Review: Very Uneven Collection
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 18, 2014
I really liked Tor.com's 2012 anthology (Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2012 Edition: A Tor.Com Original), but this one-- although *much* longer-- is not nearly as good, IMHO. Everything here is competently written, but very few of the stories had much to offer in the way of originality, and many of them went on far too long.There were a few bright spots: Charles Stross's "Equoid," a mash-up of British humor and  Lovecraftian horror, manages the unlikely feat of being both terrifying and very funny, sometimes in the same sentence. "The Hanging Game," by Helen Marshall, is a weird tale in both senses of the word. Mari Ness's "In the Greenwood" reimagines the story of Robin Hood as it probably happened, not as legend has it. And my favorite piece in the collection, Jedediah Berry's "A Window or a Small Box," is a bizarre alternate-worlds story that gets more compelling as it gets more surreal, and ultimately has some compelling things to say about love and marriage.Some of the other stories had good points but also some flaws: Beth Bernobich's fantasy novella "Thief of War" has some beautifully-written passages, but not nearly enough action to justify its length. "Wakulla Springs" by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages, another novella, is a very well-written story about four generations of an African-American family in Florida, but is really a piece of mainstream fiction with only the slightest hints of the fantastic. "Burning Girls," by Veronica Schanoes, does some very nice things with Eastern European Jewish folklore, but flounders when the author drags in the plot of "Rumpelstiltskin."The other pieces in the collection (there are 21 in total) are, alas, largely forgettable. Overall, this would have been a far stronger anthology had the editors kept only the strongest pieces and jettisoned some of the more routine stories.