Here there be dragons – or so say the old maps. Or so they say the old maps say – although not so much as people think they did.

Just the same, once upon a time the map of the ‘real’ world used to have more blank spaces in it. Long distance travel was difficult and time-consuming, long distance communication was an impossible dream, life was short and the road was too long to even be imagined. But speaking of imagining, I imagine that every place’s known and unknown stretches were different – but in the way back each city, country, people or location only had so much reach and stretch.

And then there was the era of European exploration and eventually industrialization. For good or ill, and quite frequently ill, those blank places on the map got smaller and were filled in. Which didn’t stop and probably downright inspired a whole library’s worth of stories about imaginary places that might exist whether on – or in – this planet or those nearby.

But as the terra become increasingly cognita, the well of those stories dried up. Which does not mean that the urge to explore what might be beyond the farthest horizon has in any way faded.

This is a collection intended to feed that human impulse to go where no one has gone before – and report back about it before we invade it with, well, ourselves. Some of the stories that explore that next frontier are fantasy, some are science fiction, and a few trip over that line from fantasy into horror.

And they’re all here, vividly described to make the reader want to be there. Or be extremely grateful that they are NOT.

Escape Rating B: Like nearly all such collections, Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms has some hits, some misses and one or two WTF did I just read? in a convenient package for exploration.

Let’s get the WTF’ery out of the way so we can move on to the good stuff. The two stories that were set in strange hotels, Comfort Lodge, Enigma Valley and Hotel Motel Holiday Inn just did not land for me at all. The second made a bit more sense than the first but neither worked for me. Of course, YMMV on both or either of those particular trips.

Three stories were misses – at least from my perspective. They weren’t bad, they just didn’t quite live up to their premise. Or something like that. The Light Long Lost at Sea was a bit too in medias res. There’s a world there with lots of interesting backstory but what we got was more of a teaser than a story with a satisfying ending. The Expedition Stops for the Evening at the Foot of the Mountain Pass had some of that same feel, like there was huge setup for the story somewhere else and we weren’t getting it. But we needed it. The Return of Grace Malfrey is one that had a fascinating premise that kind of fizzled out.

One story in the collection hit my real-o-meter a bit too sharply. That was Those Who Have Gone. It does get itself into the “did I find a hidden civilization or was I dreaming?” thing very, very well, but the way it got there was through a young woman on a scary desert trip with her 30something boyfriend who she is rightfully extremely afraid of. That part was so real it overwhelmed the fantasy place she fell into.

There were a bunch of stories that I liked as I was reading them, but just didn’t hit the top of my scale. They are still good, still enjoyable, and hit the right note between teasing their premise and satisfying it. In no particular order, these were Down in the Dim Kingdoms, An Account, by Dr. Inge Kuhn, of the Summer Expedition and Its Discoveries, Endosymbiosis and There, She Didn’t Need Air to Fill Her Lungs.

Last, but very much not least, the stories I plan to put on my Hugo Ballot next year, because they were utterly awesome. The Cleft of Bones by Kate Elliott, a story about slavery, revolution and rebirth as seen through the eyes of an absolutely fascinating character. The Voyage of Brenya by Carrie Vaughn, which is a story about gods and heroes and the way that stories turn into myths and legends. Out of the Dark by James L. Cambias, one of two space opera stories, this time about a corporate hegemonies, a salvage crew consisting of lifelong rivals, and a pre/post spacefaring civilization in which Doctor Who’s Leela would have been right at home.

Three stories were utter gems from start to finish. Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology by Theodora Goss, which consists entirely of a letter written to the afore-mentioned journal by three high school students who took the founding principles of the journal – that imaginary anthropology could create real countries – and ran with it all the way into Wikipedia, the nightly news, and a civil war that has captured one of their fathers somewhere that never should have existed in the first place.

The Orpheus Gate by Jonathan Maberry reaches back to the Golden Age of lost kingdom stories by taking the utterly science driven great granddaughter of Professor George Edward Challenger (hero of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World) and putting her on a collision course with a friend of her great grandmother’s – a woman who challenges the scientist’s belief in everything rational and provable in order to force the young woman to finally open her mind to a truth she does not even want to imagine, let alone believe.

