Day 207 - Tales of Dark Fantasy 2

[alytha]

I won a copy of Tales of Dark Fantasy on Pat's Fantasy Hotlist. As alluded to by the title, this is a collection of 11 fantasy short stories with a dark twist.
In general, it's quite good, with some unfortunate exceptions.

Some honorable mentions:

• The Passion of Mother Vajpai by Jay Lake and Shannon Page: although this is not explicitly stated, this story might be set in Lake's City Imperishable. It's about the final test of a young female assassin student, who is confronted with a task rather more difficult than what she expected. Lake seems to have a thing about secret societies of women, he wrote a rather similarly themed story for another collection I read recently. Very well-written.
• Chivalrous by Kelley Armstrong: starts out as Romeo and Juliet with werewolves, but, as it turns out, not everything, and everyone, is as it seems. Cleverly constructed to play with the tropes we've become used to through Twilight and other assorted supernatural soft-porn.
• Not Last Night But The Night Before, by Steven R. Boyett: One day, a man working as a clerk in a law firm starts seeing his death. Not as in how he's going to die, but as a not further described humanoid creature which appears in his life, but doesn't really interact with him at all. The death mostly amuses itself by playing computer games, and doing small acts of kindness. Nevertheless, this appearance totally throws him off the rails...until something decisive happens. Definetely the least dark story in this collection.
• A Pulp Called Joe, by David Prill: Long Rapids has been involved in paper-making for so long that the inhabitants have become part paper. The upper classes are fine vellum, the lower ones cheap pulp paper. Also involved: a doomed love-story.
• A Room With A View by K.J. Parker: I really loved this one. I'll have to check if the author has done any other stories in the same world. There's a really special magic system, where the magician passes through different "rooms", in each of which other magical stuff can be done. Apart from rooms, there's "forms", something like spells. Manuo is something of a black sheep among magicians, and gets carted off somewhere to check dogs for demonic possession. During this assignment, he's supposed to mentor a student magician, and things turn out rather unexpectedly.

Dishonorable mention:

• Hydraguros by Caitlin Kiernan: A small-time drug peddler, after taking some weird stuff, starts seeing quicksilvery stuff leaking out of people's noses or ears..then he has an extended hallucination...and then the story's over. No resolution or explanation, nothing. Or did they forget to print the last 10 pages?
• Smelling Danger: A Black Company Story by Glen Cook: I'm really sad about having to give this facit on this story, because I really love the Black Company books. This one however is extremely confusing, and nothing much happens either. I don't think anybody who's not read the books could make head or tails out of this. There is almost no indication about when or where this is taking place. The characters are not introduced or explained at all. Basically, unknown people are doing bizarre things for no explained reason in an undefined place...Very disappointing :(

The other 4 stories are ok, easily readable, but not really special in a good or bad way.

7/10 all around.