A Fantasy Medley 3

I requested A Fantasy Medley from Netgalley pretty much because of Kevin Hearne. Then Laura Bickle rang a bell as the author of The Hallowed Ones, which I liked; and then Jacqueline Carey registered as the author of Kushiel's Dart, which was not to my taste. But, all in all, I asked for it because of the ancient Irish bloke and his dog.
I'm disappointed.
The story – "Goddess at the Crossroad" – was not good. In brief: Atticus tells his apprentice the tale of that time he heard about this Shakespeare bloke and went to England to look him up, and ended up saving his life from witches. I didn't like the tale; I didn't like the way it was told; I didn't like Atticus, Oberon, drunken Shakespeare, or the apprentice whose name I don't remember. I disliked it all so much that I had to go back to my review of Hounded to verify that I actually did like it. And … I loved the dog? Really? Okay. Not this time; without his interjections and interruptions I might feel disposed to rate this higher. Based on this story I would never continue with the series. Two stars for this one.

"Ashes" by Laura Bickle is set in a very different place from The Hallowed Ones, following a pretty unique character ("Detroit arson investigator and powerful spirit medium Anya Kalinczyk" – that's kind of awesome) as she chases down an arsenous elemental before it burns down the city. I liked it. I didn't love it; I was uncomfortable with the main character going about consuming others' souls; but I wouldn't turn down more adventures with Anya and her familiar Sparky. Three and a half stars.

“The Death of Aiguillon” by Aliette de Bodard reminded me of Paula Volsky's [book:Illusion|467457], taking place in the ruins of Paris – of a Paris. It's grim and beautiful, and unpredictable, both gritty and poetic. Impressive. Four and a half stars.

[book:Kushiel's Dart|153008] was not my cup of tea, but I never argued with the skill of the writing – and Jacqueline Carey's hard-edged lyricism was very much evident in “One Hundred Ablutions”. That was impressive. That was shatteringly impressive. A solid five stars.

The gentleman was very much outclassed by the ladies in this collection – but what a weird collection of stories it is. There's no theme, no rhyme nor reason to their being together in one book except the big umbrella of "fantasy". The first two are borderline comedic, with a talking dog and Sparky the salamander and action movie violence – urban fantasy, though the city of the Hearne story was 17th century London; the second two are elegant and dark, with violence more likely to cost a civilization, or a soul – high fantasy. I suppose one could look at it as a sort of technical overview of what the genre can include. It would be more successful at that task if all four entries were of the same level.

I received the collection from Netgalley for review.

Aight, even though I only gave it 3.5 stars in total, I immensely enjoyed reading Rogues last year. I always thought I wasn't into short stories, yet not only Rogues but also this Fantasy Medley proved otherwise.

This short story collection contains four stories by four different writers. The fact that it's called a medley made me think it were four similar stories, but none of that was true. Each story is quite different from the others, which was something I really enjoyed. I'm going to rate each story separately:

"Goddess at the Crossroads" by Kevin Hearne (3 stars)

A story based around the protagonist of the Iron Druid Chronicles: a male druid called Atticus. It starts off with him sitting by a campfire with his apprentice. He's telling her a story of how, in 1604, he disguised himself as the French Marquis de Crèvecoeur so he could get near to Shakespeare. After he succeeded in this, he and Shakespeare went on a witch hunt together in the middle of the night and here we are told of how Shakespeare used this experience for writing about Hecate and the three other witches in his 'MacBeth'.

I have to shamefully admit that I'm quite ignorant when it comes to Shakespeare. I have a few books of him on my shelves but never came to reading them. So when someone mentions Shakespeare, I can only think of the movie Shakespeare in Love or conjure up an image of Leonardo DiCaprio in his early years. But I'm digressing...My point was that I've only heard of MacBeth, but don't know what it actually entails, which is probably a big plus to appreciating this story.

However, I liked it anyways. Sentences like:" "You don't read Hamlet and think, "This man could not avoid stepping in shit every day of his life." " are priceless to me.

It didn't really strike my definition of Fantasy, but there was paranormal stuff, gory stuff, humour and druid powers. Healing charms? Awesome! Makes me interested in reading the Iron Druid Chronicles for sure.

"Ashes" by Laura Bickle (3 stars)

A very different story involving Anya, an arson investigator for the Detroit Fire Department who also happens to be a powerful spirit medium who can literally devour spirits! She has a salamander familiar named Sparky, who can track down spirits and is invisible to the regular human eye.

