A Fantasy Medley 2 edited by Yanni Kuznia

Over the past year or so I've been reading more short fiction than ever before, largely because of anthologies like A Fantasy Medley 2. It's a collection of short stories by four authors: Tanya Huff, Amanda Downum, Jasper Kent and Seanan McGuire. I suspect we got it because of the inclusion of Seanan McGuire's contribution.

Often anthologies have a theme, I'm not sure if there is one in this. It doesn't explicitly say so, but the 4 stories were rather dark and a little depressing. Not sure if that was entirely intentional when the collection was put together or if that's just the way it turned out.

Of the 4 authors I'd read 3 of them. Jasper Kent is the only one I was unfamiliar with, although I have wanted to read his Napoleonic War vampire series, just never got around to including him on the TBR pile.

I have read some Tanya Huff, but never her Quarters series, which is where her story Quartered was set. I was unfamiliar with the setting and talk of bardic magic and kighs eluded me, although I was able to pick up the gist of the story. As with all of the stories in the collection it had a bitter sweet ending and left me a little sad at the end.

I quite enjoyed Amanda Downum's The Drowning City and Bone Garden was set in the world she uncovered in the sequel to The Drowning City, The Bone Palace. It too was rather dark and depressing, although her setting of a Russian flavoured world was very well done and quite atmospheric. I'm going to have to see about getting hold of a copy of The Bone Palace shortly.

Jasper Kent's books have largely dealt with the influence vampires had on the struggle between Russia and France during Napoleon's attempted conquest, generally from the Russian side. In The Sergeant and the General the other side was focussed on. The General of the title is actually a horse. This one was harrowing to read and it stayed with me for some time after finishing it. I actually needed to take a break before reading the collection's last story.

That story was Rat-Catcher. It deals with the origins of Tybalt the King of the Cats from Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye series. Afficionadoes of that series will enjoy seeing this look at Tybalt's early life and how he gained his position and just exactly why he has such affection for the works of William Shakespeare, especially Romeo and Juliet the play from which he takes the name he currently goes by. I came away with more sympathy for Tybalt, a character I have not played well with in the Toby Daye books.

It's a small collection and a bit depressing I have to say, but it does have four very high quality stories from talented and respected authors.

The Drowning City by Amanda Downum

Amanda Downum’s The Drowning City is the first of The Necromancer Chronicles. The necromancer of those books is Isyllt Iskaldur, and she is also the main character of The Drowning City.

I had been waiting to read this book for a while, I held off partially because I’m getting a little sick of diving into never ending series, and having to wait for cliff hangers to be resolved forever and a day. When the author produced the 3^rd book in the series two years after the 1^stcame out, it really started to intrigue me, and it also seemed as if the books were relatively self contained, so I jumped in, oh and Larry Rostant’s cover art is extremely alluring.

The best word to describe The Drowning City is noir. Although this book is a secondary world fantasy, and set in a pre industrial world (although they do have gun powder, pistols are used rarely) it still has this very noirish feel about it. The city of Symir is for me the real star of the book and Amanda Downum’s writing. It’s rare to find an Asian influenced city in fantasy, and rarer still to find one written so well and created with such loving care. A steamy city on the edge of jungle, where criminals and nobles live cheek by jowl and at times it’s hard to pick the revolutionaries from the appointed power brokers.

Unfortunately the story got a bit lost in the setting. Symir had a very distinct character, but the characters themselves weren’t quite so well drawn. I could usually work out when Isyllt was the focus, but other characters were so remarkably similar, even down to their names that they became rather confusing and mixed in my mind. I liked Isyllt and her bodyguard Adam, although Isyllt didn’t seem to need Adam most of the time, so he became a bit superfluous.

There was an interesting story at the heart of The Drowning City about infiltrating a group of revolutionaries and using them to foil the plans of a more radical group of revolutionaries, but it appeared to be rather redundant as an explosion of magic caused largely the by actions of the book’s protagonists destroyed the city altogether.

There were some great ideas at work here; the city itself, Isyllt’s necromantic arts, the rather Asian flavoured culture, the ghosts who were as tangible as any living person, and I was also rather partial to the flesh eating water spirits; the nakhs.

Despite having some flaws and leaving me a little dissatisfied after a great start I will try to continue with the series and look at getting The Bone Palace, the sequel to The Drowning City.