books

Nancy Kilpatrick

Books: Fantasy

Anthologies

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (1995), Hellboy: Odder Jobs (2004), Dracula in London (2004), Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories From the Edge (2005), Blood Lite (2008), By Blood We Live (2009), Vampires: The Recent Undead (2011)

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (1995) edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling

Published by Harper Collins

Dracula in London (2004) edited by P.N Elrod

I give up. After six months I'm about three-quarters of the way through, and haven't enjoyed one single story I've read.

I generally like P.N. Elrod's stories, and I've read several other anthologies she has edited, all of which I've enjoyed, but these stories? No. Yuck.

One possibility is that these are all based on Dracula (as is obvious from the title) and so they may lean more towards horror that I generally dislike. But these stories weren't really that horrific–they didn't leave me with that vague sense of nausea that horror often gives me. Instead, I just didn't find them interesting.

So as my gift to myself at the end of the year, I'm going to stop trying to read this anthology and move on to something else.

Published by Ace

Hellboy: Odd Jobs (1999) edited by Christopher Golden & Mike Mignola

Hellboy: Odd Jobs

Publisher: Dark Horse Books

Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories From the Edge (2005) edited by Nancy Holder & Nancy Kilpatrick

Blood Lite (2008) edited by Kevin J. Anderson

This anthology came out in hardback last year, but considering the theme, I was more than content to wait until it came out in paperback. Which it recently did.

As with most anthologies, there are good stories and bad stories, but there weren't too many stories that I hated, though there also weren't too many stories that I adored. So I'd say it all came out in the wash.

But over all, the stories were pretty good, and the series was worth reading. I would have been annoyed if I'd bought this in hardback, but it's not a bad buy as a paperback.

Rating: 6/10 

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

Vampires: The Recent Undead (2011) edited by Paula Guran

Vampires-The-Recent-Undead

It has taken me an almost embarrassingly long time to finish this. How long you ask? I purchased it a couple months after it was published–that long ago.

The problem is I hit a point where I wasn't interested in a story, and instead of just skipping to the next story, I put the whole thing down. I know, rookie mistake. (But you'll see I made it several times, so I decided to just finish off these anthologies, and if I didn't like a story? SKIP.)

"Vampires Anonymous" by Nancy Kilpatrick

This one was also amusing.

So, it was an uneven anthology for me, but there were some very good stories that are well-worth the price of the anthology. Published by Prime Books

Rating: 7/10