he takes it or not. There are old sisters and a not so young barmaid who all must yield and give Tathal what he wants lest he takes it anyway.
But Tathal does not dispense death and cruelty for its own sake. There is a darker purpose a deeper quest that he pursues, a destiny sown on a bloody battlefield of long ago. The names Camlann and Myrddin Emrys evoke links to a legend - to the legend - of dark age Britain.
Perhaps it s a product of the busy age we live in that short story anthologies have become more appealing to my taste than before. Bite sized fiction for a world driven by sound-bites, and there are plenty of bites of different kinds in this riveting collection which Shawn Speakman has edited.
Some of the authors I already knew and had read, others are names glimpsed on social media. Some of the stories have roots in the authors' main works though still read well as stand alone stories, others are tales told in isolation, their backstory fashioned at the convergence of each reader's and author's maginations. The anthology is inevitably an eclectic mix, but still entertaining in its own right and a powerful taster of different authors' styles and approaches.
In some ways it is like those trios of deserts offered in the best restaurants these days, a mix of different but complementary taste sensations that leave you hugering for more. Just as a festive season taster can lead to bigger things and a damaging expansion in the waisline, so too this anthology might cause an explosion in my already daunting TBR pile.
But - to the stories themselves - and a story by story sequence of mini-reviews
Madwalls - by Rachel Caine.
Beautifully written, the transition from the normal world of a teenager into some dark secret, an accident of birth landing her in the midst of an ancient covenant handed down from generation to generation on which the fate of the world rests, the world and one captive. Surreal, hypnotic, like its central theme, the reader like the protagonist is drawn into a world that lingers in the mind, or is it the mind that lingers in the world?
Stories are Gods - by Peter Orullian.
A story that believes in the power of argument, or perhaps an argument that believes in the power of stories. A hero who is physically weak, but mentally strong fuelled by a powerful love and a tragic schism to take to a debating floor in a world where academic philosopy has suddenly become dangerous. Themes from a wider well-built world (The Vault of Heaven I infer) bleed into this story though, like its protagonist, the story stands well enough on its own two feet.
River and Echo - by John Marco.
If you have seen Will Smith's "I am Legend" or the film "Silent Running" you may see the same similes that I did. A lone survivor and his unusual companion, living ghosts in the detritus of a plague ridden city. There is a traditional fantasy feel to it - rather than sci-fi, a city with walls, lit and heated by fires, defended with arrows. Though with a slight steampunk feel. The story is sustained by the wonderfully well-drawn poignant relationship between River and Echo.
A dichotomy of Paradigms - by Mary Robinette Kowal
With this story the anthology lurches into a far future of interstellar piracy and technological innovation that enables artists to pursue their craft with the same vibrant immediacy of a war photographer. Patrick the brush wielding protagonist reminded me of a pen scribbling character W.W.Beauchamp in the Clint Eastwood film "Unforgiven" - the journalist hack turned biographer chasing after a gunslinger to document his life. Only Patrick finds that painting the pirate queen poses more of a challenge to his conscience and his craft than he expected.
Son of Crimea - by Jason M Hough
John Crimson is a policeman perched on the cusp of the age of science and reason - a time when method replaced madness, when passionate crime would yield to patient investigative technique. And into his world steps the disturbing Malena Penar, intoxicating and bewitching. In a journey that spans half the world she challenges his faith in the rational, his dismissal of superstition but in the end I found it hard to tell who won!
An Unfortunate Influx of Filipians by Terry Brooks
The story is a bridge into the magical world of Landover where lawyer turned King Ben Holiday finds himself presiding like a cross between Judge Judy and Solomon over a gnomish dispute. Problems beget problems in a progeny of biblical proportions and in the end it is management, rather than leadership which must resolve the crises that competing incompetencies have created.
The Way into Oblivion by Harry Connolly.
When the centre of an empire has suddenly fallen to an unknown power, that is not so much an opportunity as a threat to those previously subjugated peoples who might be tempted to flex the muscles of their newfound independence. Song, sister to the leader of the Holvos people, finds more dangers lurk beside a crocodile infested river than within it. When all choices are difficult and all options are unpalatable, she must decide what motherhood means to her.