And finally, The Tomb Ship by Becky Chambers, which is a story about a loophole, about the evil that humans do in the name of a so-called ‘Greater Good’, and just how easy it is to fall into the trap and how hard it is to even think of a better way. Or even just a way that lets the protagonist sleep at night with a somewhat clear conscience. That it also feels like a tiny bit of an Easter Egg for The Outer Wilds was just the right icing on this gold-plated cake of a story.

More good stories than bad, although a few underdeveloped ones that felt jarring compared to the richness of the best of the collection.

2.5

An average read and compilation. It wasn't a very cohesive anthology.

There were some good stories and some were lacklustre. I thought it would be more fantasy rather sci-fi/speculative fiction which was disheartening. I couldn't connect with most of the stories. The cover and title are misleading as they paint a picture of fantasy lands or retellings of famous fictional lands,

Theodora Goss and Seanan McGuire are my favourite storytellers, so naturally I thoroughly enjoyed their stories. The others didn't quite hit the mark for me.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Grim Oak Press for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms is a collection of short stories from a variety of names within science fiction and fantasy, and edited by John Joseph Adams. It features seventeen stories which have, at their centre, the concept of a lost world and/or mythological kingdom, hence the title.

This anthology was a bit of a mixed bag for me, as there were some stories which really blew me away and others which I found to be less engaging. The standouts for me were:

The Light Long Lost at Sea by An Owomoyela - A great story with which to start this collection, this features an old world rediscovered under the sea. However, old worlds carry old magic, and consequences arise. Add to this mix a tangled story of old love, unrequited love, and women loving women, which meant I really enjoyed it.

The Cleft of Bones by Kate Elliott - This was a beautiful and poignant story revolving around a tsunami approaching a hidden kingdom, and the slaves who need to both raise the alarm and hide from the onrush of water. A great read, and I loved the central character, Ula.

The Voyage of Brenya by Carrie Vaughn - A fun story which initially reminded me of Moana (but shook that off very quickly), with a host of characters and old gods. I loved the Goddess in particular.

Down in the Dim Kingdoms by Tobias S. Buckell - Dark, horrific, and brutal — but utterly captivating — this journey to the kingdom at the centre of the earth had warring families, generational trauma, colonialism, and legacy.

Those Who Have Gone by C.C. Finlay - I wasn’t sure about this one at first, but the nurse won me over. This story, following a girl and her horrid boyfriend on a trip across a huge, reimagined national park in the USA, had some good characters and the concepts of choice and personal integrity were well handled.

The Orpheus Gate by Jonathan Maberry - This story reminded me, in parts, of A. J. West’s amazing debut novel, The Spirit Engineer, but only insofar as it featured ghosts,
spirits, Arthur Conan Doyle, and mediumship. I really enjoyed this twist on what ghosts and spirits are, how they communicate, and how humanity could help them. Really thought-provoking.

On the Cold Hill Side by Seanan McGuire - Another story which won me over part-way through, this featured an island which appears and disappears off the coast of Maine, USA, at various points in history. The build-up was great and I didn’t click as to the importance of dates until the reveal. A great read!

Overall, this was a good collection of stories which delighted me for an evening. I’d love to see more of the worlds created in the stories by Owomoyela, Elliott, Vaughn, and Maberry in particular, but there’s something for everyone here. All the stories take on the tropes of lost worlds and mythological kingdoms and handle them well; within this collection there are worlds under the sea, down in the centre of the Earth, far in the depths of space, alternate universes, and fantasy kingdoms. It would serve as a great introduction to any of these authors, or a fantastical escape for any lover of the genre.

I received an e-ARC from the publisher, Grim Oak Press, through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

“Lost Worlds and Mythological Kingdoms” is an anthology of exactly that- 17 all-new stories about discovering or re-discovering forgotten lands and mythological places. These stories are varied and almost all of particularly high quality, with many interesting and unique takes on the trope. Highly recommend if you’re a fan of these types of stories!

