Nicole Zoltack

A YA SFF anthology with 16 stories set around books.

With such an appealing theme, who wouldn’t want to try out this collection? Add in the SFF factor, and I was ready for a treat. However, the book catered to only some of my expectations.

On the positive side, I loved seeing the variety in the book. It covers quite a few SFF subgenres, including dystopian, epic, witchcraft, fae, high fantasy and futuristic. The authors clearly have a vivid imagination, and many stories create a great fantasy world within their limited page-space.

As it is, all stories are never at the same level when it comes to anthologies. But with 16 different contributing authors, it goes without saying that the quality is quite varied in this one. Some are highly imaginative, other drone on. Some end perfectly, others abruptly. A few stories seemed to be incomplete in some way, until I discovered that they were set in the world of some series created by the author. (Quite unfair to include these, if you ask me. How will we get an authentic experience when the story presumes some familiarity with its origin series? I couldn’t even understand why I was unable to connect more with the characters, until I saw this point mentioned by other reviewers.)

Moreover, the stories don’t feel like SHORT stories. When you have 16 stories spread across 540 pages, you can see that the average length per story is about 34 pages, thus touching novellette length. Because of the world building and writing style, I couldn’t go fast through most of the tales, though this was classified as YA! Hence a mixed feeling about the pacing of the book.

As always, I rated the stories individually. Of the sixteen stories in the book, four stories reached or crossed the 4 star mark. The rest were clustered around the 3 star level. My favourites were:

Ruthless hearts - E.V. Everest -

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Ink & Incantation: An Enchanting YA Anthology Featuring Books & Libraries, #1), my second read from author E.V. Everest. After reading Seven Crowns (Bellaton, #1), I was up for another read from this author. Enjoyable, well-written collection of 33 YA Sci-Fi and Fantasy short reads from a group of well-read authors with links to that author at the end of their contribution. “I received a free Kindle copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review." The gifting of this book did not affect my opinion of it. (RIP Marley January 20, 2014 - July 24, 2018).… (more)