Uncharming by Delilah S Dawson
The writing is delicious, a tasty heady morsel as the daimon Monsieur Charmant frequents the darkest corners of an alternate Paris and London in an obsession to utterly possess a poor desparate soul who had already sold him the best part of herself. The story draws on a well built world of Dawson's other works but gives what I assume to be a smalller character his moment to preen his awful nature in technicolour limelight. I liked this line especially Money had been important to him once. Now it was power and possession, the tang of owing that hit the air everytime a client gave more than they really had.
A Good Name by Mark Lawrence.
This is another work where a supporting player from Prince of Thorns (and the short story Select Mode) has an opportunity to be fleshed out in more detail. Jorg had his band of brothers and "the Nuban" - never given an identifier beyond that - was one of my favourites. In this short story we find what brought him from the village of his birth to a place at Jorg's side in Ancrath. It begins with pride, the pride in a name won through hardship, a name that should not bow when it was not merited. But sometimes it is not enough to be right, and the consequences of pride cast long shadows.
All in a Night's Work by David Anthony.
In an action packed adventure Ash - a prince's faithful bodyguard finds a night off is anything but quiet. Deadly demons stalk the palace of an alternative Egypt and our young hero sets off in a pursuit of the assassin as single minded as it is foolish. The only assistance to be had comes from a beetle with a broken antenna and as Ash realises partway through the chase "..you can't think of everything when you're dangling a hundred feet in the air, holding on to the scrawny legs of a faulty beetle." The action is as relentless as the opening sequence of a James Bond movie, and the hero scarcely less resourceful than 007 himself.
Seven Tongues by Tim Marquitz
A grim tale with a grim hero illuminated by some startling pose from the very first line onwards- The clouds gnawed at the moon, devouring it in slow steady bites. Gryl is an unusual killer - a Prodigy - who escaped enslavement and sells his formidable powers, though still constrained by some sense of a just cause, of a distinction between the guilty and the innocent. When such a man goes in pursuit of a slaver who has been trading in and abusing children the outcome is unlikely to be pretty. However, it is the jobs that seem easiest at first, that are likely to end most messily and by the end of this gripping piece Gryl has certainly painted the desert red.
Fiber by Seanan McGuire.
This was outrageously entertaining. My eldest daughter has resolutely resisted the lure of the fantasy genre but also enjoys cheerleading as a base with the Cambridge Cougars, so a story that throws a carload of squabbling cheerleaders into a dark fantasy/horrow blend should be the kind that would fire her interest. It's a bit like the way "Dawn of the Dead" combined zombie apocalypse with fantasy shopping to become one of my wife's favourite films. Speaking of which, this riveting short story also features a reformed zombie amongst its kick-ass, kick-head, kick everything leading females. "...thus proving the old adage that you should never forget to wear a cup to a cheerleader fight. No matter what kind of junk you're packing in your pants, a good boot to the groin is going to put you down if you don't have protection."
The Diamond Queen - by Anthony Ryan
This is story that reaches skywards with its epic scope. The opening battle of tens of thousands, is a bloody victory won that would make Nirnaeth Arnoediad look like a minor skirmish (allow me a little hyperbole here). The warrior general Sharrow-met flies into combat astride her blackwing like a Nazgul Lord and none dare come between her and her prey. But the spoils of victory prove elusive and Sharrow-met's past stubbornly intrudes on the present. The Voice that is is her master, commands, controls and rewards but Sharrow-met finds mysteries it cannot answer as she strives to complete her subjugation of the last city on the continent.
And when the dust has settled and silence has fallen, I am left feeling I have finished a novel, rather than a short story.
