Review + Giveaway: Shards & Ashes

Shards & Ashes

Editors: Melissa Marr & Kelley Armstrong
Contributors: Veronica Roth, Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl, Rachel Caine, Nancy Holder, Beth Revis, Carrie Ryan
Pages: 384
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: February 19, 2013
Source: For review from YA Books Central

Description from Goodreads:
Gripping original stories of dystopian worlds from nine New York Times bestselling authors, edited by Melissa Marr and Kelley Armstrong

The world is gone, destroyed by human, ecological, or supernatural causes. Survivors dodge chemical warfare and cruel gods; they travel the reaches of space and inhabit underground caverns. Their enemies are disease, corrupt corporations, and one another; their resources are few, and their courage is tested.

Powerful original dystopian tales from nine bestselling authors offer bleak insight, prophetic visions, and precious glimmers of light among the shards and ashes of a ruined world.

Review:
Basically every time I review an anthology, I do things differently. This time, since there aren't that many stories and they're a bit longer, I'm going to break it down with my thoughts about each story.

Story 1: "Hearken" by Veronica Roth
In all honesty, I was expecting to hate this story. I really was not impressed with Divergent and had no higher hopes for this short story. Well, it just goes to show that giving authors a second chance can be a good thing. I really did like this. The concept is fascinating, if not entirely sense-making. In this world, terrorism is rampant, and people are dying from bombings left and right. They've developed, for reasons that seem rather sketchy, the ability, with an implant, for certain highly musically-inclined individuals to hear a person's life music and death music. The story follows a half-Indian, half-white girl, Darya, through her decision about whether to choose to hear the life song or death song. I did laugh hysterically when Darya's life song turns out to have all of the instruments, rather than just some like most people; she's divergent, y'all! The world building opens up a lot of questions which it can't answer (How does this ability actually help anything? Does the death music actually predict when the death will occur?), but the idea itself is appealing enough that I was willing to mostly let that slide and really appreciate the story. While it does loosely fit in the post-apocalyptic category, it's REALLY loose. Darya has some depth to her, and the writing is better than it was in Divergent, if still not of particular note. 3.5/5

Story 2: "Branded" by Kelley Armstrong
Kelley Armstrong stays in familiar territory with her contribution to the anthology, in a tale about werewolves in hybrids. In her post-apocalyptic vision of the future, mankind's attempts to create super-soldiers have ultimately lessened odds of survival. The remaining humans hide behind well-guarded walls, swiftly persecuting anyone found to possess supernatural blood. Rayne's secret boyfriend has just been accused. The story is fun, and will appeal to Armstrong fans. 3/5

Story 3: "Necklace of Raindrops" by Margaret Stohl
Well, this story probably marks my final experience with Margaret Stohl. I hated Beautiful Creatures and, if anything, this is worse. In Stohl's contribution, in a dystopian future, people's lives are tied to their necklaces. If you run out of beads, you die. The other option is to drop, aka go sky diving to your death. At the beginning of the story, Jai's brother, Rama, drops. Jai is not actually bothered by this, instead embarking on a nauseatingly corny romance with Z. Even better than that nonsensical plot and the motivationless characters, Stohl writes almost solely in sentence fragments, and all three points of view read the same. 1/5

Story 4: "Dogsbody" by Rachel Caine
Caine's story follows along a classic dystopian line, with a despotic, ruthless government. Xavier, known as Zay, is recruited to work as a dogsbody, essentially a slave. This story will thrill action fans, as about half of it is an extended shoot-em-up scene. I found the characterization lacking and couldn't stop yawning, despite the action. Also, choosing to name one of the rebels Virtue is rather heavy-handed. 2.5/5

Story 5: "Pale Rider" by Nancy Holder
In Nancy Holder's contribution, another from an author whose previous work I hated, we have yet another world that makes absolutely no sense to me. Apparently, there was a collapse, consisting of explosions, earthquakes, and riots. In 8 years, the world fell apart entirely. I was already skeptical, but we've also got a hot German guy with powers and it turns into this weird paranormal thing. I wouldn't really call this a dystopia, and the writing is nauseating. 1/5