When Detroit is celebrating yet another year of banishing the evil Nain Rouge (Wikipedia: "In 2010, a community-based movement began a tradition of a costumed community parade in the Midtown/Cass Corridor neighborhood. Called the Marche du Nain Rouge. At the conclusion of the parade, an effigy of the imp was destroyed, thus banishing the evil spirit from the city for another year. Each year, parade participants and spectators are encouraged to wear costumes so that when the Nain Rouge next returns, he will not recognize the persons who once again ousted him from the city limits and thus will not be able to seek personal vengeance."), Anya spots a gnome running through the streets while setting things on fire with his glowing hands. It soon turns out she's pursuing the ACTUAL Nain Rouge, who's now a destructive fire elemental.

Along the pursuit, she meets up with Charon, a paranormal something guy who's job is to bring bad spirits and demons to Hell.

While I enjoyed this story in general, there were some aspects that threw me off a little. Like a few revelations that were made which were quite a big of a deal, but a bit out of proportion for a short story. While I'm sure the fans of the Anya Kalinczyk-series, where this story is set in, will appreciate these facts, new readers like me are just bound to be a tat bit baffled by it. It's like showing someone who's never heard of Star Wars the few seconds where Darth Vader tells Luke he's his father. It's seemingly a very important piece of information, but all you can do is shrug then, right?

Reasons I did enjoy this story is that it's fast-paced and fun and reminded me of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' April O'Neil at one point. Anya is nothing like April O'Neil, but badass chick running through a sewer mkay)

The ending was pretty cool as well and a giant invisible pet salamander just screams awesomeness.

"The Death of Aiguillon" by Aliette de Bodard (4 stars)

This story takes place sixty years prior to the start of the Dominion of the Fallen-series. The first book came out in August 2015 and I'm very curious about it after reading 'The Death of Aiguillon'.

It's a dystopian story set in a Paris which is suffering from a big war, a magical war between the Houses spread out over the city. Houses are like factions, living in mansions, each mansion occupied with a rich, magical 'family'. Huyen, a kitchen maid at the House of Aiguillon has been able to escape while soldiers murdered pretty much the rest of her House...except for a Fallen called Mandias, a bit of a dark angel you might say.

Houseless people now live a grim life, having to live in camps and kill and scavenge things just to survive.

It's not easy to describe what this story is about without giving too much away. All I can say is that this is some fantastic world building with such a grim atmosphere, you can't help but being dragged into it.

"One Hundred Ablutions" by Jacqueline Carey (4 stars)

This is the only story which isn't part of a series and also the only story which is set in a different world than the one we live in. It tells the tale of Dala, a young woman chosen by her people’s overlords, the Shaladan, to be an exalted slave among slaves.

This was a very interesting and enjoyable story. At first, I assumed all the characters were human, but it turned out they are part of completely different races. The author lets you discover these things bit by bit, which is great for building up the plot.

I loved the world setting. It reads a bit like it's taking place in some Arabic country, with a desert close by and the Shaladan all having Arabic names. The characters were well defined, especially for a short story, and everything just adds up in the end. There are no cliffhangers, open endings or whatnot; just a finished story.
That doesn't mean there isn't a possibility of delving deeper into this world. I know I, for one, would love to read more about it!

One of the races is the Jagan, which reminded me a lot of the Khajiit from the Elder Scrolls video game series. That certainly adds another factor of coolness to the story.

All in all, I don't know why this book has such low ratings on Goodreads. I certainly liked it and if you're into Fantasy or just paranormal stories, I would certainly recommend reading it when you get the chance. It might even get you to love short stories as much as I do! I'm giving it 3.5 stars in total.

Edit: I do have to say I think the cover is a bit shite, but that might be just me.

Wonderful! Will review on Amazon and Goodreads on Tuesday!

All three novellas are STELLAR.

A collection of short stories can be hard to rate since each tale needs to be judged by itself and in relation to the others in the collection. With A Fantasy Medley 3, Yanni Kuznia has brought together four disparate authors with tales from three series and one that feels like it may be in a series someday. I thoroughly enjoyed Atticus' tale of helping Shakespeare find inspiration. I also enjoyed Laura Bickle's arson investigator and will need to look up the novels in the series. Aliette De Bodard's fantasy about an alternate Paris was different and disturbing. Jacqueline Carey's tale which seemed to be set in a strange India filled with multiple alien races reminded me why I do not read her so much any more. Chances are that you will find at least one story here to enjoy if you like gook storytelling.