The Farmboy Prince - by Brian Staveley
There is a distinctive voice in this first person point of view tale, the unnamed narrrator coarsely dismissive of both noble and ignoble visitors to his home town which aspires - at its best - to be a shit-hole. The noble are reviled as they sit "holding one of Nick's filthy tankards as though he'd filled it up with some pox-victim's phlegm instead of ale, which, considering Nick's ale, was about right." while the ignoble are warned "if you go for your sword in Two Streams, you'd better be ready to drop some motherfuckers"
In short, in this short story, the lives of the people in Two Streams - like the people themselves are short and ugly. Throw into the mix a traditional tale of hidden parentage, dodgy fake names, and a looming national crisis, and it becomes clear that something needs to be done. What is less clear, is exactly what that something is, and who's going to do it but Staveley manages to raise a smile and surprise in the process.
Heart's Desire - by Kat Richardson
The style is hauntingly strange, like a letter to an absent lover. The narrator sits entwined in the twisted ghosts of fairy stories of old, atop a tower tall enough to have held Rapunzel. There is a wall of thorns such as entombed sleeping beauty. There are helpful talking animals though their purpose and manner is a long way from the timely home helps that assisted Snow White.
Something is awry in this fairy tale world, a story too full of desparation and shadow to lift the reader's sense of forebdoing, but the twist when it comes, still cuts to the heart.
The Game - by Michael J. Sullivan
Those of us brought up on the SIMS and World of Warcraft will love the inventiveness of this tale. My second daughter, not the most skilled SIIMS player, used to get genuinely upset when - by some accident in playing the first versiion of SIMS - she managed to set her SIMS on fire and watched them reduced to a pile of ash and then an urn. My eldest, slightly more clinically observant, used to experiment with different ways of killing them off - for example putting them in a pool and then removing the ladder so they could not get out and would eventuallly die of exhaustion.
In the Game Sullivan plays with the idea of games and the characters that populate them as well as the poeple that play them. It is cleverly done, so I cannot - in all spoiler-free safety - say much more than that Jeri Blainey, Project Lead for the Realms of Rah - MMPORG is about to have a very bad day.
The Ethical Heresy - by Sam Sykes
Dreadaeleon is an apprentice wizard with more to worry about than his mouthful of a name. Even as they hunt down heretic mages, wielding ice, fire and lightning, Dreadaeleon - in the grip of adolescence - is obssessed with his cooler, taller, more gifted fellow apprentice Cresta. In the midst of death and destruction and the disdain of their grim tutor Vemire, Dread vainly tries to draw some approval from his crush. The prose captures his failures well as Dread tells himself Well done, old man. She dressed you down like a six-copper prostitute, and you simply stood there and took it.
But even apprentices can find danger in this well crafted piece, the backstory of politics and magic system injected seamlessly into the writing - like the fine marbelling of fat within the lean of a high quality steak that gives the whole its flavour. Humour and pathos mix perfectly as Dread finds himself thinking
At that moment what he was going to do seemed to fall along the lines of "die horribly, possibly while crying"
Small Kindnesses - by Joe Abercromie
The story spins around three women and the men who underestimate them. There is Shev the young but retired thief turned smoke house hostess, Carcolf the alluring blond siren from Shev's past still flinging temptation in her way, and there is the unconscious redhead. Though - as facebook told me only this morning - "It takes a special kind of stupid to piss of a redhead and expect calm"
Shev is the central sympathetic character, given to small kindnesses, to protecting others from their own foolishness, from striving to escape the trap of being the best thief in Westport. Maybe there was some stubborn stone in her, like the stone in a date, that refused to let all the shit that had been done to her make her into shit.
Shev, has her share of earthy passions but tries not to let these cloud her thinking too much.
She tore her eyes away as her mind came knocking like an unwelcome visitor. When you live in life's gutter, a cerain caution has to be your watchword.
But in a grippingly related day that grows increasingly turbulent, our charming but diminutive heroine discovers that fate neither forgets, nor forgives a small kindness.
