This was a pretty great anthology. I was probably destined to like it because it’s pretty hard for me to dislike most kinds of fantasy. This is also different than some anthologies because the editor didn’t commission pieces for this book, but collected them from other already published sources. I sampled a lot of authors I’ve been meaning to try for some time, although I’m annoyed that some of the stories occur halfway through a series or something like that. If you like Epic fantasy and are curious to try out an anthology, this would be a good place to start. Below are reviews for each individual story, written as I read them.
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“Homecoming,” Robin Hobb — The first story (novella, really) is a prequel of sorts to Robin Hobb’s Rain Wilds series. It can stand on its own, but if you’re like me, after reading it, you’re really just going to want to read the rest of that series (there are four books, most of which were published before she wrote this novella). The story chronicles the first colony of the Rain Wilds continent. The colony is made up of exiles, criminals, and hopeful businessmen. Only, the environment they find is one that quickly takes its toll. The river is corrosive, the land is almost all swamp. Clean water and plentiful sources of food are scarce. People start dropping like flies. And the three ships that brought them either leave or are destroyed by the river. The story is told through the journal of a noble woman forced into exile, an artist and writer, whose husband was part of a treasonous plot against their country’s empire. She is a very unpleasant person at the beginning of the story. She’s resentful, extremely snobbish, and feels too sorry for herself to do much of anything. This was already interesting to me as a fantasy version of the first colonies in the now-USA (including the infamous missing colony of Roanoke). But then when the main character starts to take charge of her life and help the colony survive, things get really interesting. Really, really enjoyed this one, and it’s a good sign, I think, that the first story in this collection is so good. 5/5 stars
“The Word of Unbinding,” Ursula K. Le Guin — I don’t know about this one. I think Le Guin and I just aren’t simpatico as writer and reader. All the stuff I’ve ever read from her feels so beautifully impersonal. I just don’t get it. I think I only liked this one as much as I did because it was very short and I didn’t have to read much of it. I liked the first half better than the second, which is when the wizard trapped in a well (by another wizard) keeps trying different ways of escaping. Then as all of her stuff does, it got all mystical and poetic and sort of lost me. I guess I can see why she’s an important writer in the genre, but this story perfectly encapsulates why she isn’t really my kind of writer. I like tangibility in the books I read. I’m going to give her one more shot, though, because I’ve only ever read her fantasy, not her sci-fi. I’ll probably try either The Left Hand of Darkness orThe Dispossessed. Any suggestions? 3/5 stars
“The Burning Man,” Tad Williams — I expected a lot more from this story. I’ve been looking forward to reading The Dragonbone Chair for quite a while now. The mention of Angel Tower halfway through this tipped me off that this novella, like the Hobb one, is a prequel for his series Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. It was okay. I liked the first half better than the second, when it became clear that the ending was going to be pretty anti-climactic. The story is narrated by Breda, now an old woman, recalling her youth spent with her stepfather, and the story surrounding the time she saw The Burning Man. I was unimpressed with Breda. Her narration was overdramatic. I also didn’t believe the love story, which affected the way I experienced the ending. Her relationship with her stepfather would have been the way to make this story interesting, and as it is, that relationship is mostly a missed opportunity. I felt Breda was an uninteresting point of view into this story–she was much too passive, and Williams doesn’t do a great job portraying the mind of a fifteen year old girl (or rather, an old woman remembering her time as a fifteen year old girl). All in all, just a resounding ‘meh’ to this one. 3/5 stars
“As the Wheel Turns,” Aliette de Bodard — Oh, blech. Three in a row. This was a pretentious piece of mythological nonsense that spent way too much time trying to MEAN SOMETHING IMPORTANT instead of creating characters with interesting emotional arcs. I normally like stories featuring Asian-inspired mythology, but here it felt like de Bodard was using it to add to the IMPORTANTNESS instead of using it for other, more practical reasons. It did have some nice moments, although the dialogue was quite bad. The main character, who is continually being reincarnated for a mysterious purpose, shuffles through her lives too quickly for us to really care about them, but one of her husbands does something really sweet and they have a moment after death that I liked. This story might have been made to work if it was novel length instead of twenty pages. Squishing it all together just highlighted the problematic stuff. 2/5 stars