INDIVIDUAL REVIEWS FOR EACH STORY BELOW:

The Light Long Lost at Sea (4/5)

The first story in this is already an interesting one. On first sight, it appears people have discovered a remnant of the old empire- underwater ruins in a post-magic society. But forgotten things are often infused with old magic...

The Cleft of Bones (3.5/5)

A community of slaves has to hide for a tsunami, discovering a forgotten place while doing so. A well-told story, in a developed-feeling world. Another story that doesn't entirely feel like a classic adventure story discovering lost worlds.

The Voyage of Brenya (4.5/5)

Here's the "mythological"' part! A women desperate to save her people from raiders decides to travel to the West by boat, to the land of the gods.

Comfort Lodge, Enigma Valley (3.5/5)

A very fun Calvino-esque story of some magical lodge told in the way of customer reviews.

The Expedition Stops for the Evening at the Foot of the Mountain Pass (2.5/5)

This one never felt like it went anywhere. An intermezzo, a break during an expedition, with a bit too much left unsaid for me.

Down in the Dim Kingdoms (4/5)

A conquistador discovered a city in the center of the earth. Now, decades later, he visits with his family right before the place is about to become a tourist hotspot. His legacy is explored. Succinct! Reminded me of Silverberg's Downward to the Earth.

Those Who Have Gone (4/5)

A slower story, slowly winning me over by the end. Triss and her asshole boyfriend are traveling through a national park in the United States, a place so big it might as well be a country of its own. Much of it is still unexplored-- who knows, there might even be people living there? Feels like a parable.

An Account, by Dr. Ingle Kühn, of the Summer Expedition and Its Discoveries (3/5)

On a dying Earth, scientists in Antarctica discover an underground city. Another slower story, written like a diary.

Out of the Dark (4/5)

An anthropological story of two people landing on a planet where the colonists of old have reverted to a more primitive way of living (think Planet of Exile). The two scientists now face a conundrum: do they report this place as no longer having "civilized" (described as sapient in the story, but it amounts to the same thing) life, which would lead to the destruction of these people, or do they let them be?

Endosymbiosis (3/5)

More of a horror story, discovering Lovecraftian creatures.

The Orpheus Gate (2/5)

A story about ghosts and spirits. Not my cup of tea, never has been. Well-written though, and I'm sure it's a nice story if it's your type of thing.

Hotel Motel Holiday Inn (1/5)

Another disappointing story... Contemporary tale of a hotel, not much interesting happened in it.

On the Cold Hill Side (4.5)

Fantastic! According to local legend, the island of Harbor's Hope keeps disappearing and re-appearing every hundred years or so. This story explores what happens when legends become real, and islands appear out of thin air.

The Return of Grace Malfrey (3.5)

A similar story, but instead of an island it's a girl. Grave disappeared one day, from one moment to the next. Now, ten years later, she falls out of the sky on a parking lot. What happened in those ten years? Where has she been?

The Tomb Ship (4.5)

When Laym discovers an ancient spaceship of legend, she can't believe her eyes. History will have to be re-contexualised, and choices will have to be made... The only story in this that's actually set in space, and it's a great one!

Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology (4/5)

A group of friends imagine a country and it becomes real. This epistolary story explores the consequences of this event.

There, She Didn't Need Air to Fill Her Lungs (3/5)

Magic and hills! A fun story, but nothing particularly special.

I expected to enjoy this and I certainly did overall. These stories are written by talented SF&F authors and there's a decent mix of styles and stories. This collection is above average and a good bet for short story seekers.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

This is such a fun collection! The lost civilisation/hidden kingdom trope has become relatively rare in the modern world and most of the classics were written by dead white men - so this feels like a great moment for this collection, which is modern and diverse and just so delightfully imaginative. All the authors do something different with the core idea of lost worlds and mythological kingdoms, and all the results are interesting and fun to read.

