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rachelwalden's review against another edition
5.0
I can tell how much I am enjoying a book by how often I catch myself forcing others to listen to me read snippets of it aloud; I predict that I will be reading bits of A City of Ghosts to innocent bystanders until Halloween and beyond. There are a ton of memorable passages in this book, and I can't recommend it enough to people who like spooky, funny, and unsettling short stories.
endlessreader's review against another edition
3.0
While I own quite a few short story compilations, I don't read them too often. I just have a bit of trouble getting into them. The biggest problem that I tend to have is that a lot of the time, the stories in the compilation are so long that I start to think "Dude, if I wanted to read a novel, I would've picked one up!". However, A City of Ghosts: Stories seemed to be the complete opposite and that turned me off a bit, too.
In a perfect world, short story compilations would be neither too long nor too short. They'd be the perfect size. The stories in A City of Ghosts: Stories were short. And I'm not talking about regular short story short. I'm talking "half the length of regular short stories" short. It felt like once I really started to get into the meat of the short story, it was over. Also, for me, if the the stories are too short, it makes it harder for them to leave a lasting impression. And only a few of them in this compilation left a lasting impression.
The stories that the writer excelled brilliantly at were the haunted house stories. Now, these while extremely short, left a chill down my spine, while one particular one did that while simultaneously making me laugh because of the reactions of the characters. There were some heartwarming ones (I'm going to suck at the titles for a moment since there were so many stories packed in 215 pages and tons of titles) like the one about the waitress in the mirror. Or the ones about ghosts helping people and the people helping the ghosts (one particular ghost story had a young man find the soul of a ghost who was beaten to death by his father). So, there were a few gems in this compilation.
However, there were a couple of stories where I was left thinking "What was the point of that one. It was neither sweet nor scary". Or some other ones that I just felt were semi-boring. I felt like most of the stories in A City of Ghosts were just okay. You had mostly okay with a smattering of gems and a smidge of clunkers. However, I do think this is an okay to pretty good Halloween read. So, I do recommend it.
P.S. This was a First Reads win.
In a perfect world, short story compilations would be neither too long nor too short. They'd be the perfect size. The stories in A City of Ghosts: Stories were short. And I'm not talking about regular short story short. I'm talking "half the length of regular short stories" short. It felt like once I really started to get into the meat of the short story, it was over. Also, for me, if the the stories are too short, it makes it harder for them to leave a lasting impression. And only a few of them in this compilation left a lasting impression.
The stories that the writer excelled brilliantly at were the haunted house stories. Now, these while extremely short, left a chill down my spine, while one particular one did that while simultaneously making me laugh because of the reactions of the characters. There were some heartwarming ones (I'm going to suck at the titles for a moment since there were so many stories packed in 215 pages and tons of titles) like the one about the waitress in the mirror. Or the ones about ghosts helping people and the people helping the ghosts (one particular ghost story had a young man find the soul of a ghost who was beaten to death by his father). So, there were a few gems in this compilation.
However, there were a couple of stories where I was left thinking "What was the point of that one. It was neither sweet nor scary". Or some other ones that I just felt were semi-boring. I felt like most of the stories in A City of Ghosts were just okay. You had mostly okay with a smattering of gems and a smidge of clunkers. However, I do think this is an okay to pretty good Halloween read. So, I do recommend it.
P.S. This was a First Reads win.
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