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Summary
Summary
Fifteen top voices in speculative fiction explore the intersection of fear and love in a haunting, at times hilarious, darkly imaginative volume.
Predatory kraken that sing with -- and for -- their kin; band members and betrayed friends who happen to be demonic; harpies as likely to attract as repel. Welcome to a world where humans live side by side with monsters, from vampires both nostalgic and bumbling to an eight-legged alien who makes tea. Here you'll find mercurial forms that burrow into warm fat, spectral boy toys, a Maori force of nature, a landform that claims lives, and an architect of hell on earth. Through these and a few monsters that defy categorization, some of today's top young-adult authors explore ambition and sacrifice, loneliness and rage, love requited and avenged, and the boundless potential for connection, even across extreme borders.
With monstrous stories by
M. T. Anderson
Paolo Bacigalupi
Nathan Ballingrud
Holly Black
Sarah Rees Brennan
Cassandra Clare
Nalo Hopkinson
Dylan Horrocks
Nik Houser
Alice Sola Kim
Kathleen Jennings
Joshua Lewis
Kelly Link
Patrick Ness
G. Carl Purcell
Author Notes
Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant edited the acclaimed anthology Steampunk! They also started a zine, founded an independent publishing house, own two letterpresses, and edited the fantasy half of The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror for five years. Kelly Link is the author of three acclaimed short story collections, and her award-winning stories have appeared in many anthologies. Gavin J. Grant has published numerous articles and short stories. They live in Northampton, Massachusetts, with their daughter, Ursula.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Link and Grant (Steampunk!) present an engrossing, morally complex anthology of 15 stories centered on the seemingly antagonistic concepts of monsters and love. Throughout, troubled protagonists meet genuine monsters-some traditional, like vampires, others much less so. Almost invariably, it's understood that other people in the protagonists' lives are far worse than the monsters. In Paolo Bacigalupi's poetic "Moriabe's Children," a teenager fleeing her abusive stepfather finds sisterhood with the kraken that haunt the nearby sea. In Holly Black's bloody but funny "Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)," a girl stows away on her uncle's spaceship, fights off pirates, and partners with a purported alien killing machine. M.T. Anderson's wistful and beautifully realized tale of WWII on the home front, "Quick Hill," concerns a young man's sacrifice for his community's safety, and Kathleen Jennings's graphic short, "A Small Wild Magic," is a delightful variation on the story of the boy who receives three magical wishes. Additional stories are written by Cassandra Clare, Patrick Ness, and others; all of the entries are strong, and many are splendid. Ages 14-up. Agent: Renee Zuckerbrot, Renee Zuckerbrot Literary Agency. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
On the heels of their very successful short-story anthology, Steampunk!, editors Link and Grant turn to another currently popular theme: monsters, both familiar and strange, in all their various permutations. Like its predecessor, some fabulous talents--M. T. Anderson, Paolo Bacigalupi, Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, editor Link, and Patrick Ness--contribute to the appealing volume's welcome variety. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
New York Review of Books Review
YOU DON'T SCARE your children enough. I mean, to be fair, I don't know you. Maybe you scare them plenty. But most of us don't. We screen our children's books and movies for content that is "inappropriate"; incidents that might give them "nightmares." As we should. But when we're doing this, are we being too protective? Maybe. Children like to be scared. Ask a group of 9-year-olds if they'd like to hear a funny story or a scary story; they'll ask for a scary story just about every time. Why? Because they have an uncanny knack for knowing what they need. The best fiction weaves the ineffable into narrative; the warp and weft of scary fiction is the unsettling and the taboo. And because so much of a child's experience is novel, inexplicable and unsettling, narratives, including scary ones, are crucial. They help the child explore her most difficult feelings. Still, children want to feel safe. So you should do some censoring. For example, Emily Carroll's "Through the Woods," a collection of tales told in graphic form, is too disturbing and frightening to help an 8-year-old understand her internal world. A 13-year-old reader, though, or a 60-year-old reader for that matter, will be richly rewarded. And richly terrified. Carroll knows how to capture uncomfortable emotions - guilt, regret, possessiveness, envy - and transform them into hair-raising narratives. In a story inspired by Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard," a new bride stands before enormous panels of blue wallpaper, with stripes like prison bars. A song echoes through the house at night: "I married my love in the springtime,/but by summer he'd locked me away./He'd