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bmacenlightened's review against another edition
4.0
This was a strong collection of dark fantasy/horror novellas. On the whole they were very different but all enjoyable and definitely showed off the imagination of the authors included.
The first and longest of the collection "The Twice-Drowned Saint" was written as a short novel, but with the amount of detail and imagination the author threw into the world it could've easily been a longer novel. There's so much going on and references to things that had happened and things that will happen but it never felt like too much info-dump. The world building was great, but never overtook the current thread of narrative which kept things going forward. I really appreciated the setting of the city, the saints, and the angels and the balance in which they existed.
The second was a shorter more straight forward novella called "An Unkindness" and that name fits this perfectly. It's a story of faeries and ravens and unkindness and has some generally unsettling content. But it doesn't revel in that, rather the story and narrator agree that there's something wrong.
The third "Viridian" was fairly straight forward as well with a repeating structure that leads to foreshadowing and a general sense of dread. In true fashion however the last bit of the story gets increasingly thrilling and horrific as it frenetically heads towards the ending.
The fourth "The Comforter" was bizarre, but probably my favorite of the bunch. Once things picked up and got a little crazy I wasn't always sure what was going on, but it was very imaginative and entertaining with some real crazy descriptions body horror. It's just something that has to be read to be experienced.
All in all this was a solid collection and I'm glad I read them and would definitely recommend the collection. It won't be the easiest read you'll pick up, but the pay off is worth it considering how much thought and imagination went into each of these stories.
The first and longest of the collection "The Twice-Drowned Saint" was written as a short novel, but with the amount of detail and imagination the author threw into the world it could've easily been a longer novel. There's so much going on and references to things that had happened and things that will happen but it never felt like too much info-dump. The world building was great, but never overtook the current thread of narrative which kept things going forward. I really appreciated the setting of the city, the saints, and the angels and the balance in which they existed.
The second was a shorter more straight forward novella called "An Unkindness" and that name fits this perfectly. It's a story of faeries and ravens and unkindness and has some generally unsettling content. But it doesn't revel in that, rather the story and narrator agree that there's something wrong.
The third "Viridian" was fairly straight forward as well with a repeating structure that leads to foreshadowing and a general sense of dread. In true fashion however the last bit of the story gets increasingly thrilling and horrific as it frenetically heads towards the ending.
The fourth "The Comforter" was bizarre, but probably my favorite of the bunch. Once things picked up and got a little crazy I wasn't always sure what was going on, but it was very imaginative and entertaining with some real crazy descriptions body horror. It's just something that has to be read to be experienced.
All in all this was a solid collection and I'm glad I read them and would definitely recommend the collection. It won't be the easiest read you'll pick up, but the pay off is worth it considering how much thought and imagination went into each of these stories.
foomple's review
4.0
I got this book because at the end of [b:Bone Swans|25696314|Bone Swans|C.S.E. Cooney|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1433891166l/25696314._SY75_.jpg|43903471], there was an excerpt from the first story in this collection offered as a preview, and it hooked me but good. I'm glad I went ahead and gave into temptation, because I was blown away by that story --The Twice-Drowned Saint- and kind of wish it had been published on its own as a novella. The other three stories in the collection were 3- to 4-star reads for me, with the two that immediately followed it being loosely associated retellings of fairy tales, more or less (Tam Lin and Bluebeard) . I liked them, so it feels like a bit of a disservice to just go on to gush about The Twice-Drowned Saint, but it was great.
Perhaps most interesting for me was that I retroactively enjoyed The Bone Swans more through reading The Twice-Drowned Saint. Two stories in that collection, which struck me as nice when I read them (Life on the Sun and The Big Bah-Ha), ended up being so much more interesting to me once I saw they were tied to this world/story I was in the middle of. I think it's no spoiler to either work to say that Life on the Sun is revealed as a movie plot that exists in the world of TTDS. The connection in The Big Bah-Ha (a nightmarish, late-stage-apocalypse story) was more subtle, but a detail that stood out to me as odd when reading that story bore an uncanny resemblance to a detail given in the description of a certain group in TTDS. So it seems that these interconnected pieces are fragments from the timeline and geography/peoples of the same world. That's really, really neat, and it left me wanting to hear more stories from that world.
Perhaps most interesting for me was that I retroactively enjoyed The Bone Swans more through reading The Twice-Drowned Saint. Two stories in that collection, which struck me as nice when I read them (Life on the Sun and The Big Bah-Ha), ended up being so much more interesting to me once I saw they were tied to this world/story I was in the middle of. I think it's no spoiler to either work to say that Life on the Sun is revealed as a movie plot that exists in the world of TTDS. The connection in The Big Bah-Ha (a nightmarish, late-stage-apocalypse story) was more subtle, but a detail that stood out to me as odd when reading that story bore an uncanny resemblance to a detail given in the description of a certain group in TTDS. So it seems that these interconnected pieces are fragments from the timeline and geography/peoples of the same world. That's really, really neat, and it left me wanting to hear more stories from that world.
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