My stand out favourites of the collection were, firstly, the penultimate story, Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology, by Theodora Goss, which hit several of my sweet spots with its emphasis on the blurry lines between story and reality, with its epistolary format (with annotations), and the way something that seems fun at first just goes so completely and utterly off the rails that it seems like disaster.

Secondly, the first story of the collection, The Light Long Lost at Sea, by An Owomoyela which is one of those stories where the main thread is about the interplay between characters around a specific issue, set against such a fascinating, complex backdrop of magic and history that I would sign up to read a whole novel - no, a whole series - about this world without the slightest hesitation.

Thirdly, An Account, by Dr. Inge Kühn, of the Summer Expedition and Its Discoveries, by E. Lily Yu, which not only had a super interesting lost community but some wonderfully crunchy decisions for the characters to make, and I was so SO interested in those decisions and their consequences.

Fourthly, Adger Endosymbiosis, by Darcie Little Badger, which had a little bit of creepiness, which I loved, and especially the ending, and, again, characters making difficult decisions which have consequences. The idea behind this particular lost world was absolutely delicious to me.

Looking through my notes is making me want to go through every story, but that would make for a very unwieldy review, so I'll just say other favourites were Comfort Lodge, Enigma Valley, by Charles Yu (a really fun format with a tantalising hidden world), The Orpheus Gate, by Jonathan Maberry (super weird and entertaining), On the Cold Hill Side, by Seanan McGuire (it's so nice to see disabled people explicitly acknowledged and evidently living their best lives), The Tomb Ship, by Becky Chambers (a really unique take on the whole idea of a lost world), and There, She Didn't Need Air to Fill Her Lungs, by Caldwell Turnbull (there was an oddness in the storytelling that was finally explained at the end which made the story so fun to read).

I really recommend this collection for anyone who fancies a modern, diverse take on the whole lost world/mythological kingdom idea.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

I got to about to half the length of the book and I believe that it's time to put this one aside for now. Reading the forward of the book, got me so excited that I actually went to read it to one of my siblings. However, when I started reading the stories, I was saddened to see that none of them has hooked me.

I read up to "An Account, by Dr. Inge Kühn" and while they have pretty interesting ideas, not one glued me to the pages enough for me to really want to continue till the end. Hence why, I have now stopped.

I do hope to come back to it one day and finish it for some more proper thoughts, but for now, I can safely say that it's, unfortunately, not for me.

Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms is the latest themed anthology edited by prominent anthologist, John Joseph Adams. As is typical for an Adams anthology, this collection is filled with stories from pretty well renowned members of the SciFi/Fantasy community, such as Becky Chambers, Kate Elliott, Darcie Little Badger, Seanan McGuire, and more.

These writers combine to write stories that all follow a single theme in a ton of different ways: each story deals in some way with discovery of a lost world, a mythological world, or some place or part connected to the distant past. It's a theme that in a different time would've resulted in a LOT of stories from the perspective of a colonizer and be problematic as a result. But this anthology's authors are aware of that, either taking the theme in an alternate direction altogether - portal fantasies, cute stories about exploration and imagination, horror stories - or take direct aim at those stories and provide and interrogate/critique them entirely.

The result is a whole bunch of very solid stories, although I don't think any wound up being an absolute standout that demands you read it right away. But still, if you pick this anthology up, you won't be disappointed.


This collection includes the following 17 stories:
The Light Long Lost at Sea by An Owomoyela
The Cleft of Bones by Kate Elliott
The Voyage of Brenla by Carrie Vaughn
Comfort Lodge, Enigma Valley by Charles Yu
The Expedition Stops for the Evening at the Foot of the Mountain Pass by Genevieve Valentine
Down in the Dim Kingdoms by Tobias S. Buckell
Those Who Have Gone by C.C. Finlay
An Account, by Dr. Inge Kühn, of the Summer Expedition and Its Discoveries by E. Lily Yu
Out of the Dark by James L. Cambias
Endosymbiosis by Darcie Little Badger
The Orpheus Gate by Jonathan Maberry
Hotel Motel Holiday Inn by Dexter Palmer
On the Cold Hill Side by Seanan McGuire
The Return of Grace Malfrey by Jeffrey Ford
The Tomb Ship by Becky Chambers
Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology by Theodora Goss
There, She Didn't Need Air to Fill Her Lungs by Cadwell Turnbull.