murdered me dead by the autumn, / and by winter I was naught but decay." In another tale, Carroll explores fraternal jealousy: The narrator begins by admitting, "Just last week, I killed my brother." And yet the brother, handsome and popular as ever, does not seem dead. The concluding panel of that tale literally made me yelp with fear. Like the best debut novels, "Through the Woods" is packed with ideas and experiments. New artistic techniques unfurl as the terror mounts, stunning visuals splash across the panels. Carroll effectively paces each tale, and the collection as a whole. "Through the Woods" is, in every sense of the word, thrilling. "Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales" features short stories from leading figures in the young adult genre. It is, itself, a strange beast: in parts luminous, in others revolting. Some tales in this volume feel slapdash; others are brutal, callously deploying sexual assault, self-harm and murder as mere plot points. But there are wonderful stories, too, by Holly Black, Cassandra Clare and Dylan Horrocks. There is the dystopian powerhouse "The Mercurials," by G. Carl Purcell, in which the dialogue crackles with the fierce stupidity and earnestness of real people. Nalo Hopkinson's "Left Foot, Right" and Alice Sola Kim's "Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying" are both potent, expressionistic horror stories. Hopkinson, deploying Caribbean myth and dialect, makes the aftermath of unspeakable trauma first monstrous, then survivable. In Kim's tale, three adopted Korean-American girls attempt to summon their biological mothers through a dark ritual. Kim writes with visceral urgency and distills the complex emotions of an adopted child into events of real horror. M.T. Anderson's "Quick Hill" takes place in a forlorn Middle America, haunted by the losses of World War II, and also by something worse, closer to home. Anderson balances the large and the small masterfully, and he makes magic realism the most bittersweet thing in the world. His sentences all end one word before you want them to, leaving your heart dangling, exposed. "Quick Hill" is a tour de force of contemporary short fiction. It does, as well as anything I've read recently, what scary stories are supposed to do: It says what we feel, but cannot say. ADAM GIDWITZ is the author of "A Tale Dark and Grimm," "In a Glass Grimmly" and "The Grimm Conclusion." He was a teacher for eight years.
School Library Journal Review
Starred Review. Gr 9 Up-Find a dark corner, light a candle, and wrap yourself in a blanket-these are stories that beg to be read in the dark. Between these pages readers will find entries by literary greats as well as new authors. Some of these tales are moving, others terrifying, but they all have one thing in common: monsters. In Paolo Bacigalupi's "Moriabe's Children," a girl hears the kraken that drowned her father calling her to come to them. A disobedient teen discovers that interstellar space pirates are more monstrous than the creatures she's been taught to fear in the amusing "Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)" by Holly Black. In "This Whole Demoning Thing" by Patrick Ness, a young demon discovers how to be true to herself through music. And "Left Foot, Right" by Nalo Hopkinson is an eerily touching story about one girl's crippling grief and the monsters that guide her through to the other side. From vampires to ghosts and from strange creatures made of mercury to half-harpies, these beasts will broaden readers' perspectives. Teens will never think about monsters in the same way again. Long after the last page is turned, these tales will linger in readers' brains, in their closets, under their beds, and in the shadows.- Heather M. Campbell, formerly at Philip S. Miller Library, Castle Rock, CO (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Short stories with otherworldly creatures may be a dime a dozen, but rarely do they offer such nuanced scope.Link and Grant, who edited the fantasy half of The Years Best Fantasy and Horror anthology until its demise in 2009, know their way around excellent short fiction, and their editorial skills are on display here. From the light(ish) and delightful to the subversively unromantic, from humor to horror, each entry both tells a good story and says something about monstrousness. This Whole Demoning Thing posits a world of demons but demonstrates that sometimes the greatest power is just being yourself; Wings in the Morning and A Small Wild Magic are laced with romance regardless of species, while The Woods Hide in Plain Sight takes the girl meets vampire, finds eternal love trope and turns it inside out. On the other end of the spectrum, Son of Abyss and Mothers Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying guarantee cold shivers and probably nightmares, one through gore and the other through psychology. Standouts include Paolo Bacigalupis Moriabes Children and Holly Blacks Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind), both of which clearly prove that monstrous behavior is usually human in form.An anthology of riches, even if they arent always fair of form. (introduction) (Anthology/horror/fantasy. 13 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
