(AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the interests of disclosure, I’ll tell you now that I am friends with Katie Cord, founder and CEO of Evil Girlfriend Media, and am (AUTHOR’S NOTE: In the interests of disclosure, I’ll tell you now that I am friends with Katie Cord, founder and CEO of Evil Girlfriend Media, and am acquainted with several of the authors featured in WSB. At least, I was when I started writing this review. Given my penchant for brutal honesty in reviews, we’ll see how many are left after it’s posted.)
Witches, Stitches, & Bitches (hereafter WSB) is an anthology of short stories, with each story featuring, in some interpretation, a witch, stitches, and *sigh* a bitch. (I really don’t like that word.) WSB is also the first book published by Evil Girlfriend Media, a new publisher founded by Katie Cord. WSB came out on September 13, 2013, so why am I doing a review two months later? Because I’ve been really busy and am horribly behind on my reading, that’s why.
I’ll start with the cover (which is a great cover, by the way). It feels good, it looks good. It doesn’t feel or look cheap, flimsy, slapdash, or anything other than professional and well-put-together. It’s a little thing, I know, but how a book looks and feels are important qualities to me.
On to the anthology itself!
On my second reading (and yes, I liked I enough to read it twice without another book between), I took notes on each story to base my reviews upon. Here we go, into the world of WSB!
1. “Blood Magic” by Gabrielle Harbowy – I loved “Blood Magic.” It’s an artful, graceful take on a horrible situation. It intrigued me that the standard victim trope is turned on its head, in that the method of the abuse ending is – well, you’ll just have to read it. I’m trying not to give spoilers here. The way in which Harbowy describes Aya’s feelings as she suffers and struggles through the day are a master class in gently describing a terrible circumstance without losing any of the emotional impact. I also liked the lack of padding and unnecessary details – it is a short story that tells the tale, engrosses you in the heroine’s plight, gets its message across and gets out before you have time to get tired of it. Short, elegant, beautiful, and sad, “Blood Magic” is a really strong start for this anthology.
2. “Urgent Care” by Christine Morgan – The opening line really sets the tone for this story: “Once upon a time, there was a little girl whose dumbass big brother got caught up in an occult gang war.” This story is going to be very real, very gritty, and lets you know that from the jump, which I appreciated. It’s unapologetic urban fantasy in a style very reminiscent of Kim Harrison and Jim Butcher, but with its own distinct voice. It is also to Morgan’s credit that she employed one of my least-favourite literary devices, past flashbacks that continue throughout the story, and I hardly noticed it until the second read. The flashbacks are smooth with the flow of the story and don’t disrupt it at all, which is lovely to read. The romantic aspects of the story are a little obvious, but not enough to detract from the grim tone and feel of the setting. The dialogue is well-done, and I ended up really liking Larrah, despite her. . .we’ll be polite and call it “brusque”. . .demeanor. It’s obviously part of a larger story, one I know I’ll be eagerly waiting to read.
3. “The Knitted Man” by Bo Balder – This is a very charming, enjoyable short story with a, I think, a larger meaning about love that I couldn’t entirely grasp, but I think that’s more my fault than Balder’s. Even with that, though, it’s still an interesting story, and the Aunties were amusing.
4. “Spare Parts” by Stephanie Bissette-Roark – From my notes: “Mary Shelley meets Jim Butcher at the Punisher’s house.” Violent, gory, funny, and sad, Stephanie (I do know her) runs an emotional gamut in this story. It’s a bit long, and I learned things about crime scene cleanup that I never needed to know, but it kept me enthralled throughout. The last scenes were a bit more convoluted than the straightforwardness of the rest of the story, with a main character making some odd choices, but that could easily be explained if the story is continued (hint, hint). A quality read that slips just a little bit at the end.
5. “The Secret Life of Dreams” by Tom Howard – In my notes, I wrote that this story is “a brief burst of wonderful strangeness that leaves you confused, curious, and smiling in its wake; tells you exactly everything you need to know to follow the story and exactly nothing more.” I don’t really have another way to describe it – you have to check this story out for yourself. It is absolutely worth it.
6. “Frogsong” by Kate Brandt – The straightforward storytelling of “Frogsong” makes it a great follow-up to the previous story. It’s a nice modern take on a morality tale, and has a closing line I wish I’d written: “The powers of our hearts call to us, and generally we follow the song.” I so wish I’d written that! Alas, Kate Brandt beat me to it, and I begrudge her nothing for it. As for how I liked the story, well, I loved Daphne, didn’t feel sorry at all for Frank, and did feel sorry for Nellie, so I think Brandt hit exactly the emotional evocations she was going for. That is indeed a mark of high-quality writing.
