I love short story anthologies. I’m hardly one to shy away from big, sprawling epics, but it’s great having things that can be started and finished over breakfast. I love getting bite-sized stories from favorite authors. I love getting to sample stories from authors I’m curious about but never quite got around to picking up. I love reading stories from writers I’ve never heard of but am certainly going to look into now.
I also love dragons, as all right-thinking people do. Accusations of them being cliched make no sense: there is simply too much variety packed into the idea of dragons for it to ever be cliched. This book has Western, fire-breathers stealing livestock, and Eastern water-dwellers bestowing blessings. It’s got steam-powered dragons, and dragon beehives, and dragon foster moms, and dragon lawyers, and dragons who are cranky about their commute. It’s got intelligent dragons and it’s got animalistic dragons. It’s got good dragons and evil dragons. It’s got riddling dragons, it’s got imaginary dragons, it’s got metaphorical dragons, and it’s got Dungeons & Dragons. And they’re all great.
The contributing authors include some very well-known names, as well as some up-and-comers. In no particular order, they are: Daniel Abraham, Kelly Barnhill, Peter Beagle, Brooke Bolander, Zeb Cho, Aliette de Bodard, Kate Elliot, Sarah Gailey, Ellen Klage, R.F. Kuang, Ann Leckie, Scott Lynch, Ken Liu, Todd McCaffrey, Seanan McGuire, Patricia A. McKillip, Garth Nix, K.J. Parker (a.k.a. Tom Holt), Kelly Robson, Michael Swanwick, Rachel Swirsky, Ella Katherine White, and J.Y. Yang.
Unusually, this book also features a number of poems, with entries from Beth Cato, C.S.E. Cooney, Amal El-Mohtar, Theodora Goss, Jo Walton, and Jane Yolen. I’m not an expert on poetry, but I enjoyed these quite a bit.
Some of my favorite authors are in here, and I wasn’t surprised to love their stories. Daniel Abraham (The Dagger & The Coin, The Long Price Quartet, the Expanse) gets metaphorical with the story of a former mercenary determined to protect his hoard of ill-gotten gold. R.F. Kuang (The Poppy Wars) tells us about a girl willingly sacrificing herself to a dragon to end a drought. Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn), true to form, tell a sad, sweet story of a professor meeting a dragon in the form of a human woman while riding the bus. Aliette de Bodard (The Dominion of the Fallen, Obsidian & Blood) give us a prequel to her excellent short novel In the Vanishers’ Palace (which I previously reviewed here). And Scott Lynch (The Gentlemen Bastards) gives us a story of a Wyoming sheriff trying to keep people safe from an invasion of dragons, with scant help from the government.
There were other stories I loved, from authors I either hadn’t heard of or had heard of but never read. Ellen Klages tells the story of a girl, stuck bored at her relatives’ house, being taken by her aunt to San Francisco’s Chinatown with promises that there will be lots and lots of dragons. Ella Katherine White tells of a girl agonizing over whether or not to sell her beloved steam-powered flying dragon to pay for her education. Kelly Robson tells an exciting story of a dragon chasing down a school bus full of kids and the bus drivers’ heroic effort to keep her charge safe. Seanan McGuire tells us about a dragon in human form who, instead of hoarding gold, hoards foster children who need a loving home. From Brooke Bolander we hear about an amnesiac dragon in human form, working as a mob enforcer. Kelly Barnhill tells us about a girl who accidentally made a dragon in a science class lab experiment gone very wrong (or very right, as far as the girl is concerned). Michael Swanwick gives us a Jack Vance-esque story involving a girl, bandits, mages, deserts, time travel, and (of course) a dragon. Kate Elliott gives a powerfully feminist story of a society where women without husbands or fathers are sent as sacrifices to dragons (reading this story really pissed me off, in a good way). And Sarah Gailey gives what might have been my favorite of the anthology, a deep and moving story of abuse and escape and a dragon in the barn that no one talks about.
I know I didn’t talk about all the stories, but though they of course can’t all be favorites, I enjoyed every single one of them.
Short stories can’t really be used to fill Bingo squares, but the book as a whole is a terrific fit for the Five Short Stories square (read it all for Hard Mode). It comes out in July, and is very much worth picking up.