Shadowed Souls is one of the best collection of short stories I have ever read. Sure there were one or two that I did not fully like as much as the other ones (not bad, just not my cup of tea), but there were several stories that were quite good. I mean I even ordered the first book in Tanya Huff's Vicki Nelson series after finished her short story. That is not something I do often.

What I really liked about the stories is that you don't have to have read anything before by the authors to get the gist of these short stories, sure there were times when I had wanted a short introduction before each story so that I had known more about what is going on. But, at the same time was it kind of nice to get to know the characters without any previous knowledge. It's like getting a chance to try out each author and see if the story and the writer's style are something for you. I mean several of the authors in this book have I never read anything of before and now I would love to read more from them.

Shadowed Souls has everything from ghost to zombies and it's a perfect book for urban fantasy fans. It's a collection that will work both for fans of the authors in this book and people that just like me loves urban fantasy and want to find new authors to read!

I want to thank the publisher for providing me with a free copy through NetGalley for an honest review!

Read this review and others on A Bookaholic Swede ( )

Decent collection of urban fantasy short stories. Glad to have a Dresden story to tide me over, enjoyed the other stories, for the most part. ( )

2.7/5.0 average of the stories in audio format. Three good ones; one actually landing me a new author to check out. There were a couple of so-so stories with interesting premises, but the readers’ voices were so annoying I couldn’t stay with the story.

Entirely too many soy-boy characters and uber-strong lesbian monster hunters. Ugh. I’ll be so glad when this woke nonsense is finished and characters’ sexual orientation is less important than how interesting they or their motives are as people ... or not-people. Oh, and vampires. They’ve been done to death (soon, I hope).

Top three stories: the ones by Butcher, Richardson, and Anderson. ( )

Anthology, although I really just picked it up for my Dresden Fix. I'll try to briefly cover some of the short stories that stuck out.

Cold Case: I enjoyed having a story from Molly's perspective and getting more insight into the Winter Court and Molly's new role specifically. I would have given this story 5 stars if not for the fucking embarrassing violent sex-related episode at the end, in which Molly attempts to sleep with someone and her Mantle makes her black out and nearly kill her partner.

Sleepover: A nice spin on the succubus trope, but the ending seemed a bit too easy.

Peacock in Hell: Awful. Just awful.

Hunter, Healer: Whimsical, funny, and uplifting story. The sidekick's gimmick wore a little thin, but this was very enjoyable.

Eye of Newt: Funny, almost satirical story involving a zombie PI. ( )

This was a good collection of stories—entertaining, reasonably light, no stories that completely lost or disappointed me. Not a great collection, but it doesn’t need to be. I liked the stories in the established worlds I recognized, liked most of the stand-alone stories, and even enjoyed the established worlds I didn’t know. (Unfortunately, those last ones didn’t wow me enough to lure me into their novels.) I did like the moral greyness and hints of darkness, but then, I usually do.

Warnings: Not really.

6/10 ( )