Anthologies That I Love

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I don't know if I've made this obvious on this blog yet, but I love anthologies. I love full-length novels, but there's also a special place in my heart for short story collections. So, I've decided to spread the love and discuss some of my favorite collections.


  
Wastelands and Wastelands 2 Edited by John Joseph Adams

Genre: Post-apocalyptic & Science Fiction

Synopsis (Goodreads): Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence - the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon - these are our guides through the Wastelands.

From the Book of Revelation to The Road Warrior, from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving eschatological tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. In doing so, these visionary authors have addressed one of the most challenging and enduring themes of imaginative fiction: The nature of life in the aftermath of total societal collapse.

Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction - including George R. R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King - Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon. Whether the end of the world comes through nuclear war, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm, these are tales of survivors, in some cases struggling to rebuild the society that was, in others, merely surviving, scrounging for food in depopulated ruins and defending themselves against monsters, mutants, and marauders.

Wastelands delves into this bleak landscape, uncovering the raw human emotion and heart-pounding thrills at the genre's core.



The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror Edited by Paula Guran. This is an annual release which started in 2010 and continues to today.

Genre: Fantasy & Horror

Synopsis (Goodreads):  The supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real . . . tales of the dark. Such stories have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting traditions of the past while inventing imaginative new ways to unsettle us. Chosen from a wide variety of venues, these stories are as eclectic and varied as shadows. This volume of 2018's best dark fantasy and horror offers more than five hundred pages of tales from some of today's finest writers of the fantastique--sure to delight as well as disturb. 



Am I Blue?: Coming Out of the Silence Edited by Marion Dane Bauer

Genre: LGBT, Young Adult

Synopsis (Goodreads): Each of these stories is original, each is by a noted author for young adults, and each honestly portrays its subject and theme--growing up gay or lesbian, or with gay or lesbian parents or friends.



Places I Never Meant to Be: Original Stories by Censored Writers Edited by Judy Blume

Genre: Fiction

Synopsis (Goodreads): "What effect does [the climate of censorship] have on a writer?....It's chilling.
It's easy to become discouraged, to second-guess everything you write. There seemed to be no one to stand up to the censors....so I began to speak out about my experiences. And once I did, I found that I wasn't as alone as I'd thought."
-- from Judy Blume's introduction to Places I Never Meant to Be

Judy Blume is not alone: Many of today's most distinguished authors of books for young people have found their work censored or challenged. Eleven of them have contributed original stories to this collection. Along with a story written by the late Norma Klein when she was a student at Barnard College, they comprise a stunning literary achievement as well as a battle cry against censorship.



Firebirds: An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction Edited by Sharyn November 

Genre: Fantasy & Science Fiction

Synopsis (Goodreads): Firebirds is more than simply an anthology -- it is a celebration of wonderful writing. It gathers together sixteen original stories by some of today's finest writers of fantasy and science fiction. Together, they have won virtually every major prize -- from the National Book Award to the World Fantasy Award to the Newbery Medal -- and have made best-seller lists worldwide. These authors, including Lloyd Alexander (The Chronicles of Prydain), Diana Wynne Jones (The Merlin Conspiracy), Garth Nix (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Patricia A. McKillip (Ombria in Shadow), Meredith Ann Pierce (The Darkangel Trilogy), and Nancy Farmer (The House of the Scorpion), each with his or her own inimitable style, tell stories that will entertain, provoke, startle, amuse, and resonate long after the last page has been turned.The writers featured in Firebirds all share a connection to Firebird Books, an imprint that is dedicated to publishing the best fantasy and science fiction for teenage and adult readers.



Toil and Trouble Edited By Tess Sharpe & Jessica Spotswood

Genre: Fantasy & Paranormal

Synopsis (Goodreads): Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

Glinda the Good Witch. Elphaba the Wicked Witch. Willow. Sabrina. Gemma Doyle. The Mayfair Witches. Ursula the Sea Witch. Morgan le Fey. The three weird sisters from Macbeth.

History tells us women accused of witchcraft were often outsiders: educated, independent, unmarried, unwilling to fall in line with traditional societal expectations.

Bold. Powerful. Rebellious.

A bruja’s traditional love spell has unexpected results. A witch’s healing hands begin to take life instead of giving it when she ignores her attraction to a fellow witch. In a terrifying future, women are captured by a cabal of men crying witchcraft and the one true witch among them must fight to free them all. In a desolate past, three orphaned sisters prophesize for a murderous king. Somewhere in the present, a teen girl just wants to kiss a boy without causing a hurricane.