“The Alchemist,” Paolo Bacigalupi — I feel bad that I’ve had The Windup Girl on my to-read list for so long, because this story was great. It takes place in a world where the price for magic is creeping, poisonous brambles which are very hard to destroy, because they put off seeds that scatter and take root even when burned. They have reached a point where there is almost nowhere free from them. It’s a cool, sort of Sleeping Beauty-inspired world, where the poisonous brambles cause a sleep that becomes permanent as the victim’s blood solidifies in their body. Except there are no princesses. The main character is the titular alchemist, who has ruined his own life and impoverished his family in pursuit of a way to kill off the brambles for good. It was really well-written, had interesting twists and turns, and the world of the story was extremely vivid. His characters also come to life very quickly. The fifty-page length seems like more from how much depth you get out of it. Really, really liked this one. 5/5 stars
“Sandmagic,” Orson Scott Card — Hmm, I kind of liked this. And I feel bad about that. I actually haven’t read anything by OSC since I found out what a crackpot he is politically. One of these days I will do a re-read of Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead (two of my all-time favorite books) with his extreme views in mind, and then write all about how those books actually contradict those beliefs, and how silly that is. I am convinced it will be brilliant. But in the meantime, this was here and it was only twenty pages, and it’s not like he’s going to profit from my reading it. I didn’t even buy the book–it’s a library copy. This is a revenge story, a cautionary tale and a bit of a fable, about a boy whose parents are killed horribly in a war and his hatred festers into violence. It takes the opposite tack of a normal fantasy story, because the ‘hero’ ignores the wise mentor character and everything goes to shit. It wasn’t structured very well, though, and the first couple of pages were completely unnecessary. 3/5 stars
“The Road to Levinshir,” Patrick Rothfuss — This story was one of the reasons I picked up the collection, the other being the story by Brandon Sanderson. Joke’s on me, though; I’d already read both of them previously when they were part of other books. This one is an excerpt from the middle of Wise Man’s Fear, the second book in the Kingkiller Chronicles, which was published in 2011. Apparently another version of this story actually was published in Writers of the Future way back in 2001, before Rothfuss even published The Name of the Wind, but it’s the updated version in this collection. Despite my annoyance at having already read it, the excerpt did work pretty well as a stand-alone story. There were a few instances where context was missing for people who weren’t familiar with Kvothe’s story, and references to events that are left unexplained, but the basic story works. There’s even a bit of growth on Kvothe’s part, although the larger context of it is missing here. 4/5 stars
“Rysn,” Brandon Sanderson — Like the previous story, I already read this as part of a larger novel, in this case The Way of Kings, the first book in Sanderson’s beyond epic Stormlight Archive series. Both of the books published in that series so far are a solid five stars and I can’t recommend them highly enough. I don’t think this story works on its own. Robbed of the larger context of the whole series, it seems small and unimportant, and the revelations you get from it when read as part of that larger work are the most interesting part about it. It’s not actually a good story on its own. There were other little excerpts from both books that would have worked better than “Rysn,” and Adams would have done better to choose one of them instead. The books are split into POV character parts, interpersed with ‘interludes,’ like the one included here, that lend depth to the world and bring in little clues about the larger context of the story. Unfortunately, robbed of that larger context, it’s pretty much a dud, I think. 2/5 stars
“While the Gods Laugh,” Michael Moorcock — This novella is the origin of Moorcock’s Elric Saga. It was published ten years before Elric of Melnibone. I suppose it’s unfair of me to think this story was stupid and pretentious and boring, but this story was stupid and pretentious and boring. I haven’t read much fantasy from the 1960s, but if this is what it was like, yeesh. No thank you. Very pulpy. Very melodramatic. Shallow characterization. The ‘hero’ Elric of Melnibone, an albino with a magic sword, who was very famous for being one of the fantasy genre’s first anti-heroes, was extremely disappointing. He’s a cocky asshole who expresses his intelligence by moping around the world and brooding about how put-upon he is. Again, this is probably unfair becaus the story is over fifty years old, but time hasn’t favored it. Moorcock is clearly very impressed with himself as a writer, but all of his “deep thoughts” are thoughts any fifteen year with an attitude, a cigarette, and a moleskine can have. Elric thinks he’s the first man to ever emo and he’s soooo special and alone, but any idiot can emo like Elric. Additionally, everything else about this story was shallow. The secondary characters (including a laughable sex-kitten sidekick). The quest. Elric’s “emotions.” Blech. And I had been looking forward to reading Elric of Melnibone. Maybe I still will. A long time from now. 2/5 stars
