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jonmhansen's review against another edition
4.0
Anthology of sweet short stories featuring New Zealand witches at Christmas. All are tie-ins to longer works, so if you find one you like, it’ll lead you to more.
octavia_cade's review
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
3.0
A collection of Christmas-centred shorts, most of which tie into longer urban fantasy series from a group of New Zealand authors. The cover probably gives away the fact that this is a lighthearted, friendly book, and there's a great deal of similarity in tone between the stories. If there's an overarching theme, it's that magic families of different descriptions come together for the holidays. Everyone likes everyone else, and there are no major dramas, just gentle, supportive relationships. Of the stories here, I think my particular favourite was "Christmas on Waiheke" by Jamie Sands, in which a group of rogue knitters are decorating the local community, and accidentally summon a tree spirit:
"'I am terribly sorry for the disturbance, Leaf. And the Waiheke yarn bombers are sorry as well. Aren't you?' He used a slightly severe tone for the last bit, and the knitters all murmured that yes, they were sorry and they wouldn't do it again."
I used to live in a small town where the local knitting group would make fancy scarves to wrap around local trees along the main street, just because they could, and the thought of one of them downloading a knitting pattern from the internet, mistakenly summoning up the supernatural, and then just being mildly apologetic about it... I find that deeply amusing.
"'I am terribly sorry for the disturbance, Leaf. And the Waiheke yarn bombers are sorry as well. Aren't you?' He used a slightly severe tone for the last bit, and the knitters all murmured that yes, they were sorry and they wouldn't do it again."
I used to live in a small town where the local knitting group would make fancy scarves to wrap around local trees along the main street, just because they could, and the thought of one of them downloading a knitting pattern from the internet, mistakenly summoning up the supernatural, and then just being mildly apologetic about it... I find that deeply amusing.
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