7. “No Substitute” by Caren Gussoff – Whereas the weak point of “Spare Parts” was its convoluted ending, “No Substitute” is weakest in its beginning. On the first page, 8 character names (I’m counting “Delanor sheriff” as a name) are thrown at you with no context and not much about their relationships (Kate is a friend of Poppy’s, Jonquil is Poppy’s mother, Wisteria is Poppy’s aunt). It’s like the story hits the ground running too fast and stumbles. The relationships between those people are explained early on, so the story does get up to its own speed after that stumble. There is a bit of a “whodunit” element to the story, though the suspect list is pretty short, and one character makes a really odd decision that drives the story forward but just doesn’t make much logical sense (read it and you’ll see what I mean). It’s a solid story, but not without its flaws. Also, the name “Ber Breyan” kept reminding me of longtime University of Alabama football coach Bear Bryant, and I couldn’t quite get the mental image of him out of my head when I read the name. But that's a personal thing; it should not be as distracting for the general reader.
8. “Forgetting Tomorrow” by Bob Brown – I will say this now: I think fables are overdone in current pop culture. Between TV shows Once Upon A Time and Grimm, movies like Snow White and The Huntsman, Tangled, Hansel and Gretel, and of course the Disney Princesses, and comic books Fables and Grimm Fairy Tales, and numerous other novels out there, fables are just being done to death right now. All that said, “Forgetting Tomorrow" manages to stand out in that crowded field by following a character that I haven’t seen in any of those other fable interpretations (no, I’m not going to say who). Kudos to Bob Brown for writing a fast-moving, engaging story that stands apart in a saturated market!
9. “The Bitchy Witch Queen And The Undone Stitches” by Garth Upshaw – I guess it’s only fair that the longest story in the book should have the longest title, right? Also, I guess it would make an interesting band name. Anyway, don’t let the light tone of the lengthy title fool you – this is a pretty heavy story. It’s a fully-realized world, with details given aplenty in drips and drabs as opposed to flow-breaking info-dumps, which I liked. It’s also, I think, a fair approximation of what our world would be like if magic really existed – there would still be social inequality and class warfare, just along different lines. That’s the world this story occupies, and Upshaw really makes the world live and breathe. In terms of world-building, I would say this story is the best in the book; the characters are also pretty well-developed, but given the length, they’d damn well better have been. The somewhat preachy ending, along with Lianne’s choice to make it so, detracted a little from my enjoyment of the story, but not much. Upshaw built a good world here – I hope he’ll return to it to tell more stories.
10. “Not Even If I Wanted To” by Kodiak Julian – It’s an interesting modernized take on Hansel & Gretel, from a very different perspective than other tales and, thank God, not starring Jeremy Renner. It’s by no means a bad story, but it really didn’t grab me and pull me in as much as the other stories did. That may be down to Julian’s stark, this-is-what-happened style. The first-person narration here seems to be a little detached, and that carried over to me in reading it – I felt detached from the story, not engrossed in it. Again, by no means a bad story, but not as vibrant and alive and the others in this book.
11. “Yes, I’m A Witch” by Julie McGalliard – The second page of this story contains a line I absolutely fell in love with: “It tasted of chemicals and disappointment.” Brilliant. McGalliard has an attention to small details that speak volumes, such as the mismatched door on the otherwise undescribed car of Sharyn’s sister’s car; it’s such a little thing but it told me so much about Sharyn’s family and home situation. I love writing like that, that gives me meaningful small details instead of walls of miniscule, unimportant ones. Also, the primary setting of this story makes perfect sense: 1981, at the beginning of the Satanic Panic. That societal fear of basically things that were not mainstream, so encouraged by and ensconced in the rise of the religious right, is perfectly reflected in Tabby’s mother. No other time would have had that movement in society, so this is that rare gem of a story in which the setting really matters to the story. Not many stories are that way nowadays, and I loved it here. Granted, it also brought back painful, awkward 80s memories, but I’ll not hold that against McGalliard. It also reads a little like a cautionary tale, but isn’t heavy or preachy in its message. “Yes, I’m A Witch” is one of my favourites of the anthology, no question.