From good witches to bad witches, to witches who are a bit of both, this is an anthology of diverse witchy tales from a collection of diverse, feminist authors. The collective strength of women working together—magically or mundanely--has long frightened society, to the point that women’s rights are challenged, legislated against, and denied all over the world. Toil & Trouble delves deep into the truly diverse mythology of witchcraft from many cultures and feminist points of view, to create modern and unique tales of witchery that have yet to be explored.



Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd Edited by Holly Black & Cecil Castellucci

Genre: Fiction, Young Adult

Synopsis (Goodreads): Acclaimed authors Holly Black (Ironside) and Cecil Castellucci (Boy Proof) have united in geekdom to edit short stories from some of the best selling and most promising geeks in young adult literature: M.T. Anderson, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, John Green, Tracy Lynn, Cynthia and Greg Leitich Smith, David Levithan, Kelly Link, Barry Lyga, Wendy Mass, Garth Nix, Scott Westerfield, Lisa Yee, and Sara Zarr.

With illustrated interstitials from comic book artists Hope Larson and Bryan Lee
O'Malley, Geektastic covers all things geeky, from Klingons and Jedi Knights to fan fiction, theater geeks, and cosplayers. Whether you're a former, current, or future geek, or if you just want to get in touch with your inner geek, Geektastic will help you get your geek on!



Those are just a handful of anthologies that I love. Do you have any favorites? What's your opinion on anthologies?

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Blogtober Day 28: The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018 is an anthology of dark fantasy and horror stories. It was edited by Paula Guran and contains more than twenty stories, each by a different author. This is the ninth edition of the yearly anthology that Guran has edited and released.

Since The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018 is a collection of stories, and contains so many, this review is going to be a little different than my other reviews. With around 30 stories, there's no way I could review every single one of them without making this review unbearably long. At the same time, I can't give a review of the book as a whole, since each story is so different. Instead, I'm going to talk about five stories: three that were my most favorite, and the two I disliked the most.

The Crow Palace by Priya Sharma is the story of a woman named Julie who returns home following the death of her father. She left him and her sister, with cerebral palsy, years ago and has only returned to bury her father and take care of a few last minute things. While she's visiting, she uncovers a dark family secret. I think the reason why I enjoyed this story so much was because it subverted my expectations. Julie's family has a very strange connection with birds, which is apparent on the first page. What the connection is, and how deep it goes, is revealed much later. The thing that made this story stick in my mind, though, was the final revelation regarding the birds.  I won't spoil the ending, but let's just say, Julie's assumption about what the birds did, and who they did it to, is wrong.

The Little Mermaid in Passing by Angela Slatter can best be described as telling the story of the Little Mermaid from the Sea Witch's perspective. In the original fairytale, the reader doesn't ever learn why the Sea Witch would help the Little Mermaid. In the Disney film, Ursula obviously has a masterplan to take over the ocean, but the original story never reveals that. I liked this story because it took a story I already knew, and showed it from a different angle. Much like other stories such as Wicked, it made me rethink how I viewed the "villain". I found the writing style and the direction the story went in to be unique and unexpected as well.

Secret Keeper by Bonnie Jo Stuffelbeam I would categorize as halfway between psychological horror and teen drama. The story takes place almost entirely in a high school. It tells the story of a Ghost Girl, who isn't dead and lives in the bowels of the school, who begins training Chrissie, an actress in the school musical, to sing better.  If this set-up sounds like Phantom of the Opera, but with the Phantom having a different gender, that's because it kind of is. While the set-ups are similar, the plots are different. The Ghost Girl wants something different from what the Phantom wanted. The ending was unexpected as well, since it's ambiguous regarding what was and wasn't reality.


Moon, and Memory, and Muchness by Katherine Vaz tells the story of a woman grieving the loss of her child who encounters a little girl that reminds her of her deceased daughter. She owns a tea shop and the girl and her mother become regular customers. The story is chock full of Alice in Wonderland references as well.It's somewhat of a thriller, but I wasn't a huge fan. It's not a bad story, just one with weird pacing. The story goes from 0 to 100 very suddenly, then back to 0, and I don't feel there was enough build-up beforehand.

Survival Strategies by Helen Marshall is the story of a British scholar going to New York to do a piece of a famous horror author, who's supposed to be Stephen King, but isn't. This was my least favorite story, mostly because not a lot happens. She does some research, talks to the author's ex-editor and that's pretty much it. Scenes of the narrator talking about the author's career are interspersed with her mentioning how bleak and tense things are in the world due to politics. Perhaps some might find the story suspenseful, but I didn't. The only way this story is connected to horror is that the author she's researching, who never appears, writes horror.

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror series, for a lack of a better term, is one of my favorite releases, because its one of the ways I find new authors. It's also where I find some of the most interesting and creative stories. I feel like authors of short stories are more willing to take risks and try new things than with full length novels.

Rating: 3.5 stars. I didn't love every story, but I liked the collection as a whole.