books

Harry Turtledove

Books: Fantasy

Anthologies

By Blood We Live (2009), The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius (2013) 

The Secret History Of Vampires (2007) edited by Darrell Schweitzer

Published by DAW

By Blood We Live (2009) edited by John Joseph Adams

The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination: Original Short Fiction for the Modern Evil Genius (2013) editor

This is the third anthology I've read by John Joseph Adams, and I must say that he has a good rack record for creating anthologies with stories I really like. He also has a good mix of stories, some of which I am guaranteed not to like, but that's okay, because it's good to read stuff I don't normally read, and if I really don't like a story, I can always skip on to the next (even though I rarely do that).

The stories I liked best in this anthology were the straight-up cackling Evil Overlord sort (you know that list, right?), because they were funny. The ones I liked least tended to be the more serious ones, because, well, evil in its true form exists in the world, and it's generally funny at all.

Harry Turtledove's story "Father of the Groom" was another funny story, riffing off the whole idea of Bridezilla.

Now, bridesmaids' dresses could piss off a saint. And if you are currently visualizing a pissed-off saint in a bridesmaid's dress, you are indeed the kind of person for whom this tale is intended, you poor sorry sod, you.

I liked this one quite a bit as well.

Aside from the anthology ending on several depressing notes, this was all-in-all a varied and very good collection of stories, with something for everyone. After all, the stories I disliked were not bad, they were just not my type of story.

Published by Tor Books

Rating: 8/10