Carl Engle-Laird

A collection of shorts published on the Tor website. Very much a curate's egg of a book; some stories I liked very much, others I thought not very good (either stylistically or subject matter). Some authors are better at writing short fiction than others or have some short pieces that serve as a good introduction to their work, others, let's say I won't be looking out for them! The stories were mostly science fiction or urban fantasy; there wasn't much in the way of more traditional fantasy show more (but it's rather difficult to pack a multi-volume epic into a short story).

On the whole enjoyable, and good reading for the daily commute as you can easily fit a story in each way. show less

For me, Ellen Datlow is one of the finest anthologists around, so it should be no surprise that this is a superb collection of fiction. If there is any surprise at all, it is perhaps that she could only pick from short fiction published by tor.com the previous year, but I think that the quality of the volume says a great deal about the quality of the work on Tor.



There's not a single story on here that i would consider poor - the vast majority I scored 4- or 5- stars and, for those I didn't, show more it was more that they were simply not my type of thing. For instance, there were a couple that I thought more vignettes for sketches, not fleshed out enough to be trues stories, but I know that is something of a personal taste issue.



The real joy of this collection, though, is that it has introduced me to so many authors I may otherwise never have come across but are now no-questions-asked purchases. I can't wait to get to the other tor.com "some of the best" volumes.




I've reviewed the tales individually as I've gone along, so will just give the ratings here.


Clover by Charlie Jane Anders - 5/5

The Art of Space Travel by Nina Allen - 4/5

The Destroyer by Tara Isabella Burton 4/5

Traumphysik by Monica Byrne 2/5

The High Lonesome Frontier by Rebecca Campbell - 4/5

Lullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard 3/5

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djeli Clark 5/5

Breaking Water by Indrapramit Das 5/5

Autobiography of a Traitor and a Half Savage by Alix E. Harrow 5/5

The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin 5/5

Everything that isn't winter by Margaret Killjoy 4/5/

The Weight of Memories by Cixin Liu 3/5

The Maiden Thief by Melissa Marr 4/5

The Caretakers by David Nickle 3/5

Your Orisons May Be Recorded by Laurie Penny 4/5

meat drink by Daniel Polansky 3/5

The Three Lines of Sonata James by Lettie Prell 4/5

The Great Detective by Delia Sherman 3/5

Finnegan's Field by Angela Slatter 4/5

The Weather by Caughlan Smith 3/5

Terminal by Lavie Tidhar 5/5

Her Scales Shine Like Music by Rajnar Vajra 5/5

La beaute sans vertu by Genevieve Valentine 5/5

That Game We Played During the War by Carrie Vaughn 5/5

A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong 5/5 show less

Normally I'd go with

A four star for this, because for a good price there is almost a thousand pages of fiction, and unlike many, most of it doesn't suffer from obscenely obvious plot errors for the sake of ACTION. On the other hand, most of it is not the sort of fiction I like. I don't know why modern publishing venues refuse to categorize and just lump all fantasy, Science Fiction, Horror & many others under 'Speculative Fiction'!. Those categories were INVENTED to separate subgenres show more because many of us want one type and not another. show less

This is a great collection - of so many stories I don't think I could pick out a favorite, and I'm definitely not going to review it item by item like I usually do. This is good stuff, though, with several award-winners and many others that probably should have been.