These stories are all solidly in the "short story" size - with some being just a few pages and some being a bit more significant...but even then, nothing here will take you more than a few minutes to read. Some of the stories feature multiple parts, others are told in non-traditional ways, but it's a very diverse collection - with some going for horror, some going for fantasy, some going for magical realism, and some even going for SciFi.

And as I mentioned above the jump, you have a bunch of stories that hit some similar themes, although in some very different ways. So for example, The Light Long Lost at Sea, The Cleft of Bones, and Down in the Dim Kingdoms, all deal with the impact of colonization destroying lost knowledge and older communities, in various ways - with Down in the Dim Kingdoms by Tobias S. Buckell being a particularly strong story for how it develops and shocks in its conclusion, with its very very selfish narrator.

You have two stories featuring hotels with strange magical connections - Comfort Lodge, Enigma Valley by Charles Yu is told as if it's a listing of Yelp reviews from guests to a hotel that's clearly being affected by a strange portal to another world warping geometry, experiences, and minds; Hotel Motel Holiday Inn by Dexter Palmer is instead told by a traveling salesman who explains all the magical attributes of smaller hotels around the world that others wouldn't know. Both stories are very fun and imaginative and different takes on similar ideas.

You have a number of horror stories, or stories where things go out of control, even a few from authors you might not expect - so while Seanan McGuire's story (On the Cold Hill Side) about investigators investigating urban legends for the government turning into horror is hardly surprising, Darcie Little Badger's Endosymbiosis story turning towards horror is far more surprising and all the more shockingly good as a result.

And well, I could go on and on, but you get the point - it's a really solid anthology of stories, even if it doesn't really have one or two highlights that are so good that I would demand you read them and nominate them for awards next year. Instead you get a pretty much entirely enjoyable collection from start to finish, with enough variety to keep you well entertained. Could do a lot worse than that.

Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms, edited by John Joseph Adams, is a highly recommended anthology of science fiction/speculative or alternate reality short stories.

Much akin to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, this anthology focuses on lost places, adventures, undiscovered realities, mysteries, or new parts of our world. The collected stories cover the gamut from spectacular to mediocre. The span between the excellent and inadequate seemed a bit greater than what is normally found in anthologies, but perhaps that was only my experience. My rating is based on the majority of the stories which I liked enough to highly recommended the whole collection. One of the weakest stories was the first one for me, which actually had me considering setting this collection aside.

Contents include: "The Light Long Lost at Sea" by An Owomoyela; "The Cleft of Bones" by Kate Elliott; "The Voyage of Brenya " by Carrie Vaughn; "Comfort Lodge, Enigma Valley" by Charles Yu; "The Expedition Stops for the Evening at the Foot of the Mountain Pass" by Genevieve Valentine; "Down in the Dim Kingdoms" by Tobias S. Buckell; "Those Who Have Gone" by C.C. Finlay; "An Account, by Dr. Inge Kühn, of the Summer Expedition and Its Discoveries" by E. Lily Yu; "Out of the Dark" by James L. Cambias; "Endosymbiosis" by Darcie Little Badger; "The Orpheus Gate" by Jonathan Maberry; "Hotel Motel Holiday Inn" by Dexter Palmer; "On the Cold Hill Side" by Seanan McGuire; "The Return of Grace Malfrey" by Jeffrey Ford; "The Tomb Ship" by Becky Chambers; "Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology" by Theodora Goss; "There, She Didn’t Need Air to Fill Her Lungs" by Cadwell Turnbull.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Grim Oaks Press via NetGalley.
The review will be published on Barnes & Noble, Edelweiss, Google Books, and Amazon.

