The Banquet of the Lords of Night & Other Stories

The Banquet of the Lords of Night & Other Stories (2004) Liz Williams

The Banquet of the Lords of Night & Other Stories is an anthology (obviously) of stories by Liz Williams. The stories range in style from the fantasy to science fiction. As with most mixed anthologies, I didn’t much care for the science fiction stories, but enjoyed most of the fantasy stories, particularly those set in the same world as her Detective Inspector Chen novel, Snake Agent.

The first story, “Adventures in the Ghost Trade” is pretty much the start of the novel Snake Agent. Detective Inspector Chen must discover what has happened to the ghost of Pearl Tang, and how she ended up in hell instead of heaven. The final story, “The Man from the Ministry” is also set in the same world. Tang ends up in Hell–a prisoner of the Ministry of Epidemics, and has to figure out how to resolve the situation he has gotten himself into. Those were probably my favorite two stories in the anthology. I find the world that she created fascinating (and I can’t wait until The Demon in the City comes out in May) because it’s as familiar as it is strange.

Although the worlds of some of the other stories were similar, they didn’t necessarily have quite the same feel as other stories, although the details in the worlds were often similar. The story “A Child of the Dead” in particular had a similar feel, and the same technology as the first and last stories.

Other of the stories, however, were quite different. “The Daykeeper” dealt with elves and some degree of Celtic mythology, but didn’t quite have the feel to it I associate with such stories. This didn’t make the story bad, just different from what I expected.

Several of the stories were quite dark. “Skindancing”, “Outremer”, and “Dieudamour” were all quite dark–not necessarily in a horrific way (although there were horrific elements in “Skindancing” and “Outremer”) but in a way that reminded me of the darkness of the world and the darkness of the actions of people when they’re at their lowest–the ability of humans to take without giving.

The other three stories that I particularly liked were “Nightside”, in which young women deal with illness–the tone is that of the pampered women of the Regency and Victorian eras. “Dog Years” was another story that stuck with me and the second story in the collection to deal with the idea of possession, in this case, possession by the dead instead of demons. The third story, from which the title of the anthology came, “The Banquet of the Lords of Night” was one of the darkest stories–not only in tone but taking place in a world where night and darkness reign.

As expected, I did not enjoy the stories that had, to me, a particularly strong science fiction feel. Those would be the stories “Quantum Anthropology”, “Loosestrife”, and “Ancestor’s Song”. Those stories came almost one right after the other towards the end, and I almost set the book down, thinking that maybe the end of the anthology contained the stories that had more of a science fiction feel. However, I kept going, and was glad I did so, because otherwise I would have missed “The Blood Thieves” and “The Man from the Ministry”.

The other thing I want to note about this book is that I quite like the cover art. Since I complain so much about bad cover art, I also like to try and point out when something works for me, and I really liked the picture on the cover here.

If you like fantasy anthologies, then you’ll may want to check out this collection. Particularly the first and last stories, which will give you a feel for whether you’ll like her book The Snake Agent, which I highly recommend.
Rating: 7/10

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