I always love anthologies - the chance to start and finish a story over breakfast, the chance to watch favorite authors stretch their wings and try new ideas, and the chance to sample new ones is always something I look forward to. The theme this one was created around is “Lost Worlds,” as in The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Hidden worlds waiting to be discovered. Not a new idea, but one that hasn’t been done much in recent years.
The contributing authors, in no particular order, are Tobias S. Buckell, Becky Chambers, Kate Elliott, Jeffrey Ford, Theodora Goss, Darcie Little Badger, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, An Owomoyela, Dexter Palmer, Cadwell Turnbull, Genevieve Valentine, Carrie Vaughn, Charles Yu, and E. Lily Yu. I knew of many of these authors beforehand, but the only ones I’m really familiar with are Becky Chambers and Seanan McGuire. And with McGuire I’ve only ever read one book and one short story, so I was going in with not much in the way of expectations.
I wasn’t exactly disappointed in this anthology, but I think my expectations might have been a bit high. (The last two anthologies I have read were From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back and The Book of Dragons, both of which were absolutely stellar.) (Pun intended.) Nothing in here was bad by any stretch, but at the same time this didn’t send me rushing off to add a few dozen books to Mt. Readmore.
That being said, there were some excellent stories here. The standouts:
“Down in the Dim Kingdoms” by Tobias S. Buckell. A girl is taking a trip to an underground civilization, along with her grandfather who had discovered (and conquered) it in his youth.
“The Tomb Ship” by Becky Chambers. An asteroid miner finds an intact derelict, the palace warship of a long-dead tyrant of her home planet. With a fully functional A.I.
“The Return of Grace Malfrey” by Jeffrey Ford. Lovecraftian-story of a girl who disappears as a child and reappears years later, having spent the intervening time in a nightmarish other world.
“Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology” by Theodora Goss. It’s written in the form of a letter to an academic journal by three teenagers who managed, while doing a worldbuilding game, to accidentally create a real, living nation.
“The Voyage of Brenya” by Carrie Vaughn. A woman from (I would say) early Medieval Britain sets off across the ocean in a small boat, hoping to reach the land of the gods and demand they come answer her people’s prayers for aid.
THE standout, for me, was “Pellargonia.” I work with teenagers in my day job, and Goss absolutely nailed this. The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter is being added to the queue.
Many thanks to Grim Oak for the ARC. Comes out March 8.