Story 6: "Corpse Eaters" by Melissa Marr
My main reaction to this story was "CHICKA-WHUT?" There's not nearly enough world building to sell this story of some Lizard King god arising from the deeps with his lizard followers. Then apparently some humans start worshiping him and they all eat people. The main characters, Harmony and Chris fight them. Yes, it's dark and creepy, but would probably work better either with a lot more background or as some sort of superhero comic. Also, the relationship between Chris and Harmony is creepy, since he previously had a relationship with her sister Chastity. In fact, he and Harmony first hook up when he thinks she is Chastity, during a drunken haze after Chastity's death. I didn't like the characters or the world, unfortunately. This was a major letdown, since I generally enjoy Marr's work. 2/5

Story 7: "Burn 3" by Kami Garcia
Well, another author has succeeded in surprising me and exceeding my expectations. Kami Garcia chooses a simple premise for her story: global warming leading to post-apocalyptic conditions. A society, within a dome, is managing to limp along, but, even beneath the glass, people suffer from burns. Garcia doesn't shoe-horn in any romance, or try to make the story overly hopeful. "Burn 3" follows classic lines, and does so without being melodramatic or boring. 4/5

Story 8:"Love Is a Choice" by Beth Revis
Yet again, Beth Revis' short story contribution is set in the AtU universe. Unlike some of the others, I actually really liked this one, which gives background on Orion. In this story, you can really see why he ended up losing his mind, and how he became so ruthless and crazy, despite his good intentions. 4/5

Story 9: "Miasma" by Carrie Ryan
Yet again, romance dominates any sort of actual world building. Carrie Ryan has some cool ideas. Something has happened to the environment, and now there's a deadly plague and creepy beaked doctors. Conceivably, this could be awesome, but it's all just there as a backdrop to an instalove sort of relationship. Pass. 2/5

Though most of these stories fell flat for me, the collection is very readable, with even the worst stories not boring me. This made it a nice easy read. I wouldn't recommend it to those who look primarily for world building, but, otherwise, it's a quick, fun read, and, unless you're OCD about such things, you can just skip the stories you don't like.

Rating: 3/5

Giveaway:
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Audiobook Review: Astray

Astray

Author: Emma Donoghue
Narrators: James Langton, Khristine Hvam, Robert Petkoff, Suzanne Toren, Dion Graham
Duration: 6 hrs, 31 mins
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Source: Own

Description from Goodreads:
The fascinating characters that roam across the pages of Emma Donoghue's stories have all gone astray: they are emigrants, runaways, drifters, lovers old and new. They are gold miners and counterfeiters, attorneys and slaves. They cross other borders too: those of race, law, sex, and sanity. They travel for love or money, incognito or under duress.

With rich historical detail, the celebrated author of Room takes us from puritan Massachusetts to revolutionary New Jersey, antebellum Louisiana to the Toronto highway, lighting up four centuries of wanderings that have profound echoes in the present. Astray offers us a surprising and moving history for restless times.

Review:

Short story collections have never been my favorite reading, because they tend to be so uneven. A few stories will really move the reader, leaving the reader wishing for so more of them. Others bore or frustrate, an experience to be got through. With this being the case, keeping my attention and interest up throughout is difficult. On audio, I think this may have been exacerbated, because, without an excellent narrator, they can provoke in the reader a tendency to zone out.

These stories vary in subject matter, but all confront a sense of not belonging, of being astray in one sense or another. These historical tales might be appreciated by some for their own merit, and I didn't dislike them, but, for me, the best part of Astray were hearing the historical inspirations for Donoghue's stories. Every single story in this collection is based upon true historical incidents, some quite directly and others more loosely. At the end of each story, a narrator would inform the reader of these historical incidents, and I always looked forward to that, as most of the stories included quite shocking material.

Though a couple of the stories did hold more appeal for me than others, for the most part, I had trouble focusing and didn't get too much from them. Partly, this stems from a lack of characterization which can plague the shorter forms of writing. Also, some of the narrators really did not sit well with me. One in particular made me want to claw my ears out to put an end to her perky, know-it-all voice speaking with terrible imitations of accents.

