Saturday, December 26, 2009

Short Story Saturday: Faeries Gone Wild

I'm a little behind today, what with the holiday and all. The other thing is, I've been reading through this anthology, trying to find a story I like.

It's not working.

It's possible that I'm just overly stressed out - the holidays do that to me. Or that my sense of humor is underdeveloped - there are a number of very popular authors whose humor does nothing for me except to induce an unattractive lip-curl and eye-roll combo. But whatever the reason, this antho didn't do anything for me. I got through three of the stories, but only one was remotely engaging.

Maryjanice Davidson
I've been looking for a reason to try this author -- so many folks whose opinion I respect enjoy her books. And I try not to rule out authors based on shorts that I don't love, because there are a lot of authors whose longer work I really enjoy, that don't do it for me in short form.

Long story short, I could concede that Davidson has potential for me, but this story wasn't a reason for me to rush out and start working through her backlist. Tall, Dark, and Not So Faery was a cute story with a huge cast, and a decent secondary romance considering it's only about 70 pages. All of the stories in this anthology have cartoony, goofy characters, but Coffee Ray had a heart-tugging appeal under his caricature, and I was rooting for the couple to find each other, so that's a plus.

Michele Hauf & Leandra Logan
I didn't like either of these at all. Terrible dialog and the juxtaposition of child-like cutesy with erotic/sexy really really didn't work for me. Like, at ALL.

So there you have it.
Blame it on post-holiday let down or whatever, but I can't rec anything from this anthology. Better luck next time....

The meme
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3 comments:

M. said...

Oh, the relief! It's not just me! I was at 0 out of 5 stories that made me want to find full-length work for the authors of 'Four Dukes and a Devil' and really questioned myself on the curmudgeon factor.

But the good is: another antho made me find Ilona Andrews, who I'm now glomming.

Nicola O. said...

No, it's not just you. Like I say, I try not to rule OUT a new author on the basis of their shorts... but the flip side of that is that if an author knocks me out with a short story or novella, that's HUGE.

Virginia Kantra and Angela Knight are the last ones that did that for me. I keep meaning to pick up something by Jillian Hunter too, based on a short I read last December, but have yet to get around to it.

sanjeet said...

But the good is: another antho made me find Ilona Andrews, who I'm now glomming.

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