≫ Read Free Down These Strange Streets George R R Martin Gardner Dozois 9780441020744 Books

Down These Strange Streets George R R Martin Gardner Dozois 9780441020744 Books

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Down These Strange Streets George R R Martin Gardner Dozois 9780441020744 Books

Most of the stories in this anthology are short stories of between twenty and twenty-five pages in length, but several are long enough to almost qualify as novellas. That information may not be of interest to you, even though it was to me since one of the stories I was not particularly partial to was of the longer variety. The description on the book cover stating these are stories of urban fantasy may not be strictly true unless you consider that any made up environment classifies as fantasy. Are ancient Roman times really urban fantasy?

I have to say I was very impressed, overall, with this compilation. The stories all have in common the fact that there is a detective, either professional or amateur, trying to solve a unique problem. There are not many of the seemingly required vampire and werewolf stories that usually are included in this type of anthology. Some authors I don't normally enjoy reading with their series characters surprised me with quite enjoyable offerings here. Other authors I had not read before made me long to read more of that character only to find that their contribution was not part of a series. Something which will be of great value to any reader wanting to find more works by a specific author is the information presented before each story. There is a large amount of detail of what materials have been written by each author with titles and series character names. All of this will be of great help if you want to purchase more novels by specific authors. There are sixteen stories and an introduction by George R. R. Martin. I wish Martin had included a story of his own because I think that would have been most interesting to read when set within the boundary of this compilation. All of the stories bear the copyright date of 2011, so you will probably not have read the story in any previous anthologies. The authors are, in the order their story appears in the book: Charlaine Harris, Joe R. Lansdale, Simon R. Green, Steven Saylor, S. M. Stirling, Carrie Vaughn, Conn Iggulden, Laurie R. King, Glen Cook, Melinda M. Snodgrass, M.L.N. Hanover, Lisa Tuttle, Diana Gabaldon, John Maddox Roberts, Patricia Briggs, and Bradley Denton.

My favorite line in the book has to be from "Beware the Snake" by John Maddox Roberts: "Look out!" Julia cried. "He has a snake! And he'll use it!"


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Down These Strange Streets George R R Martin Gardner Dozois 9780441020744 Books Reviews

I bought the book mainly for the stories from C. Harris, Simon Green, Carrie Vaughn, M.L.N. Hanover, and Patricia Briggs, which were all very good and well done, what I'd expect from those authors. Most of the other authors I'd never heard of or had head of but never read anything of theirs. I did read some of the stories by the other authors but some of them I just couldn't get through but there were not very many of these. All in all I enjoyed the book and the stories and felt it was worth buying the book. I'm not going into detail of the stories because other reviewers have done that.
Anthologies suffer and benefit from the multiple authors that inhabit them. Readers might find duplicates of stories from other anthologies. The quality of the stories is also varied.
16 short paranormal/mystery stories. I give this 3 stars. The stories are well written, but most of them didn't stay with me. That is, I couldn't remember the plot of most of them & had to read a couple of other books before I could bring myself to resume.

I liked Hellbender & The Adakian Eagle the most. Shadow Thieves the least. Most of them are obviously from established series. If you like mysteries with some paranormal thrown in, you should like this
I bought this book because I follow the work of one of the author's who contributed, and have been really enjoying most of the short stories. Some of the stories I have enjoyed so much I was disappointed when they finished, I wanted to know what happened next, which is the mark of a good tale.

Another thing I have enjoyed about this book is that it has got me reading a style of book(fantasy) that I don't generally read unless they are blockbusters such as Tolkien, the Harry Potter series or Twilight.

There were some stories I felt was missing some information because things were happening and there was no lead up to the event. Like taking a loo break while watching watching a movie, such as "Inception", and getting back to find you are totally lost.

Also sometimes there was background information I was missing because I hadn't been following the series - which I didn't mind because it really annoys me when authors of sequels feel the need to bring the reader up to speed on the histories of each and every characters and event based on the assumption the reader hasn't read any previous books in the series.

Why can't novels have footnotes or references with all these facts that readers would know if they had been following the story from the beginning (or for the perennial forgetful)? This would be really easy with the advent of electronic books - click on something to take you to the history, it could even reference which chapter of which novel so the reader could go back and have a refresher - if they WANTED to, and then click back to the story.

Overall, an enjoyable mixed bag.
Most of the stories in this anthology are short stories of between twenty and twenty-five pages in length, but several are long enough to almost qualify as novellas. That information may not be of interest to you, even though it was to me since one of the stories I was not particularly partial to was of the longer variety. The description on the book cover stating these are stories of urban fantasy may not be strictly true unless you consider that any made up environment classifies as fantasy. Are ancient Roman times really urban fantasy?

I have to say I was very impressed, overall, with this compilation. The stories all have in common the fact that there is a detective, either professional or amateur, trying to solve a unique problem. There are not many of the seemingly required vampire and werewolf stories that usually are included in this type of anthology. Some authors I don't normally enjoy reading with their series characters surprised me with quite enjoyable offerings here. Other authors I had not read before made me long to read more of that character only to find that their contribution was not part of a series. Something which will be of great value to any reader wanting to find more works by a specific author is the information presented before each story. There is a large amount of detail of what materials have been written by each author with titles and series character names. All of this will be of great help if you want to purchase more novels by specific authors. There are sixteen stories and an introduction by George R. R. Martin. I wish Martin had included a story of his own because I think that would have been most interesting to read when set within the boundary of this compilation. All of the stories bear the copyright date of 2011, so you will probably not have read the story in any previous anthologies. The authors are, in the order their story appears in the book Charlaine Harris, Joe R. Lansdale, Simon R. Green, Steven Saylor, S. M. Stirling, Carrie Vaughn, Conn Iggulden, Laurie R. King, Glen Cook, Melinda M. Snodgrass, M.L.N. Hanover, Lisa Tuttle, Diana Gabaldon, John Maddox Roberts, Patricia Briggs, and Bradley Denton.

My favorite line in the book has to be from "Beware the Snake" by John Maddox Roberts "Look out!" Julia cried. "He has a snake! And he'll use it!"