Donoghue's afterward again relates the historical aspects of the stories, as well as going into greater detail on her thought process in crafting these stories. She narrated this herself, and both the content and her brogue are lovely. Getting a window into her interpretations of the stories singly and collectively really made for an interesting and unique reading experience.

If you love Donoghue's writing, Astray will be a must-read for you, if only to get a view into the workings of her brain. The stories themselves did not hold any special charm for me, but might have done more so had I read a print copy rather than listening to them.

Rating: 2.5/5

Audiobook Review: The Angel Esmeralda

The Angel Esmeralda

Author: Don DeLillo
Narrators: Michael Cerveris, Peter Friedman, Heather Lind, Mercedes Ruehl, Aaron Tveit
Duration: 6 hrs, 16 mins
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Source: Own

Description from Goodreads:
From one of the greatest writers of our time, the first ever collection of brilliant short stories, written between 1979 and 2011; chronicling—and foretelling—three decades of American life. Set in Greece, the Caribbean, Manhattan, a white collar prison, and outer space, these nine stories are a mesmerizing introduction to Don DeLillo’s iconic voice, from the rich, startling, jazz-infused sentences of his early work to the spare, distilled, monastic language of the later stories.

In “Creation,” a couple at the end of a cruise in the West Indies can’t get off the island. In “Human Moments in World War III,” two men orbiting the earth hear American radio, a half century ago. In the title story, nuns working the violent streets of the south Bronx, confirm the neighborhood’s miracle, the apparition of the dead child, Esmeralda.

Nuns, astronauts, athletes, terrorists, and travelers, the characters in The Angel Esmeralda propel themselves into the world and define it. DeLillo’s sentences are instantly recognizable, as original as the splatter of Jackson Pollock or the luminous rectangles of Rothko. These nine stories describe an extraordinary journey of one great American writer—and are a perfect introduction to the author whose prescience about world events and ear for American language changed the literary landscape.

Review:

You know how in high school or college English classes, you unpack every single line of whatever text you're studying at the time. The class looks deeply into the work for symbolism, metaphor, syntax, diction, and deeper meaning. To be honest, much as I can enjoy doing it, I think a lot of that's bullshit. Sometimes a spade is just a spade, you know. Sometimes, the color of the wallpaper in the room wasn't the author subtly trying to send the reader a message about the hero's emotional state.

Why am I going into all of this? Well, DeLillo's stories feel like he wrote them with these sorts of classes in mind. They're full of symbolism and deeper meanings, all intended to show how clever he is. Were I reading these with a class and taking the time to analyze them word by word, I might be impressed. However, as pleasure reading, they kind of sucked.

Here's the thing: these stories were just so boring. I wanted to like DeLillo; actually, I still do, since I own two of his novels. They were mostly the sort of thing where nothing really happens and what does happen doesn't make sense, but probably because they were about something else altogether. A couple of them had awesome premises, but failed to focus on the cool parts. For example, one was set in Athens, Ohio, which was being beset by an endless stream of earthquakes. It focused not on that, but on a broken statue, obviously a metaphor, but for what I just don't care. Yes, I know much of this is my laziness, but I have a day job, y'all, and I don't want to do too much heavy lifting when I get home.

The characters lacked development, I felt. Again, this just seemed to be much more about his ideas and getting his literariness across. Also, they were repetitive. In most of the stories, there was a refrain that would repeat several times, which is generally not my favorite literary technique, and didn't work for me here.

I fully acknowledge that I didn't read these the way I think DeLillo intended them to be read, but, dammit, I'll read however I want to. Anyway, for the scholarly types that want to study sentences in detail, go right ahead; this is for you. I'm sure these are marvelous and critically praised and whatever, but I guess I'm not smart enough to appreciate them. Fine by me.

Rating: 1

Narration:
The narrators match their style to the stories pretty perfectly. Of course, I didn't like the stories, so I didn't care for most of the narration either. For the most part, they affect (or always read with) a monotonous tone. These people don't give a fuck and they want the world to know it. This plays perfectly into the scholarly "too good for an interesting story line" business. It does not, however, make paying attention to the audiobook an easy task. If you like this style, then go for it, but it's not for me.