“The Mother of All Russiya,” Melanie Rawn — I liked this one. It’s a sort of pseudo-fantasy, alternate history involving Saint Olga, the founding of Kiev, and a eunuch magician. The magician part is what makes it fantasy and alternate history, of course, although Rawn claims the events detailed actually happened. She has only changed the how. I liked the overall story, but it illustrates my main problem with most short stories. Authors who are used to writing novels a lot of the time do not know how to write characters or stories that are as interesting as they would be in a longer work. I know what Olga does in this story, but I don’t feel it. I will forget almost everything about this story in less than a week because there was nothing in it for me to connect to the characters emotionally. 3/5 stars
“Riding the Shore of the River of Death,” Kate Elliott — I’ve never read anything by Kate Elliott before, but I liked this! Again, it would have been better served by being a full length novel. The tribal setting almost came across as stereotypical because so little space was spent developing it, but the interactions between the characters saved it. I just didn’t have time with her style to actually care for the characters. But her world intrigued me, and she did some stuff with gender that I’ve never seen before. I’m a little confused on the setting of this novel, and I think it’s part of a larger series of hers, but I’m unclear as to which and where in that series it takes place. I already had her on my to-read list, but this has made me more excited to get to her stuff eventually. 4/5 stars
“The Bound Man,” Mary Robinette Kowal — I super liked this! It was sort of weird at first, but then it clicked and I whipped through it. It has a bunch of things I always like in stories–time travel, stories about mothers and daughters, mucking about with prophecies, racial stuff, gender stuff–and it was almost all treated in ways I haven’t really seen before. It was nothing revolutionary, just all of it was really well done. Second novella I’ve read by MRK this year, and both have been great. I’m really excited to finally start her Glamourist Histories series.5/5 stars
“The Narcomancer,” N.K. Jemisin — Just a bunch of firsts up in here. I’ve had Jemisin’s Inheritance series on my to-read list for years now, and I finally managed to track down a used copy of the second book a couple of months ago, but this story got to me first. It’s a precursor to her Dreamblood series, the first novel of which, The Killing Moon, was was published in 2012. It’s a world where dream magic exists, can kill, heal, etc. The main character is a priest named Cet who is tasked with bringing peace to a village plagued by a narcomancer, a magician with the power over sleep. I actually got a little teary-eyed at the end of this story, though it did get a bit weird there for a while, but I guess it was a good kind of weird. 4/5 stars
“Strife Lingers in Memory,” Carrie Vaughn — This story was tedious. I get what she was going for. No one ever follows the hero home after his heroic deeds are over (well, no one except Tolkien, and even then, it was more of an afterthought to the story instead of the story itself). And the kind of shit fantasy heroes especially face (goblins, dragons, other scary monsters, etc.) would probably give you a hell of a case of PTSD. Unfortunately, it’s just not well-written. The characters were cyphers, and the writing felt like it was trying too hard. Again, I think this is an author that does better with more space. She doesn’t have the gift of characterization. I’ve enjoyed some of the other stories of hers I’ve read in anthologies, but they’ve all been more contemporary, where her voice as a writer sounds more natural. This was bleh. 2/5 stars
“The Mad Apprentice,” Trudi Canavan — This was okay, but it was also sort of unpleasant. The main character is the sister of a psychopath, the titular mad apprentice. After he murders his master, he brings her along on his violent adventures, killing any magician he finds and taking their magic. Soon he is also killing civilians, whole villages. He is a horrible, horrible person, and she just sits there like a doormat and lets him do everything, either because she’s scared of what he’ll do to her or because she’s in denial, or both. It’s understandable, but I didn’t like her at all. The style of the story was jarring as well, half told from her perspective and half told from another magician chronicling the events. It would have been better to stick to one perspective. Canavan’s Black Magician series is still on my to-read list, and I hope it’s better put together than this was. 3/5 stars
“The Otherling,” Juliet Marillier — First time reading Juliet Marillier, and it was . . . interesting. The fantastic parts were original and interesting, but the entire premise of the story is just so morbid. I didn’t like being made to feel like I should get positive resolution out of something that is so horrible. (SPOILERS: The main character is a Bard, a prophet who sings the future of her people and warns them of things that threaten their survival. There is always one Bard, and they are always a twin. Their twin is killed at birth so they can absorb their strength and use it to work the magic of being a Bard. This Bard disobeys and doesn’t kill her apprentice’s twin, and disaster almost follows. The story ends when she finally kills the twin and rah rah our people are saved. It wasn’t celebratory, but it didn’t make me feel super great, I can tell you that.) 3/5 stars
“The Mystery Knight,” George R.R. Martin — Love this one. I read it last year after first reading its companion novellas, “The Hedge Knight” and “The Sworn Sword.” I didn’t re-read this time because this book is already four days overdue to the library, but my original review can be found here. 4.5/5 stars
Averaged rating of all stories is 3.38, but I’m rounding up because the overall experience was very positive.