This book was definitely a mixed bag for me. Some of the stories were really fantastic, some were just ok and some were pretty meh. I've always found anthologies to be a lot of fun because you can just pick them up, read one short story and put the book down without desperately needing to read the next to get answers. I struggled to be invested to read the whole books worth of stories because I'd lose motivation when I came to a story that just didn't have the entertainment factor of the really good ones, however I'm glad I finished it because the stories that were really great made up for the ones I found boring. I was given a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, thank you NetGalley.

Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms is a worthwhile collection of stories written by well-recognized authors. As with most anthologies, not all stories spoke to me, but, overall, the quality is above average and so I would recommend it to readers looking for good short stories.

I don't always read the introductions to books, but I'm glad I did this time. The books that Adams cites as inspiration; King Solomon's Mines, The Lost World, etc. were some of my favourite stories as a young teenager. Reading through this collection of stories instantly transported me back to those times. It was such a satisfying feeling of nostalgia mixed with entirely new characters and stories. A very effective modernisation of an old genre.

I won't review each story separately, but my favourites were this subset;
Comfort Lodge, Enigma Valley by Charles Yu
The Voyage of Brenya by Carrie Vaughn
Down in the Dim Kingdoms by Tobias S. Buckell
Hotel Motel Holiday Inn by Dexter Palmer
On the Cold Hill Side by Seanan McGuire
Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology by Theodora Goss

I would give the average rating of all the stories a 3,5/5 but all of the above were at least a 4. I would also say there were no stories that I thought were genuinely bad or poorly written. Which I was pleasantly surprised by. You would think with the law of averages, there would be at least one I disliked, but no. There was true quality in the selection of authors and their submitted work.

I would happily recommend it to fans of anthologies and the old tales of adventure.

This is a difficult anthology to rate. Some stories were great, and then there were those wtf did I just read making no sense and wanting my time back. One of the weakest was the first story, I just couldn't understand why this was a lead story and I wondered if it was part of a story arc of this author that we were dropped into, I almost stopped reading the book thinking if all are like this ... however I'm glad I did continue on because some are really good and make you think. Especially liked the Seanan Mcguire, with the world right now, was really good. Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a copy for an honest review.

I have mixed feelings about this anthology, as it has some stories that were very imaginative and well written, but also has a lot of mediocre (and worse) ones. Below I rated each of the stories individually, with a few words about impressions and/or subject.


The Light Long Lost at Sea by An Owomoyela - 1.5/5★
After reading it, I looked to see if the author has a book or series that this might be a companion of, because I was sure this isn’t a standalone story; but apparently it is, though there’s nothing much to understand from it: not the world, not the magic, not what happened to the world and the magic, not what happened/happens to the characters. This is the story: a woman asks her former girlfriend to come see what a certain anomaly in the sea is, which turns out to be a magical residue from the Empire (?), and the ex-girlfriend has magical powers and a male friend who appears out of nowhere and disappears suddenly... If you didn’t understand anything from this, it’s exactly like the story, so don’t worry.

The Cleft of Bones by Kate Elliott - 3.5/5★
A story of slaves and kindness. The world is better developed than in the first story, the main character inspired, so this one was a decent standalone.

The Voyage of Brenya by Carrie Vaughn - 3.5/5★
A nice story about how legends/faiths come to be born, and how songs & ballads have their own life. I think the mythological landmark in this one is Stonehenge.

Comfort Lodge, Enigma Valley by Charles Yu - 1/5★
Wtf was this?! This ‘story’ is comprised of very weird reviews for a hotel/motel.

The Expedition Stops for the Evening at the Foot of the Mountain Pass by Genevieve Valentine - 2/5★
A story about an expedition where the members know many of them will die / have a very high chance of dying. Way too many characters for such a short story and rather unclear storyline!

Down in the Dim Kingdoms by Tobias S. Buckell - 3/5★
A quite decent story about a psycho 17yo girl; the part about the adventurers rings so true.