Rating: 1

Overall Rating: 1/5

Review: Love, in Theory Blog Tour

Love, in Theory: Ten Stories

Author: E. J. Levy
Pages: 224
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Publication Date: September 15, 2012
Source: UGA Press for blog tour

Description from Goodreads:
In this funny, brainy, thoroughly engaging debut collection, an award-winning writer looks at romance through the lens of scholarly theories to illuminate love in the information age.

In ten captivating and tender stories, E. J. Levy takes readers through the surprisingly erotic terrain of the intellect, offering a smart and modern take on the age-old theme of love--whether between a man and woman, a man and a man, a woman and a woman, or a mother and a child--drawing readers into tales of passion, adultery, and heartbreak. A disheartened English professor's life changes when she goes rock climbing and falls for an outdoorsman. A gay oncologist attending his sister's second wedding ponders dark matter in the universe and the ties that bind us. Three psychiatric patients, each convinced that he is Christ, give rise to a love affair in a small Minnesota town. A Brooklyn woman is thrown out of an ashram for choosing earthly love over enlightenment. A lesbian student of film learns theories of dramatic action the hard way--by falling for a married male professor. Incorporating theories from physics to film to philosophy, from "Rational Choice" to Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class," these stories movingly explore the heart and mind--shooting cupid's arrow toward a target that may never be reached

First Sentence: "They met in a camping equipment store, where he was working as a clerk and she had come to rent a pair of climbing shoes."

Review:
In the past, I have always avoided short fiction, with the grudging exception of some anthologies with really appealing themes (ex. Zombies vs. Unicorns). Generally, short stories haven't made a whole lot of sense to me, since they tend either to be scrapped ideas that weren't good enough to make into a novel or too short to do a fabulous idea justice. Either I don't want the story at all or I want it to be much longer, a proper novel. Well, I happily report that E. J. Levy's short story collection Love, in Theory is precisely what I want short fiction to be.

These ten stories dovetail together nicely, covering a lot of the same ground with slight variations. I love Levy's writing, even in the stories I didn't care for as much. She also makes a lot of fabulous observations with a cynicism and honesty I find quite delightful. I expected this collection of stories about love to be something like a written version of the film Love, Actually, and I suppose it sort of is. However, Levy's stories are all a bit on the melancholy side, lacking the cute couples uniting to make a happy ending, like Love, Actually has, though it actually does have several stories that do not end well.

The last TLC blog tour I participated in was for Before the Rain, a memoir supposedly of love and revolution that follows the romance of two lesbian reporters. I could not help comparing these two, because for all that Before the Rain is non-fiction and Love, in Theory fiction, this short story collection feels infinitely more personal. Having finished this, whether incorrectly or no, I feel I have a sense of who E. J. Levy is, through some of the themes that continually appeared throughout the stories, especially as several of the main characters were writers or worked in academia. In reading this, I felt as though I could sense Levy working through issues she had confronted in her own life or in the lives of close friends and family members. This closeness I felt for the author, whether I'm right or not, made the stories so much more powerful for me.

Over half of the stories focus on well-educated women in their late twenties to early thirties, who struggle with love and romance. These women long for romance, for connection, but, when they find it, the theory of the emotion, the ideal, the dream, does not really seem to fit into their lives. These stories, while they might bore some with the similarity of the heroines, held the most appeal for me, since I cannot help seeing myself reflected in them. Reading about women who have similar reactions and difficulties with romantic relationships to mine was incredibly cathartic.

Another subject that comes up in nearly every story is adultery. If you can't handle stories of infidelity, this collection will not be for you. The adultery comes in just about every form, and, though that's a subject I don't tend to love either, handled quite deftly. This does not seem to have been included for shock value or torridness, but just because that's life; it's a thing that happens and, unfortunately, has to be included in any depiction of love, in the working out of what love really might mean in the face of all of this cheating.

The other most interesting repetition, that again I can't help but stick out to me as perhaps being personal, is that of a lesbian becoming very attracted to a straight man, whether or not she acts on it. Interesting, too, is that the sole gay main character does not question his sexuality, though he does fight against settling down, as almost all of these characters do. The LGBT themes run strongly here, appearing in slightly less than half of the stories.

