Gavin J. Grant

In 2008 I was busy moving out of my parents’ house and going to university in another city to complete a reading-intensive English Literature and History degree, so I was understandably out of touch with the current publishing trends in my favourite genre. And yet, if this collection showcasing the “year’s best” fantasy and horror is anything to go by, I apparently wasn’t missing out on much… Reading this collection was honestly a slog, and I am hard pressed to recall any stories show more that stood out to me from the over 2 months it took to get from cover to cover. What I do recall is a decidedly sharp focus on stories with strong horror elements and a preponderance of tales with overtly obnoxious chauvinist tone. I’m talking stories where all the women are typified by the male gaze, the protagonists mansplain ad nauseum to the reader, and are narrated via storytelling that relies on shock value, violence, and expectedly sordid mystery to get us to the finale. Honestly, very few of the tales made it past the first few pages for me, and I regularly found myself throwing the collection down in disgust to pick up literally anything else on my TBR to remedy my reading mood. It’s really too bad that the collection was so disappointing, because I was looking forward to getting into some short stories, discovering some new authors, and revisiting a time period in publishing that I seemingly missed out on. So much for nostalgia always being a positive recollection, I guess… show less

This one, I was not expecting to like. I thought I'd enjoy it, because I like Kelly Link, and a couple of her stories would be in there. But it's an anthology, so it's a crapshoot and what are the odds of most of the stories being phenomenal? I guess when your editors are Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, your odds are pretty damn high. It's an amazing book. Some of the best writing I've come across in years, certainly the best collection of short stories I've ever encountered.

The writing! show more Great writing! By many people all in one place in short stories! Wow! ahem, sorry, it still blows my mind. I took about two weeks to read this because I didn't want to rush the sheer pleasure of the activity. This is the book I would recommend as an ambassador to people who like literary fiction but hate sci-fi, people who refuse to read zines, people who read nothing but sci-fi/fantasy and are afraid of literary fiction. Well, ok, I'd recommend it for practically everybody. It's not good, it's brilliant. show less

I was looking for something to shake up my reading habits of late, so I figured that a collection of short stories that fit into the Halloween season would be perfect. This collection promised an exploration of themes around monsters and how they interact with the "normal" world, and each of the stories definitely delivers. I hadn't been exposed to most of the authors heron as well, so it was nice getting a taste of new authors and a few of them I'll definitely be looking into further.

One show more of my favourite stories was Paolo Bacigalupi's "Moriabe's Children", which used humanity's preternatural fear of the sea and the creatures that dwell within to draw the reader in. The protagonist is a young girlwho feels a strange kinship with the kraken of the deep, even though they killed her father and are traditionally feared by her village. Yet unlike the villagers Aliane knows that worse monsters lurk within humanity - those who are cruel, self-serving, and violent against their own kind while masqerading as regular members of society. In a sense, this story sets the pace and tone for the whole collection, because it epitomizes the major theme that the collection explores: we may call supernatural creatures monsters, but maybe it is the flaws within humanity which makes us the real monsters. show less

I bought a copy of 'Monstrous Affections' off eBay for one story, 'Wings in the Morning', which I understood was a sequel to [b:In Other Lands|31944679|In Other Lands|Sarah Rees Brennan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1496783711l/31944679._SY75_.jpg|52603350] by Sarah Rees Brennan. As that was a YA fantasy romance, I anticipated that the rest of this anthology would be similar. The blurb states, 'Fifteen top voices in fantasy fiction explore the show more intersection of fear and love, of monsters and men, and our fatal attraction to what hides in the shadows'. From this I subsequently inferred that there would be banging. To my surprise, there is barely a mention of sex in the whole book. I was pleasantly disconcerted to discover that many of the stories weren't romances, focusing instead on friendship and familial love. There are also a few sci-fi settings to break up the urban, supernatural, and other fantasy worlds. The stories are consistently YA, though, as without exception the protagonists are teenagers or student age.

I did not initially intend to read the entire thing in just over a day, as the plan was to use it as light relief from [b:Little Dorrit|31250|Little Dorrit|Charles Dickens|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1496619146l/31250._SY75_.jpg|80851]. Then my period arrived and I needed a distraction from the pain. 'Monstrous Affections' was ideal for this, as it's very easy to read and contains a suitably interesting variety of fantastical concepts. As it turned out, 'Wings in the Morning' proved rather a let-down. It's fun and engaging in exactly the same way as [b:In Other Lands|31944679|In Other Lands|Sarah Rees Brennan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1496783711l/31944679._SY75_.jpg|52603350], but only adds a different point of view on the same events of the novel (Luke's, rather than Elliot's). I had hoped to find out what happened next and did not. On the other hand, several other stories exceeded my expectations. The most moving and atmospheric was 'Left Foot, Right' by [a:Nalo Hopkinson|27528|Nalo Hopkinson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1361387199p2/27528.jpg]. A memorable portrait of grief and the clear highlight of the book. Several stories transpose demonic elements into the American suburbs, or even present Hell as a suburb in 'Son of Abyss'. As American suburbs already seem uncanny and horrifying to me without the need for demons, I found that these fell a bit flat. I preferred the convincingly intense teenage girl friendships and ghostly happenings in 'The New Boyfriend' and 'Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying'. These two stories have more imaginative and unexpected details, rather than just giving high schoolers horns and tails.

Other stories had appealing world-building without making a strong impression overall, particularly 'Quick Hill' and 'Moriabe's Children'. In the latter, I liked the background kraken lore while finding the plot limited even for 24 pages. That's always a point of tension with short stories, how much plot can and should be crammed in. It seems like a very difficult art. Too little plot, and characterisation and setting will need to be exceptional to compensate. Conversely, there is always a risk of trying to cram too much into a small space, such that events appear truncated. This latter was notable in, 'Ten Rules For Being An Intergalactic Smuggler (the Successful Kind)'. Nonetheless, there were no stories in this anthology that I disliked or was bored by. They all had some intriguing element and, crucially, were distinctive. As a collection, they were well chosen and a pleasantly undemanding read when recuperating on the sofa. Nonetheless, I am a bit disappointed about 'Wings in the Morning'. show less