Those Who Have Gone by C.C. Finlay - 3.5/5★
This one seemed to me the most real and possible, a story about a ~18yo girl who dates a 30-ish guy and wants to break up with him, but is afraid of him.

An Account, by Dr. Inge Kühn, of the Summer Expedition and Its Discoveries by E. Lily Yu - 3.5/5★
This was an interesting one: it’s 2050 and the ice shelves have melted. Three scientists are working at the Polar Station in Antarctica when they find a geological feature that is not on any map, so they decide to study it.

Out of the Dark by James L. Cambias - 3.5/5★
A team of two competitive men who search space habitats that are deserted or inhabited by people who reverted to primitiveness, to repossess them.

Endosymbiosis by Darcie Little Badger - 3/5★
A story about an oceanographer and the sirens’ call.

The Orpheus Gate by Jonathan Maberry - 4/5★
A scientist (the grand-granddaughter of Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger) is visited by a friend of her grandmothers and gets her world and beliefs shaken.

Hotel Motel Holiday Inn by Dexter Palmer - 3/5★
Salesmen who travel often and must stay in hotels and motels meet and exchange stories and particularities of these lodgings. This reminded me of the fourth story ("Comfort Lodge, Enigma Valley" by Charles Yu), but I found it better written and much more easily to grasp.

On the Cold Hill Side by Seanan McGuire - 4/5★
A disappearing island keeps coming back every hundred years or so, and now the US government wants to find out more about it and its inhabitants.

The Return of Grace Malfrey by Jeffrey Ford - 1/5★
The second time in this collection: WTF did I just read?!” A little girl disappears out of thin air and ‘teleports’ in a town where she’s 16yo and works in a factory, sorting human hands..

The Tomb Ship by Becky Chambers - 4/5★
A story about a space miner, a queen and a computer that finds a loophole in a protocol – quite interesting one, and quite well written.

Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology by Theodora Goss - 4/5★
Nice story 3 teens writing a letter to a publication, about a story they invented, and how it affects their lives. I also liked how it was delivered, as a letter with annotations from all three friends.

There, She Didn’t Need Air to Fill Her Lungs by Cadwell Turnbull - 2.5/5★
Good idea at the base, but I never knew who was telling the story. I figured what was happening to the girls early on, but I didn’t get the ending..

Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms is a collection of stories featuring people discovering new places in various settings and shades of realism.

I haven't read an anthology in a while and thought that this would be a good place to start for me! From the cover and the description, I thought this book would be mostly fantasy stories revisiting worlds like Avalon, El Dorado, and other places with new perspectives. These stories feature all new worlds and the vast majority are sci-fi. I'm not as much of a sci-fi fan and so was a little disappointed at the content. I ended up skipping some of the stories that had the word "spaceship" in the first paragraph so I could get to the fantasy stories. I also sometimes take some time to adjust to world building and that was hard when the stories aren't that long. The stories that I did read and enjoy were very cool and had some interesting concepts that I hadn't encountered before.

If you are a fan of sci-fi and world building, I'd totally recommend this book! If not, I would skip. 2.65 stars rounded up to 3. Thank you to Grim Oak Press and NetGally for the advanced reader's copy of this book!

I will admit to having been drawn to this collection because of one particular author (Becky Chambers) but being quite excited to read from a bunch of different authors some of whom were new to me, others familiar. Overall, I think this is an excellent mix of stories with a truly wonderful theme that has clearly inspired this group of authors in a lot of different ways. Did every story work for me? No! But isn't finding the stories that *do* work part of the joy of collections like this anyway? I of course adored Becky Chambers' story but stories of imaginary anthropology, worlds under the icecaps, logbooks of adventures to far off lands - all of these captured my imagination and flung me off to far off places! I think this is a book that many will find joy and wonder in, it's something to keep and to flick through and to reread a story here and there when you need a bit of an escape.
This is yet another collection I am delighted to have read and I look forward to delving back through it a second time and digging into some of the backlists of the authors within!