These stories will not appeal to everyone, but I loved it. A couple of the stories in the middle fell flat for me story-wise, so I couldn't quite rate this five stars. The themes and tone herein remind me a lot of Carol Shields' The Republic of Love, so if you enjoyed that I recommend this heartily, and vice versa.

Rating: 4.5/5

Favorite Quote: "As a scholar, it was her job to see things in relationship to other things; the only thing she couldn't see in a relationship was herself."

Acoustic #3 - Goo Goo Dolls

Drifting House

Author: Krys Lee
Pages: 207
Review Copy Acquired from: Viking

Drifting House consists of nine short stories. All of them focus on Koreans or Korean-Americans. The topics of each short story vary greatly, as do the time in which they're set (from the 1970s to roughly the present), but they do have one thing in common. They are all about desperation, of one sort or another. These characters all yearn to be themselves, but are stifled one way or another, broken from the past or tradition or duty.

All of these stories are really, really sad. The writing style is simple, unornamented, which really seems to force the reader to focus more on the content. The pain these people feel is not dressed up in fancy syntax or diction; it's laid out in front of you for you to experience as well.

Having a chance to learn about another culture, the side I don't learn about from kdramas, is certainly eye-opening. For example, the story "The Salaryman" tells about a man who loses his job at a corporation during a serious down time in the economy. The man sends his family away to stay with his wife's relatives until he can find a job. In the meantime, he is a bum, begging for change, sleeping outside, and going to the unemployment office everyday. What kind of world is this? It's terrifying how one a corporation will lay people off for a profit margin and this is how things can end up.

The story I liked best was At the Edge of the World. The main character of that one is an incredibly bright young boy. I like his voice and his clever thoughts. They remind me somewhat of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Check out my tags for this post: all of those are subjects of one or more of the stories. Do not come to this book for happiness, because you will not find it; this is a book that looks at the darkest parts of life unflinchingly.

Rating: 3/5

"And I wonder where these dreams go
When the world gets in your way
What's the point in all this screaming?
No one's listening anyway"

The Brain from Young Frankenstein: The Musical

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

Author: H. P. Lovecraft
Pages: 360 (followed by 60 pages of notes)
Review Copy Acquired from: Penguin Classics

The short stories of Lovecraft, at least the ones in this anthology, all seem to take place in the same universe. The stories have a lot in common with another. For one thing, they all focus on some sort of mythical monster/god/evil creation of a mad scientist / reader of the Necronomicon. Also, if one were narrating them, it would be really difficult to resist the urge to end the telling of each with DUN-DUN-DUN.

At first, I really was not feeling this at all. Lovecraft's writing is very flowery and ornate, which I felt did not lend itself particularly well to tales of horror. All of the extra information and verbiage lessened any sense of urgency that the stories were trying to convey. As I became more familiar with his narrative style and realized the connections underlying each story, I found myself coming to enjoy the stories.

These tales are often hugely unsurprising in their final twists. The plot lines herein will be familiar to most people who have ever watched a horror film or read a horror story. At first, this irritated me, but this too turned to some amount of fascination when I considered that they were probably fairly original plot lines then. He may have originated some of these ideas, which is pretty cool.

While this will not be for everyone, I definitely think that anyone who really liked Mary Shelley's Frankenstein will adore this, as it was clearly a huge influence upon him. Plus, the cover on this edition is completely gorgeous, even if I doubt Cthulhu would actually look like that.

Not a Robot, But a Ghost - Andrew Bird

Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories

Editors: Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant
Pages: 412
ARC Acquired from: Candlewick

Steampunk is a fun genre, one I have begun to explore with excitement. While I have not loved all of the steampunk novels I have read to this point, I have uniformly enjoyed the idea behind them, the out-of-place mechanization accepted as normal in an otherwise old-fashioned society. What attracts me most to this, I expect, is the similarity between steampunk and magical realism, the only difference being that the magic lies in the technology.

