For a short story collection, this was pretty great. Garth Nix’s imagination can be a wonderful place, but also a scary one. Ugh, he is so creepy sometimes. The highlight was the first story, a novella set in the Old Kingdom from his Abhorsen series, which is one of my favorites. But there were also a couple of stories in here I loved, and would like to see more stories set in their respective worlds. Short reviews of each of the stories found below.
“To Hold the Bridge,” An Old Kingdom Novella — Novella set hundreds of years before the Abhorsen trilogy. Follows young dude named Morghan who I kind of love. He’s just so steady and good. Morghan becomes a cadet in the Greenwash Bridge Company, ends up having to hold the bridge all by his lonesome when the Dead attack. Really good read. 4.5/5 stars
“Vampire Weather” — Young man from Amish-like community in a world where vampires are real and can be vaccinated against has a run-in with an outsider. Good until the last page, where it just sort of sputtered out. 3.5/5 stars
“Strange Fishing in the Western Highlands” — I can safely say I didn’t expect Hellboy, of all characters, to show up in this collection, but here he is! And yes, it’s *that* Hellboy. But I liked the story here and the atmosphere, and it had a cheeky little sense of humor. 4/5 stars
“Old Friends” — Say what now? I didn’t really get this one. It felt like I was missing something the whole time, and then after it ended, it still felt like that. Seemed like some cool worldbuilding if there would have been more of it and I didn’t feel like I was missing something. 3.5/5 stars
“The Quiet Knight” — This was adorable. Tony is a high school student who refuses to speak and is very intimidating to the other students because of his size. Tony doesn’t talk because when he was a kid he accidentally drank poison and ruined his voice. Tony is also a LARPer. He “finds his voice” when a brother and sister join his LARP group. The ending was just so heartwarming I wanted to die. 4.5/5 stars
“The Highest Justice” — A princess enlists the help of a unicorn. A bloody, gross twist on unicorn stories. Dead queens, adulterous kings, sharp horns. 4/5 stars
“A Handful of Ashes” — This one wasn’t long enough. I would love to read an entire book set in this world. It takes place at a magical girls school, but the magic is dark and creepy, and the story’s heroine is a girl who is looked down upon for having to work her way through school. She and her friends have to save the school. Not enough room to really develop the world. 4.5 stars
“The Big Question” — Really liked this one. It has a nice folktale vibe going for it. Can’t really explain the premise without spoiling it, so I won’t. Short but sweet. 4/5 stars
“Stop!” — A radioactive man who is unaffected by bullets makes his way slowly into a nuclear testing range. Things get freaky. My only complaint is that it switches POVs halfway through with no warning. Felt a little sloppy. 4/5 stars
“Infestation” — What if vampires were actually bioengineered nanoweapons dropped on Earth by accident by aliens who were too busy warring with each other to care? Definitely a take on vampires and vampire hunters I’ve never seen before. 4/5 stars
“The Heart of the City” — This was a weird historical thing with French people and angels and magic and soldiers. I wasn’t really interested in it until the last 1/3, and then it ended. 3/5 stars
“Ambrose and the Ancient Spirits of East and West” — Ambrose is a practitioner of arcane magic who used to work for a shadowy organization called D-Arc in WWI. His experiences left him traumatized and he quit the organization. This story picks up with them roping him back in. It was okay, but I think it was too short. Needed more development, like as a full novel. 4/5 stars
“Holly and Iron” — Mix up a bunch of old stories, most notably Robin Hood and King Arthur, and you’ll get this story. I wasn’t super into it until about halfway through, and then it got pretty good, although the end was on the cheesy/predictable side. To be fair, it is a folk/fairy/legend type of story, so predictable comes with the territory. 4/5 stars
“The Curious Case of the Moondawn Daffodils Murder” — Ho hum, this was rather boring. And silly, but not silly enough to be interesting. It’s basically just Sherlock Holmes fanfiction, only instead of Sherlock or Mycroft or Watson, we get Sherlock’s cousin Magnus, who is involved in the paranormal. It really just fell flat for me. 3/5 stars
“An Unwelcome Guest” — Another silly story, this time set in a world where witches, fairy-tales and modern technology all co-exist. It’s also a reverse Rapunzel story, and it mostly works, even if all the component parts are a bit of a jumble. 3.5/5 stars
“A Sidekick of Mars” — Another fanfic, basically. This time for John Carter of Mars. And it’s the worst kind of fanfic, where the author makes up a character and inserts it into the existing storyline. And he was an annoying character, too, with a very affected accent. Didn’t really enjoy this one at all. 2/5 stars
“You Won’t Feel a Thing” — According to the author’s note afterwards, this takes place in the world of Nix’s novel, Shade’s Children, about ten years before the events of that book. I didn’t care for the worldbuilding very much. Too scary and freaky. But it was a well-constructed little story. Probably won’t be checking out the full novel now that I know what it’s about. 3/5 stars
“Peace in Our Time” — This was a little bit too much like an earlier story in the collection, the one about the old guy who turns out to be a villain. We’ve got pretty much the same thing here, except in a sci-fi setting, and the guy in this one is a lot more destructive. 3/5 stars
“Master Haddad’s Holiday” — A story about a sci-fi, space traveling assassin. Not as cool as it sounds, although to be fair, I probably didn’t give this a fair enough shot because I was just ready to be done with this book. 3/5 stars