Mississippi Roll

Mississippi Roll is the 24th book in the Wild Cards series published by Tor Books. There are 5 stories bound together by a segue/interlude story written by Steven Leigh. The book credits G.R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass as editor/assistant editor respectively.

I remember picking up the original books in the series in about 1987(ish) and loving the whole idea of a shared universe anthology series.  I'm already a huge fan of anthologies because there are always at least some stories that appeal at any given time and there are always new-to-me authors to follow up on after devouring the anthology.  I'm also very fond of short fiction because it provides a whole different set of problems and it's always fun (and often enlightening) to see how authors adapt to the constraints of a shorter narrative.

This book is 336 pages of well edited and curated fantasy goodness.  If you're familiar with the wildcards universe and premise, this is a good one. If you're not familiar with wildcards before now, this is a very good standalone novel to introduce the concept and some of the characters.

I loved the character Steam Wilbur ("In the Shadow of Tall Stacks" Steven Leigh). That's him on the cover. Leigh's interlude stories give the whole anthology a nice cohesiveness.

The stories are all strong, but I especially loved "A Big Break in the Small Time" by Carrie Vaughn.  I couldn't stop smiling reading it.  Deftly written and exciting and I'm a total sucker for couples who really care about one another.  Sweet!

Four and a half stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

Tales from the Good Ship KafkaBury

From the author's preface:

What can you say about Franz Kafka and Ray Bradbury except—what wonderful examples of the most precious freedom we have: the freedom of—imagination

That's certainly a high bar to aim for, an homage to Kafka and Bradbury. I opened this book with some amount of trepidation, because, honestly, there are a scant handful of stellar authors who could stand in a room with either Kafka or Bradbury and not suffer a lot by comparison.

I was unfamiliar with Bruce Taylor before reading this book and was very pleasantly surprised by the 26 (by my count) included 'stories'.  I use quotes around 'stories' because very few of them have an overall narrative story arc; for the most part, they're first person PoV vignettes.  Many of them are quite lyrical and almost poetic, they're all quite well written.  Mr. Taylor (aka Mr. Magical Realism) has a very strong and distinctive voice.  He's clearly not trying to be anyone else.  Several of the included pieces seemed very autobiographical or taken from real experiences.  One of the first lessons of writing is 'write what you know', and it's one that the author has clearly mastered.

I read a lot of books.  I find myself often reading a passage in a book and trying to recall where I've read something similar in tone and timbre to a passage.  That didn't happen one single time with this book.  I've literally never read anything that 'sounded' the same to me; nothing that 'went to the same place' in my brain.  The stories themselves are short (the book is 189 pages) and varied.  Like all collections, there are some that resonated more with me than others (that's why I love collections and anthologies).  They're all well written, some of them are very very good, and a few of them are outstanding.  I try to pick at least three standouts from any collection I review and in this case it was difficult since there were several really excellent vignettes. I finally settled on these three which spoke to me.

Watermelonmania - Magical realism with a healthy dose of surrealism in a techno coffee bar. This one's a lot of fun.


The Legend of the Slugosaurus - a truly silly but fun creation fable for anyone who has ever lived in a rainy climate and wondered why slugs exist.


Return - is a sweet and magical love story.

As an aside, these stories are fairly topical and there's quite a lot of current events in the included themes.  Many of them are also set in the Pacific Northwest USA, especially Seattle and environs.  I'm not sure how dated they'll be in 20 years, but right now they're very relevant, readable, enjoyable and well written.

189 pages
E-book and paperback formats. Paperback available via Amazon's printing service. DRM free e-book also available from the publisher.
Published by ReAnimus Press.

Four stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

This is a BIG book, 944 pages, including 73 stories from both famous authors (O. Henry, Erle Stanley Gardner, Lawrence Block, Max Allan Collins and many others) as well as authors who are less well known today than they were in their contemporary periods, but may be familiar to fans of the old pulp magazines such as Phantom Detective (C. S. Montanye, Paul Ernst, Donald Keyhoe, etc).

The collection is broken down and arranged chronologically: The Victorians, Nineteenth-Century Americans, The Edwardians, Early Twentieth-Century Americans, Between The World Wars, The Pulp Era, Post-World War II, and The Moderns.  Each of the stories has a short introduction including publication notes and author bios.  The intros were a real treat to read and even though I love detective fiction trivia, there was quite a lot that was new to me.

I love anthologies and collections, and this one is no exception.  The hook for the anthology is that the stories feature one or more rogues/villains.  Sometimes they're portrayed in a more favorable light, like the stories featuring Lupin and Raffles and some are just dastardly, Dracula and Horace Dorrington, for example.

Since the book covers such a broad span of time, some of the stories reflect the language and dialogue of their period, but for anyone comfortable reading a Holmes story, these stories won't present any problems at all.

I enjoyed quite a lot of these and even enjoyed reading a few of them aloud together (fun road trip activity, passenger reads, driver drives :).

Heartily recommend this collection.  I found a number of authors who were not previously familiar to me for further reading.

The anthology's editor, Otto Penzler, has curated another superbly entertaining thematic collection.

Four stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

The Overneath

Peter S. Beagle is one of a handful of authors who are absolute no-miss-wonderful for me.  I'd try to make a sports or cultural icon analogy, but I am a book nerd at the end of the day.  I read.  I read a lot.  I believe I have read (and reread) everything widely available which he's published.  There are two things I've found to be true with Peter Beagle's oeuvre. 1)The books and stories are accessible, enjoyable, and readable for anyone and 2)the meanings and messages change subtly every time they're read.  That's literally as close to magic as makes no difference, and I have absolutely no idea how he does it.  I guess I don't honestly really want to know how he does it, because I'm afraid that, like most magic, it won't work properly if it's dismantled.

The Overneath is a collection of 13 stories, including two Schmendrick stories.  I was so excited to be allowed to review the Overneath because Schmendrick (and The Last Unicorn) was really the watershed book for me growing up and between Peter S. Beagle and Madeline L'Engle I turned into a ravenous bookworm and never got better.

I therefore expected the Schmendrick stories to be central for me in the collection with 11 bonus stories which I expected to like, but not be blown away by.  I am truly surprised that that wasn't the case.  Oh, both of the stories are wonderful, and Schmendrick Alone has never been published elsewhere, but for me at least, they weren't the standouts in this collection.  It's brutally difficult to pick three to concentrate on, but for me they would be:

Trinity County California: You'll Want to Come Again and We'll Be Glad to See You. Combining modern realism with dragons and drug control, this is a beautifully written gritty fable about monsters... and the illegal dragons they exploit.

The Way it Works Out And All. Avram Davidson, (yet another of my favorite authors) and Peter S. Beagle go road tripping interdimensionally together.

Music, When Soft Voices Die is a melancholy parable about pursuing a connection to the unknowable pain at the center of existence.

I lied, I couldn't quit at three...  They all resonated deeply with me, but two more especially:

Great Grandmother in the Cellar is a wonderful creepy fairy tale about loyalty and family and Olfert Dapper's Day which gives some of the back story of one of the original catalysts for The Last Unicorn.

This is as good as it gets. Peter S. Beagle is an amazingly generous gifted storyteller and we're lucky that he has shared his stories with us.

Five stars

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.