My rating: 3.75/5 stars (some stories were definitely 5 star though)

When it comes to anthologies, I always say that you never know what you are going to get. Most end up being middle of the line, and that is the case with this collection as well. Aside from a couple of outliers, the vast majority of the stories in this were very mediocre.

My biggest fault with this collection is that I felt that a lot of the contributing authors didn't understand the assignment. To me, a lot of the stories saw the theme and then tried to stretch it as far as they could, or looked the other way.

It could just be me, but when I think of lost worlds and mythological kingdoms, I think of something along the lines of the Uncharted games. What I got instead were a lot of sci-fi stories, which I consider to be cheating a bit considering the nature of sci-fi, and simply just not enough discovery of places that were neither lost nor mythological.

Thank you, NetGalley and Grim Oak Press, for giving me the opportunity to review this in advance.

The writing cast of this anthology is such a strong one. Talk about all star! Individually, I don't think there was a bad story. There were some stories that didn't really resonate with me, but I don't think any of them were bad. Two absolute standouts were one framed as a series of Yelp-like reviews and another one dealing with an Antarctic exploration post-polar ice cap melt. Ultimately, however, I didn't find myself the biggest fan of this anthology overall. I thought it felt too crammed; some stories got lost in the shuffle and ended up being a bit forgettable. I also felt that the ordering of the stories felt a bit random. It's hard to put my finger on. But for me I think these stories are stronger on their own rather than all together. I think it would've been better as a smaller collection (or two smaller ones), maybe a fantasy-leaning one and then a sci-fi leaning one. All in all, I wasn't the biggest fan but still found things to enjoy.

I always love anthologies - the chance to start and finish a story over breakfast, the chance to watch favorite authors stretch their wings and try new ideas, and the chance to sample new ones is always something I look forward to. The theme this one was created around is “Lost Worlds,” as in *The Lost World* by Arthur Conan Doyle. Hidden worlds waiting to be discovered. Not a new idea, but one that hasn’t been done much in recent years.

The contributing authors, in no particular order, are Tobias S. Buckell, Becky Chambers, Kate Elliott, Jeffrey Ford, Theodora Goss, Darcie Little Badger, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, An Owomoyela, Dexter Palmer, Cadwell Turnbull, Genevieve Valentine, Carrie Vaughn, Charles Yu, and E. Lily Yu. I knew of many of these authors beforehand, but the only ones I’m really familiar with are Becky Chambers and Seanan McGuire. And with McGuire I’ve only ever read one book and one short story, so I was going in with not much in the way of expectations.

I wasn’t exactly *disappointed* in this anthology, but I think my expectations might have been a bit high. (The last two anthologies I have read were *From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back* and *The Book of Dragons*, both of which were absolutely stellar.) (Pun intended.) Nothing in here was bad by any stretch, but at the same time this didn’t send me rushing off to add a few dozen books to Mt. Readmore.

That being said, there were some excellent stories here. The standouts:

* “Down in the Dim Kingdoms” by Tobias S. Buckell. A girl is taking a trip to an underground civilization, along with her grandfather who had discovered (and conquered) it in his youth.

* “The Tomb Ship” by Becky Chambers. An asteroid miner finds an intact derelict, the palace warship of a long-dead tyrant of her home planet. With a fully functional A.I.

* “The Return of Grace Malfrey” by Jeffrey Ford. Lovecraftian-story of a girl who disappears as a child and reappears years later, having spent the intervening time in a nightmarish other world.

* “Pellargonia: A Letter to the *Journal of Imaginary Anthropology*” by Theodora Goss. It’s written in the form of a letter to an academic journal by three teenagers who managed, while doing a worldbuilding game, to accidentally create a real, living nation.

* “The Voyage of Brenya” by Carrie Vaughn. A woman from (I would say) early Medieval Britain sets off across the ocean in a small boat, hoping to reach the land of the gods and demand they come answer her people’s prayers for aid.

*THE* standout, for me, was “Pellargonia.” I work with teenagers in my day job, and Goss absolutely nailed this. *The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter* is being added to the queue.

Many thanks to Grim Oak for the ARC. Comes out March 8.