steakhusband's review
4.0
I received this ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This anthology hooked me in with its premise: five genres and story briefs, with five authors writing each one. The genres included were contemporary fantasy, soft science fiction, other, hard science fiction, and high fantasy; all genres that I'm interested in. The book is set up so that all the stories, divided by genre, come first, and the briefs are all at the end. I loved reading the stories in one genre, playing detective to find the common elements between them, and then going to the end to see what the authors were working off of.
My favorite genre in this anthology was definitely the contemporary fantasy. I don't want to spoil too much, but the stories in that genre all with the apocalypse and the protagonist's struggle between preventing the apocalypse or leaving home and being free; basically, the brief was right up my alley. The different interpretations of the brief were really cool and a few of the endings definitely surprised me. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the hard science fiction stories, since I don't read a lot of hard science fiction and I was expecting for the stories to go over my head. They were all very accessible, though, and I loved the AI element in each story.
Overall, I thought there was a really good mix of stories in here. I thought it was fairly easy to find the similarities between the contemporary fantasy stories, since the setting was more limiting/specific than the others, but I had a slightly harder time with the other genres. Each author put their own spin on their brief and even stories within the same genre were wildly different. Just a sneak peek of some of the things in this anthology: Aliens! Egyptian noir! Blood mages! Werewolves! There was only one story I wasn't super into, but it still interested me enough to finish reading it.
Another plus was the diversity in the stories. I didn't really go into the book expecting a lot, but I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of characters represented!
Reading 5x5 is a solid anthology, and I'm definitely interested in checking out other works from the authors who contributed.
This anthology hooked me in with its premise: five genres and story briefs, with five authors writing each one. The genres included were contemporary fantasy, soft science fiction, other, hard science fiction, and high fantasy; all genres that I'm interested in. The book is set up so that all the stories, divided by genre, come first, and the briefs are all at the end. I loved reading the stories in one genre, playing detective to find the common elements between them, and then going to the end to see what the authors were working off of.
My favorite genre in this anthology was definitely the contemporary fantasy. I don't want to spoil too much, but the stories in that genre all with the apocalypse and the protagonist's struggle between preventing the apocalypse or leaving home and being free; basically, the brief was right up my alley. The different interpretations of the brief were really cool and a few of the endings definitely surprised me. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the hard science fiction stories, since I don't read a lot of hard science fiction and I was expecting for the stories to go over my head. They were all very accessible, though, and I loved the AI element in each story.
Overall, I thought there was a really good mix of stories in here. I thought it was fairly easy to find the similarities between the contemporary fantasy stories, since the setting was more limiting/specific than the others, but I had a slightly harder time with the other genres. Each author put their own spin on their brief and even stories within the same genre were wildly different. Just a sneak peek of some of the things in this anthology: Aliens! Egyptian noir! Blood mages! Werewolves! There was only one story I wasn't super into, but it still interested me enough to finish reading it.
Another plus was the diversity in the stories. I didn't really go into the book expecting a lot, but I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of characters represented!
Reading 5x5 is a solid anthology, and I'm definitely interested in checking out other works from the authors who contributed.
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