Yanni Kuznia (editor), A Fantasy Medley (Subterranean Press, 2008)
A Fantasy Medley is a chapbook that collects four of the major female fantasy authors in publishing today. Although, to be fair, you could remove the female from that previous sentence and, in a book that gathers together C.E Murphy, Kate Elliot, Robin Hobb and Kelley Armstrong, it would not be any less true.
This is a slender volume but it's not a slight read in any sense. Each of the stories dips into broader worlds created by the authors, but it isn't necessary to have read their other works to enjoy this collection, since the stories are self-contained narratives in their own right. Everything necessary to enjoy the story is contained within the story, although wider knowledge of the worlds does add to the fun.
In Kelley Armstrong's "Zen and the Art of Vampirism" two old -- we'll call them associates -- of Zoe Takano attempt to evict her from her Toronto home. Now Zoe isn't the easy victim that they imagine her to be, but the price of defending her place in Toronto might be more than she's willing to pay. With less violence than you might expect from the premise -- although with a few very effective scenes of it -- this is an entertaining tale. Zoe Takano is an engaging character with an appealing voice and outlook, a glimpse of her history effectively reeling the reader's sympathies in, and the way she deals with the unwelcome intrusion of other vampires in her domain is clever enough to keep both the antagonist and the reader guessing about her motives.
"Riding the Shore of the River of Death" is Kate Elliot's contribution. Kareka, the daughter of the begh of the Kirshat, seeks to avoid marriage to a hero by taking a head to prove that she is a man. Events outside of her control force her to abandon her quest when her brother is mortally injured. As she sees her life threatening to turn into someone else's story, Kareka must decide what she is willing to sacrifice.
Robin Hobb returns to the Farseer world in the short story "Words like Coins." While all four stories in the book were impressive, I have to admit that this one was my favourite. While remaining completely unsentimental, Hobb explores the worth of words and promises through Mirrifen, a one-time hedge-witch apprentice who knows the value of promises kept and broken, and the pregnant female pecksie she finds on her farm. All the characters were solid and believable and the pecksie never fell into the role of comedy sidekick that so often seems to be the fate of small fey creatures. Hobb managed to convince me to keep rooting for Mirrifen even when she was doing something I disagreed with.
Finally, C.E. Murphy takes Janx and Eliseo Daisani from her Negotiator series to Russia in "From Russia, with Love." where they met both Baba Yaga and Baba Yaga's daughter. The story is told from the point of view of Baba Yaga's beautiful daughter -- bait for Janx and always in danger from her mother's voracious appetite -- and the tone and tenor of the story feels Russian. This story has a certain interesting resonance with Elliot's "Riding the River of Death," since the heroine of each story has to make the choice to take the story for her own, to usurp the expectations of those around them.
I'd recommend A Fantasy Medley. If you are already a fan of any of the authors included in the collection it will be a fun extension to the canon and if you've never read them before, then this would be an excellent sampler to see if you'd enjoy their other works. On its own merits A Fantasy Medley is definitely worth a read. The narratives and tightly woven and well told, the authors' familiarity with their worlds gives the setting a concrete feel and the stories are interesting and original.
Rather like the TARDIS there's far more substance inside A Fantasy Medley than you would imagine could fit.