With such thoughts in mind, I was eager to read this anthology, particularly considering that some authors I already enjoy contributed stories, such as M. T. Anderson, Cassandra Clare, Libba Bray and Cory Doctorow. In fact, these authors cap the anthology. It begins with the stories by the three I listed last and ends with M. T. Anderson's tale.

Despite what should have been a strong beginning, I found the start of the anthology utterly tedious. I did actually Clare's, Bray's and Doctorow's stories, but none of them blew me away. Then, the next four stories I found to be completely awful, the anthology not picking up in quality again until Kelly Link's story, which, while interesting, really did not seem like steampunk so much as science fiction or fantasy, depending upon where the summer people came from.

The latter half of the anthology, though, was totally satisfactory. I enjoyed all of the stories but the graphic novel Finishing School. Speaking of the comics included (Finishing School and Seven Days Beset by Demons), why were they so awful? I love that comics were included and applaud the blending of formats, but really think they could have found something better. Seven Days Beset by Demons was by far the worst story in the anthology, for it lacked plot, carried a heavy-handed religious bent and did not particularly smack of steampunk. Epic fail.

The best stories, in my opinion, were "Steam Girl" by Dylan Horrocks, "Everything Amiable and Obliging" by Holly Black, and "The Oracle Engine" by M. T. Anderson, the final three stories in the anthology. I must admit I am a bit biased against most of the others, because I quickly tired of reading the poor grammar of western characters, who say things like "I done seen them people." No thanks.

If you hate that all steampunk takes place in Victorian England and want to see where else it can be set, then you'll enjoy this wide range of interpretations (although personally, I found the ones in a modern setting a bit odd). Be prepared to slog through a couple of long stories that you might not be especially interested in. Or just skip those and move on.

"I hear the clockwork in your core
Time strips the gears till you forget what they were for"

Octopus's Garden - The Beatles

Stories for the Nighttime and Some for the Day

Author: Ben Loory
Pages: 210
Review Copy Acquired from: Penguin

Ben Loory's collection of short stories is, surprisingly, accurately portrayed by the cover. As much as I depend on them (old adages be damned), they often lie, depicting some scene or person never to occur or exist within the novel. The ocean, the spaceship and the octopus tentacle are all main aspects of at least one story. Let me also say that I love the cover, from the art to the texture of it. I also like the texture of the paper within (which does the old timey thing where some pages stick out more than others) and the flaps built into the trade paperback. This book is an excellent tactile experience.

Even before reading the first story, I was charmed by Loory, whose author's note reads: "Here are some stories. I hope you like them." So simple, but completely perfect, because that's what I, as a reader just starting into the book, precisely hope to do. So, you may wonder, did I like the stories? For the most part, yes. The stories are all very short and the writing is deceptively simple. In very few of the stories did I feel like I had a good grasp on what exactly was going on.

Most of the stories are left very open-ended, almost as though the stories are as much about you as they are about the characters in them. This point is borne out by the fact that the characters generally do not have names, referred to only as boy, girl, man, woman, friend, etc. In fact, if I remember correctly, the only characters who receive names are animals: the octopus family in "The Octopus" (along with their likely human landlord, who may be the only human with a name) and the moose (who receives a moniker) "The Man and the Moose." I am not quite sure what to make of this, but it's definitely intriguing.

The universality of the characters combined with the fantasy/magic elements made the stories feel like modern fairy tales or fables or urban legends. The magic was pervasive, subtle and a part of the regular world, which reminded me, in an odd way, of Sarah Addison Allen's novels. Where hers feature a sweet, happy magic, Loory's magic is generally that of something dark and dangerous, although some of the stories included are cute ones (which I fancy are the ones for the day). As an example of what reading the stories is like, I am going to share the shortest story with you.

"Once there was a man who was afraid of his shadow.
Then he met it.
Now he glows in the dark."

Without a doubt, Stories for the Nighttime and some for the day is an interesting read and exceedingly thought-provoking. Every story really is like the one above, in that the meaning is rather unclear and it's up to you to suss it out. I think this would be an excellent title for a book group, as everyone could share their impressions and analyze the themes running through all of the stories to get at the project's aims as a whole. I hope to see more from Ben Loory, especially what kind of a novel he would write.

