"Fantastic Creatures" anthology

This one isn't as good as the other one I reviewed, but I'm reviewing it anyway.

"Three Steaks and a Box of Chocolates" by A. R. Silverberry: Kind of boring, about a country doctor and a mountain man who has a mysterious monster friend. Its time period is somewhat ambiguous.

"Snapdragon" by Lea Doué: Local mom gets wronged by a man, overreacts, curses both daughters so they can technically never be wronged in that way but also their lives are super terrible now because the curses are poorly executed. Also kind of a retelling of Princess and the Frog.

 

"The Golden City Captives" by Julie C. Gilbert: A guy and his girlfriend get enslaved for the arena and then turn out to both be shapeshifters. Ended too abruptly for my taste.

 

"Seekers" by Intisar Khanani: A little girl has a knack for locating hidden things. |Turns out she's a selkie|. My synopsis is bad, but the story is decent.

"Mystery of Asgina Lake" by Caren Rich: Nobody believes the lake monster is real, except the sheriff's twin daughters. Who find the lake monster. It is not friendly. This one was fairly good.

"Skin Deep" by Morgan Smith: The first one that made me go "Welp, this is not as family-friendly as Tales of Ever After." Basically some girl has to get married to the prince, who's a horrific monster because fairies are jerks. And then {T15+ they play Strip Fantasy Dice Game}. There are so many other things that could have happened, my man! (well, woman, actually.) Did not love this one.

"The Last Chronicle of Pete Mersill" by David Millican: Evil life-draining beings have taken over the world and wrecked most of it. One guy murders a bunch of them. Then he dies (would spoiler tag that, but come on, look at the title.) Too bleak for my taste.

"Priscilla, the Magnificent, Flying Giant Squid" by L. Palmer: About a woman who honors her dead colleague by transporting a sentient kraken via dirigible, despite the fact that pretty much everyone else says A) sentient krakens don't exist and B) if they did, you couldn't transport them via dirigible. This one is okay.

"An Adventurer's Heart" by Nicole Zoltack: A vaguely Greek Mythology-flavored one with jewels that do magic stuff. Didn't love it, but it's not bad.

"Destiny's Flight" by Frank B. Luke: Needs more worldbuilding. Has a vaguely Old Testament flavor, but also a vaguely Medieval Crusades flavor. And some evil guys. Apparently written by a pastor, though I can't speak to what kind of pastor. This either needs to be more or less like Narnia.

 

"The Kappa" by Lelia Rose Foreman: Short, relatively pointless story that reads like a Japanese folktale (and may actually be one). It involves a kappa, because of course.

 

"Celebration" by Arthur Daigle: A king dies. Everyone's sad. Then a bunch of goblins steal the corpse, bury it, and celebrate because said king was actually decent to goblins (who aren't evil in this). This guy wrote my favorite story in the other one, and this story is similarly good.

 

"The Nether Lands" by David Millican: Yeesh. The one that involves demon hunting, and also 85% of the inappropriate-for-children content in the whole anthology. Did not like this one.

"Talori and the Shark" by Jessica L. Elliott: Feels like several fairy tales mashed into an unidentifiable paste and then formed back into a story. It's not my favorite, but definitely better than the previous one.

"Reviving the Sword" by Kandi J. Wyatt: A centaur attempts to re-empower her magic sword. Kind of boring.

"Mothers' Night Out" by D. G. Driver: Graphic violence! Basically the new hire at the daycare gets stuck babysitting all the employees' babies at night while their moms go do stuff. |Turns out they're all werewolves|. Did not like this one either.

"The Mage and the Spotted Wyvern" by Craig J. Price Jr.: A solid story, if not one with anything particularly special about it. Its plot is oddly hard to describe.

"The Very Last Dragon" by Katy Huth Jones: Imagine St. George and the Dragon, but told in a somewhat silly and satirical fashion. This one is okay.

 

"The Adventures of Zero: The Quest for Wormsroot" by Vincent Trigili: A kid attempts to go find a rare root so the village doctor/healer/alchemist will take him on as an apprentice. Fairly entertaining.

"Ishka's Garden" by Bokerah Brumley: A princess's fairy friend gets abducted, so the princess goes after her. Has a decent plot twist at the end.

"Absolutely True Facts about the Pacific Tree Octopus" by H. L. Burke: Little girl gets taken in by Internet hoax that turns out not to actually be hoax. Not great, not terrible.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for sexual references (I'm looking at you, The Nether Lands) and graphic violence ("Mothers' Night Out", anyone?)

3 stars, overall. Most of the stories are fairly okay, there's just a couple that are nyehhhhhh. I'm glad this is the first book in the series, as that means it improves as time goes on.

(Endnote: I'm willing to bet some fake internet points that there are very few other blog posts which use nyehhhhhh as a predicate adjective inside a dependent clause.)