12. “The Far Horizon” by J. H. Fleming – As I think I mentioned before, I’m not a fan of stories that switch back and forth between past and present for their entire length. Fleming employs that technique here, and does okay with it. This is also another example of a story with just the right amount of detail – not too much, not too little, and that’s a technique I am a HUGE fan of. This story zips right along at a great pace, starts off greyish in tone and gets darker as it goes, and wraps up in an open but very satisfying conclusion. It’s a very good story overall.
13. “The Three Gateways” by Eva Langston – This is another story with a “cautionary tale” feel to it, but one that wraps up really well and in an unexpected way. Langston does an excellent job of characterization here as well’ there’s no pure saints and no pure sinners. I like that. In all of it, Langston writes really well and sucks me into the story. I even liked Luci the Teenage Goth Witch, mercenary though she was, and the spells described feel pretty real to me. It’s a great grey story, well worth the read.
14. “For Want of a Unicorn” by Camille Griep – This story is hilarious. I cracked up several times reading about the worst Fairy Godmother ever and things working out for the heroine in spite of the FG more than because of her. I love this story so much! It’s a take on a fable-ish world rather than directly on a fable, which is good, and it’s very smartly written. I love a good humour story, one that doesn’t insult the readers’ intelligence for the sake of a joke, and Griep pulls that off very, very well here. Definitely one of my favourites, if not my outright fave. LOVE IT! More from Camille Griep, please, now, thank you!
15. “Blood of the Mother” by Alaina Ewing – I began this story with a bit of apprehension, becomes it starts closer to the middle of the story than the beginning, and I am automatically wary of stories that start off that way and then flash back to the earlier bits of backstory. THANK GOD this story doesn’t do that. The necessary backstory is filled in through dialogue and the narrator’s thoughts, a much more less obtrusive method that didn’t pull me out of the story. (Hear that, writers? If you can’t start me at the beginning, then catch me up along the way; don’t put the story on pause to go back to what happened before.) It’s a well-written, solid witchy adventure story that moves along at a quick, smooth pace. My only complaint is that, at times, Terra feels like the sidekick in her own story.
16. “Dress of Fur and Fangs” by Rebecca Fung – Last but not least, we have this story, which starts off light in tone but gets very dark around the middle, when the “bitch” shows up. This story had, in my interpretation, a running theme on body images, filtered through a Potter-esque world, with a message on the dangers of envy as well. I can’t say much more than that without spoiling it, and I have no desire to do that, but I can say that, for me, it made me really think about the messages society tells women about their bodies. It’s an intriguing and thought-provoking story that loingers in your head after reading it, and concisely written to get its point across without being heavy-handed about it. (I should probably learn from that.) A very good read, and a great way to bring this anthology to a close.
So, now you have my review of these 16 stories. Now I’ll answer the most pressing question: is WSB worth buying?
The answer is a heartfelt, enthusiastic OH HELL YES WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR. If you like witches, stitches, bitches, and/or well-written, intelligent, engrossing stories, this is the anthology for you! It’s available on Amazon in both ebook and paperback formats (I haven’t jumped onto the ebook bandwagon yet, because I am old and set in my paper-reading ways) so whatever your preference, it’s easy to get your hands on a copy.
Which you should do.
Like now.
Don’t make Katie have to put a curse on you.
UPDATE: Because I don't think clearly at 3 AM, I made a mistake. I did not mention the terrific editing job on WSB done by Shannon Page. Having been an editor myself, I am very vigilant for editorial errors when I read; in the past few years, most books have driven me to conniption fits over how many errors make it to print. I am pleased to report that, thanks to the diligence of Shannon, there aren't any. Seriously, none. No typos, no continuity slips, no nothing. Clearly Ms. Page is a superhuman editor, perhaps editor of the Xavier School's monthly newsletter, and deserves to be recognized as such. I apologize for the oversight. ...more
Eh, it was all right. A bit bloodier than it seemed to need to be, and rather predictable. Hero and heroine travel the UK to hunt down mystical artifaEh, it was all right. A bit bloodier than it seemed to need to be, and rather predictable. Hero and heroine travel the UK to hunt down mystical artifacts, ruthless enemies brutally kill off the caretakers of said artifacts through thuggish underlings, hero and heroine have trouble believing in the powers of the artifacts, hero and heroine are framed for brutal murders, hero and heroine develop feelings for each other, mysterious stranger helps them, and a final battle that's over so fast you'll miss it if you blink, blah, blah, blah. It feels like it's all been done before.