"I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade
He'd let us in, knows where we've been
In his octopus' garden in the shade"

The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny - Lemon Demon

Zombies vs. Unicorns

Editors: Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier
Genre: fantasy, young adult, short stories
Pages: 415

Today, I'm going to do something a bit different. Having finished this short story collection, I am going to give the stories awards to convey the best and the worst.

Funniest Story: "The Highest Justice" by Garth Nix- I have not been a Garth Nix fan, much to my own disappointment, but I though he did a great job with this story. It's absurd, but in a way that I found entirely comical. Nix does not take the whole thing too seriously and keeps up the comedy throughout. Win. Also the only story to feature both zombies and unicorns, although it is ranked with Team Unicorn. Honorable mentions: "Princess Prettypants" by Meg Cabot, which started off a bit lamely, but got to be laugh-out-load funny at parts; "The Purity Test" by Naomi Novik- a unicorn who gives up on finding a virgin in NYC enlists a hungover girl on a park bench, which is funny all on its own.

Most Terrifying: Tie between "A Thousand Flowers" by Margo Lanagan and "The Children of the Revolution" by Maureen Johnson- Which is worse: bestiality or zombie children? Lanagan's unicorn story is absolutely disgusting; she tries to sell some sort of warped interspecies romance, but I'm not buying. Blech. After reading that one, you will want to cleanse your brain with soap. Through some folly or evil prank on the part of the editors, "The Children of the Revolution" is the next story in the collection. This one is more out and out horrifying, mostly because I am a bit terrified of kids to begin with. Also, I am now haunted by Sponge Bob.

Most Romantic: "Love Will Tear Us Apart" by Alaya Dawn Johnson- Philip's a zombie, but, brain-eating aside, he's a pretty good one. None of the rotting and he has great taste in music (like the Arctic Monkeys). Just as he is arranging his next meal of mac n' cheese (i.e. human), his prey starts getting more and more appetizing, only not in an entirely food-like manor. Can Philip hold back his zombie urges enough to make it work with Jack? Also, I have to mention, major props to this collection for representing gays and lesbians, who feature in Scott Westerfeld's story; I love seeing young adult fiction become more open-minded. Honorable mention: "Cold Hands" by Cassandra Clare- another zombie story, but I suppose the category above proved why the unicorn tales don't feature much romance.

Why Come Up with a New Idea When You Can Recycle?: "Bougainvillea" by Carrie Ryan- Really, Carrie Ryan? You can't right anything not set in your world that bears an uncanny resemblance to The Village? Not to mention that many of the themes of the stories are in every single one. God forbid a heroine find any amount of happiness or ever seem like a real person. Although not part of this category per se, I also must comment on the fact that her choice to alternate between past and present did not tell the story very effectively. Honorable mention: "The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn" by Diana Peterfreund- a good story and definitely not the same as the Astrid books. Still, it might have been nice to see Peterfreund do something different with the unicorns.

Weirdest: "Love Will Tear Us Apart"- Although, as I mentioned above, this story has some good points, it's also one of the most oddly constructed pieces of fiction I have ever read. It jumps around in time and is told largely in second person. Honorable mention: "Prom Night" by Libba Bray- the story didn't feel complete to me at all, so it just left me confused and unsatisfied.

Most Depressing: "The Third Virgin" by Kathleen Duey- A unicorn bothered by its past wanders around trying to commit suicide makes friends with a suicidal virgin. A regular barrel of laughs.

The Story I Most Wish Were a Book: "Inoculata" by Scott Westerfeld- Although rather reminiscent of the recent film Zombieland and with a common theme to The Dead-Tossed Waves, Westerfeld has done some interesting things here. The story felt a bit like a teaser; when it was over, there was a lot more I wanted to know.

Team Unicorn or Team Zombie? While I like both, on the basis of the stories here, I declare myself a member of Team Unicorn. Partly because the unicorn stories were better overall, since a couple of the zombie stories really failed to impress me, but also because I got sick of Justine Larabalestier's (leader of Team Zombie) snide comments at the beginning of every story.