The Rat - by Mazarkis Williams
A boy, Emil, awaits his great-grandpa coming to stay, hoping for an insight into the past. In this well written tale a backstory of epic grandeur is distilled down to a child's eye view of a simple hut and four people sharing an evening warmed, inflamed even, by fires of history. The title at first seems misleading, the eponymous rodent and its feline huntress little more than shadows on the fringes of the lyrical prose. But by the end the story had put me in mind of the sad fate of the crew of USS Indianapolis, torpedoed in 1945 and left for days floating in shark infested waters, their numbers steadily and inevitably diminished until they were spotted and rescued by chance. A horror like that would etch deep into an old man's memory and so it is with great-grandpa curmudgeonly and distrustful when awake, restless and fearful asleep.
And for Emil the excitement of the new, not just great grandpa but his road companion the musician "young enough to hold his shoulders straight, but he carried snow in his hair." quickly gives way to questions he dare not ask, answers he does not want.
The Siege of Tilpur - by Brian McClellan
I had heard of the powdermage series, but this was my first excursion into the world of magic and musketry that McClellan has created. It is a tale of warfare, of a desert seige, of prejdice, class and incompetence. Sergeant Tamas and his squad, serving the artistocratic General Seske are in the classic mold of the infantry lions led by officer donkeys as they bid to take the fortress that has never fallen. It also has shades of the Sharpe novels of Bernard Cornwell, the period feel (if not the generalship) more suited to the Napoleonic era than the first world war.
It is visceral action, but with very human heroes. For a moment I saw a hint of Blackadder goes Forth as Tamas explains his cunning plan to a disbelieving general clad in a silk dressing gown (perhaps one of General Melchett's cast offs?). As with most cunning plans, things do not run exactly smoothly, but then that is what makes the story so entertaining.
Mr Island - by Kristen Britain
A charmingly atmospheric tale of what happens when a strange traveller is welcomed to a small east coast community, all told with a true 19th century period feel by a narrator known only as Mrs Grindle. If Jane Austen and Jules Verne had been inspired by the story of Grace Darling to collaborate this might be the tale they came up with. Of propriety and love, science and shipwreck, mystery and loss.
As the layers of the story are peeled back, and truths are raised - in some cases from the sea bed - several themes enjoy a brief flash of illumination, as though from the sweep of a lighthouse beam. Women's emancipation, commercial advantage, luddite impulses, all flare in this skilful depiction of small town life exposed to new influences. But Mr Island and the woman whose kindness captures his heart form the spine to the story and prove that - no matter how small the space in which you stand - there is no limit to the direction in which you can look.
Jury Duty - by Jim Butcher
There have been many great courtroom dramas since Henry Fonda first swung a jury in "Twelve Angry Men" but when Harrry Dresden - Chicago's wizardly private investigator gets involved in an open and shut case the debate will be won with spells and claws more than words and points of law.
This fresh fast paced story was my first introduction to Harry Dresden and the cynical wit that permeates the writing as Harry first questions "What does justice have to do with the legal system?" and then observes of the judge "This was a woman who had seen a great deal, had been amused by very little of it, and who would not easily be made a fool."
Strings pulled beyond the courtroom threaten to make a mockery of justice, but for a hardboiled kind of guy, Harry has an unusually soft centre; when the lives or happiness of children are at stake... well let's just say you wouldn't want to be at the sharp end of any stake Dresden might be holding.
The Dead's Revenant - by Shawn Speakman
A bit like Delilah Dawson's tale of Monsieur Charmant, Shawn Speakman gives us the point of view of a main story antagonist. For 9000 words we walk with Tathal Ennis as he prepares to bring death and disaster to a sleepy English village. He has a certain amoral charm, an indifference to right or wrong as he draws people in with the spell of his words, or the words of his spell.
There is young Tim Becket "tossing in his sleep, his nightmares darker than the purpling new bruises that mingled with old yellow and green, all delivered by a grandfather who abhorred weakness." Tathal offers him an escape of sorts, not caring whether he takes it or not. There are old sisters and a not so young barmaid who all must yield and give Tathal what he wants lest he takes it anyway.
But Tathal does not dispense death and cruelty for its own sake. There is a darker purpose a deeper quest that he pursues, a destiny sown on a bloody battlefield of long ago. The names Camlann and Myrddin Emrys evoke links to a legend - to the legend - of dark age Britain.
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