I liked the heroine a lot, though. A lonely, poor, single woman, harangued by her mother. . .she felt very relatable and real. The hero, however, seemed straight out of central casting in appearance, personality, and style. In fact, the book felt a lot like it was written specifically to be turned into a movie, so I would not be surprised if that happens in the next couple of years.
A good read, but I wouldn't call it a great read....more
I'll be quite honest here. . .after reading the first chapter at Barnes & Noble (not the website, I was standing in the store here and reading), I figI'll be quite honest here. . .after reading the first chapter at Barnes & Noble (not the website, I was standing in the store here and reading), I figured this book would be a very very light diversion from the weightier titles I normally read, something amusing but that was all I expected of it. In that first chapter, the writing seemed a little thin, the story seemed weak, and the POV seemed to jump around at will.
That said, with all those complaints, I still bought the book. Hell, I paid retail price for it (minus 10%), which I think speaks to the charm of this book.
I am very glad that I bought this book! Gail Carriger's writing is witty, charming, funny, quirky, and just downright enjoyable from start to finish. It's impressive that she took so many genres (paranormal, steampunk, Victorian romance,and action-adventure), threw them together into one book, and made them all work so very very well; even more admirable that she did so with a Whedon-worthy heroine!
The basics: Alexia Tarabotti is a spinster in Victorian England. . .but in her England, vampires, werewolves, and ghosts openly roam the streets and take their place in civilized society. Like her deceased father (whom her mother calls "excessively Italian") and unbeknownst to her vapid mother and society-obsessed half-sisters, Alexia is what those in the Victorian know call a "preternatural" - she has no soul. The parasol-wielding Miss Tarabotti is feared and monitored by vampires and werewolves alike, because her touch can restore them to mortality. In addition to that, and the deplorable state of being too strong-willed and Italian to have settled down and started a family, Alexia is suddenly attacked by a vampire. . .which is where the novel begins.
The series thus far (I just finished the second book) is great fun. You won't come out with deep thoughts about the human condition or reflecting profoundly upon the nature of existence, but you'll definitely be entertained!...more
My experience with short story collection leaves me with one general rule of thumb about them: in any given collection, most stories will be just okayMy experience with short story collection leaves me with one general rule of thumb about them: in any given collection, most stories will be just okay, a few will be standouts, a few will be bad or worse. Supernatural Noir falls right into line with that rule.
While none of the stories are outright terrible, most are just fair to middling. There are some standouts, however; Melanie Tem's "Little Shit," Joe Lansdale's "Dead Sister," Tom Picirilli's "But For Scars," and, surprisingly, Caitlin R. Kiernan's "The Maltese Unicorn" ("surprisingly" because I'd read only one Kiernan book before this story, and hated it with such a passion that I refused to read any more) are the great stories of this collection. They're the ones that balance the noir and supernatural aspects perfectly, whether it be in the mere ghostly whispers in "But For Scars" or the entire world has embraced the supernatural as in "The Maltese Unicorn".
The rest of the stories are okay. Solid enough, for the most part, but not as strong or as memorable as the ones listed above, and some seemed to struggle with the noir/supernatural balance well.
My only question is: Why isn't there a Jim Butcher story in this collection?...more
**spoiler alert** NOTE: I'm going to save myself some time and trouble by doing this one review for all three books in this trilogy. Yes, I am lazy.
Th**spoiler alert** NOTE: I'm going to save myself some time and trouble by doing this one review for all three books in this trilogy. Yes, I am lazy.
That said. . .
The Sign of Seven Trilogy wants so, so, desperately badly to be Stephen King's IT. All the elements are there:
1. ancient evil rises to terrify a town every so often (every 7 years in Sign of Seven trilogy; every 20-30 in IT),
2. group of friends that battled said evil in their youth must reunite to combat the evil again (7 friends in IT; 3 guys in SST that are joined this time by 3 women),
3. a little romance (the one girl in the group hooks up with one of the guys in IT; each of the 3 guys in SST hooks up with one of the 3 women. . .okay, a LOT of romance in that one),
4. paranormal abilities and occurences around the main characters, small clashes with ancient evil lead up to big dramatic final battle (cosmos-spanning battle in IT; for SST, ummmmm. . .not so much), and
5. last but not least, a crappy TV miniseries based on the book (ABC made one for IT in 1987 starring John Ritter, Richard Lewis, and Harry Anderson; there has not been one announced yet for SST but given the Lifetime Network's love of Nora Roberts, it's probably coming).
Basically, again, SST wants to be IT. That was the first thing that came to mind as I was reading the first book, as soon as I got a sense of what's going on.
And it falls so tragically, disappointingly, heart-breakingly short.
I'm not going to compare the trilogy to IT; it's obviously going to come off all the worse for the comparison. But it doesn't do so hot standing on its own, either.
The demonic villain, referred to as Twisse, never seems to say exactly why he wants to destroy the town so badly. If it's just simple vengeance against the ancestors of the people that defeated it centuries ago, really, why not just kill them and go? Why get locked into this stupid cycle? I get that it wants vengeance and all, and that these ancestors hold perhaps the only power on earth capable of killing it, but really, if this one place on the entire planet has exactly what's needed to kill you, wouldn't you stay away from it? Or at least not go giving people a reason to come kill you?
The heroes and heroines are initially very distinct in their personalities, but as the series progresses, they start blurring together so that, towards the end, I found myself having to check again and again to see who's saying what.
The small-town setting is a charming one, and it works well for the story. There is a lot of love and the characters are pretty well developed, at least until the end, in the story, though there are times when the supporting characters are a little more interesting than the heroes. The sex scenes are pretty good, though a couple feel a bit forced and awkward.
All that said, the series is pretty good. . .right up until the end, when it just all falls apart. It falls apart so badly that I subtracted a star and half for the ending alone.
After all the buildup, all the struggle, all the conflict and pain and tears getting to that final battle. . .it's over in less than ten pages, with a very short epilogue. The end was more of a messy amorphic blob than Twisse turned out to be, in the end. Speaking as someone that loves startegy and tactics and fighting games, the final battle is so nonsensical and disjointed that, given the solidity of the structure and writing to that point, I wondered if it had been ghostwritten. It felt very rushed, pushed too far too fast, and it definitely suffered for the impatience. On top of that, one minor line from one of the earlier books is all that saved the climactic ending from being a complete deus ex machina, making it more "deus ex extremely small and unimportant detail."
And in the end, SST still tries to be IT. Gage's journey into a seemingly endless void, Cal's father's view of the destruction raining down on their small town while the battle is being fought elsewhere, the defeat of the beast by both literal and metaphysical destruction of its heart, the reflections upon and glimpses of the damage the beast had done in previous rampages through the town. . .all these things are parallels from IT, and paralleled so much that I more-than-half-expected a Turtle of enormous girth to show up (though, perhaps to avoid copyright issues, it would have been called "a plus-size tortoise").
Stephen King, check your wallet, mate. I think you've been nicked.
What amazes me the most here is, that with such similar setups, King still told the better story 20+ years ago. IT is not a short read; in fact, it's longer than all three books in the SST trilogy put together. But if you're not a die-hard La Nora fan, or a sucker for a semi-action-packed romance, go read IT instead.
This trilogy comprises the first Nora Roberts work I've ever read. I'll give her a try again, because there are enough good things about the characters and story here that the trilogy held on to one star despite its own ending, but I'll also be trying in hopes that whatever I read next from her will be a bit more original and less blatantly derivative....more
This is the most f$#@-ed up book I've ever read, and that's saying something, considering I'm a big fan of Garth Ennis and Barbara Gowdy.
There's no otThis is the most f$#@-ed up book I've ever read, and that's saying something, considering I'm a big fan of Garth Ennis and Barbara Gowdy.
There's no other way to describe this book. While some of the subjects that Ellis touches upon here were covered in his other books like Bad World, this time he puts those into a narrative, and, well. . .
It's an awesome book, a great journey across America, from coast to coast. Some would say it's America's "underbelly," "underworld," or "demimonde;" I say it's just America in all its glories and lacks thereof. It's America, good, bad, and ugly, plus the fascinating, the bizarre, the truly outrageous and the incredible.
Not a book for the easily shocked or offended.
With all that said, this is a great read. All the utterly bizarre characters, unorthodox love story, and the "why isn't this a movie yet" plot add up to a book that's entertaining, engrossing, informative, and a bit of a mindscrew. . .that's why I like it so so so much.
If you take nothing else away from this book, at least you'll know what a "macro-herpetophile" is. Hee hee....more